I never mean to eavesdrop on somebody else's conversation, but well, sometimes I can't help it, especially if the talkers in question have naturally loud voices.
Anyways, I overheard two women discussing a meeting that they were going to. One of them mentioned that it was a good thing that one women in their group had kids because otherwise, it would be a bad thing. Apparently some people who were going to the meeting frowned upon childless career women.
Society, of course, doesn't frown upon childless career men, but this was quite a turn-around. What happened to the idea that career driven females had no time to reproduce and raise children? Is it now the norm to expect women to do everything--to hold down a good job and bring up a bunch of kids single-handedly? I'm not deriding the women who do choose to do everything, if anything, I find it incredibly admirable. But this does not mean that it's something that every woman should do.
And where are all the men in this equation? True, some of the males may be helping out equally in the rearing of offspring department, but perhaps there are less benign implications.
Perhaps society is still holding on to the notion that women should have kids (despite what they want) even if career women are commonplace.
Geek Humor for the Day: Typically in haploid yeast, the a receptor is located on the a cell type. When the a cell secretes a factor, this factor binds to the receptor on the a cell which causes it to undergo a mating response. Student: So if an insertion for the a receptor is included in the mutant a [yeast] cell, doesn't the cell mate with other a cells? Prof: Well, it schmoos* and everything, but I don't think it goes all the way. Student: ...!
*Schmooing - when yeast cells undergo the mating response
