Methinks Berkeley Students Have No Problem Procuring Cheap Contraception

I read The Daily Cal’s Sex on Tuesday column as an undergrad, and thought it was something of note.  When I came back on campus a few years later and attempted to read the same column, now written by a different girl (if there was ever a Sex on Tuesday boy, I missed it) and quickly concluded that a 20-year-old has no business writing sex advice.  Via College Insurrection I found that a girl by the name of Nadia Cho, now in custody of Sex on Tuesday, made a quite a splash proclaiming:

[H]aving sex on campus is actually very doable, and it’s lots of fun. It’s also surprisingly easy.

Note to the copy editor: “doable” connotes relative ease.  To avoid redundancy, strike out the last sentence.  Besides, even if we take our self-described “mischievous” author for her own word, sex on campus is not that easy.  She chose the evening before Thanksgiving when the campus is “marvelously empty” for her adventure, but try doing it the day before the first final when everyone and his mother is at The Stacks studying.  Plus, she makes it pretty clear that neither she nor her unfortunate male partner actually had an orgasm.  “I’m just not ambitious” — she explained.  I dono… What she does with her body in the privacy of whatever is really none of my business, but I like my newspaper correspondents thorough and ambitious.

To be sure, Ms. Cho has the theory to back her no-orgasm sex practice:

[S]ex isn’t always about cumming and having orgasms. Sometimes it’s for shits and giggles. Having expectations and goals can ruin the fun of it.

She has lots of theory.  For instance, she authoritatively states:

The risk of getting caught is what makes having sex in public so exciting. Without that, there wouldn’t be any novelty in doing it. It’s fun to challenge yourself to not make any noise while having sex.

Nadia Cho folds her hands

Nadia devoted several paragraphs to encouraging her fellow students to make out in public places.  Among her pearls:

Other than providing fun places to get down, Berkeley is the best place to explore your sexuality.

That sentence is a fine example of Berkeley undergrad writing.  Presumably “the best place to explore your sexuality” is “fun [...] to get down”.  Rewrite and shorten.  The problem with undergraduates is that they get accustomed to getting paid by the word, so to say.  In every humanities class, they absolutely have to stretch their pearls to make up 8 pages, which prevents them from developing an ability to write as they think.  I shouldn’t pick on the columnist too much, I doubt I was any better when I was her age — although I wish I had more instruction.Ms. Cho continues:

Our school is a predominantly safe and accepting space with many places, people and resources to help you discover your sexual self.

“[P]redominantly safe”?  As far as I can tell, “predominantly safe” means keep on the look out for creeps — as any woman should, anywhere. But then there is this:

It is the place where I learned what it means to be queer, to recognize the presence of patriarchy, to attempt polyamory and to become more confident in my sexuality so I could go ahead with new experiences — attending naked parties and orgies and writing a sex column, just to name a few.

Ah, the patriarchy!  So that’s why Berkeley is not “safe” but merely “predominantly safe”, because there might be a patriarch roaming around somewhere.

Speaking of naked parties, are Nadia’s parents reading her world-famous column?  Well, doh!  Of course!  Considering that the girl is in no hurry to get home the day before Thanksgiving, the point of this writing exercise is most likely to get her bill-paying (Korean?  Patriarchal?) father know who’s the boss.  I don’t suppose the column will hurt her employment chances, not in the Bay Area, where patriarchy no longer prevents us women from enjoying our sexuality, but does she really want every romantic interest from this day forward googling her name?  And if she gets around to having a family, she has to presume that her kids will find out.  I have some decade-old silliness attached to my name floating online, nothing of sex on campus caliber, to be sure, but enough to dread the day when my kids will enter my name into a search engine.

Ms. Cho concludes her story:

Learn to appreciate your sexy side and experience a few frisky things during your time here. Take the Female Sexuality DeCal [...]

That, my friends, is the difference between a Sex on Tuesday columnist and her audience: Female Sexuality DeCal.  Whatever it takes to have their pretty little brains occupied.

UPDATE: Linked by Doug Ross.  Thanks!

Bad Girls on Oxytocin

In a series of Freudian slips President Obama let us know that in his view our allies are “noise” and the murdered American ambassador is “bump in the road”.  Elizabeth Warren looks more and more like a compulsive liar.  And I’m going to write about relationships.

“Why didn’t we tell them?” asks Leslie Loftis.  A young woman who had the brains to be admitted into Princeton confesses:

During the second semester of my freshman year, two of my closest female friends and I created an “Accomplishment Chart,” complete with a star for each “accomplishment” we had achieved. One of those friends had been dating a freshman boy since September and she had only one star. My other friend and I would taunt her ruthlessly for her lack of “accomplishments.” We, on the other hand, were plenty accomplished. Whenever I looked at the star stickers adorning my section of the chart, I would always laugh out loud, remembering the awful, drunken hookup that each star symbolized. There were many nights, though, when I couldn’t sleep from cringing at those memories. But I wouldn’t take those experiences back. Without them, I would have never realized how much I hate the hookup culture here.

It wasn’t until the end of my sophomore year that I finally started regarding my freshman hookups as mistakes. This was partially because I had a hard time admitting that I had messed up. For me, to regret a decision was on par with saying “I screwed up big time,” which I could barely admit to myself, let alone a peer. And the desire to seem like I already knew it all, despite never having lived on my own before, kept me from asking questions when I first got to Princeton. But even if I had, there were elements of the hookup culture I would have never been able to anticipate, let alone seek advice about.

I have to say, if after a year of bad sex this young lady figured that hook up culture sicks, she got out easy.  She could have picked up a disease or seriously screwed up her life.  But here is Temple of Mut with an excellent essay on why women are casualties of casual sex.  It has nothing to do with culture or feminism, it’s hormonal:

During millions of years of human evolution, the female system has been designed to begin a cascade of oxytocin production during two specific events: 1) When being intimate with a male; 2) When breast-feeding an infant. On the other hand, human males have very limited oxytocin levels (and actually release some of the little oxytocin they produce when “involved” with the woman of the moment).

Now, oxytocin is a wonderful thing. It energizes people, and makes them feel good about life. It enhances the immune system, as well as boosts other biochemical processes in the human body. Personally, after strawberry margaritas, oxytocin is my favorite chemical (and I have a graduate degree in chemistry, so I know chemicals).

However, as with everything else pleasurable in life, there can be a bit of a downside. Once a woman generates oxytocin, she will usually want to do everything in her power to keep up the production levels. For example, there are tales of women who nurse their babies past toddler-hood (until 3, 4 or 5 years in age). This is related to the fact these women want to continue releasing oxytocin (even though they will have other rationalizations).

The same thing is true following intimate relations. Oxytocin production can be stimulated in a woman through her lover’s voice, scent, sight and touch. This fact explains a wide range of female behaviors that follow intimacy. For example, women will call up their new partner frequently. They will steal their lover’s shirts to enjoy the scent. They will invent excuses to see the man-of-the moment. And the more oxytocin these women generate when with their lovers (or by talking to them), the more emotionally attached they get.

As they say, read the whole thing.  As a pop number from decades ago had it, you might like him better if you sleep together.  What Romeo Void didn’t warn us about is that you might like him too much:

Many feminists egg on young women to engage in no-strings-attached sex like certain men, but historically that’s not how women are “bad”.  As Mut explained, women don’t have much to gain from sleeping around.  The way women “have” men is by not sleeping with them, by making men lust after themselves, but not giving up sex.  A not-so-secret admirer is a fabulous ego-booster, and in certain circles one-sided friendships of this nature are quite common.

Granted, having a page is not an “accomplishment” that a young lady will decorate with a star on a chart — that would be gosh.  She has to be content with gossip that recognizes her as the girl who broke somebody’s little heart.  Even then, being a tease is rather dead-endinsh — but so is being a Cosanova.  However, getting a man interested and keeping him interested through decades of relationship does require some female talents.

I’ll be back shortly with a post about identity.

UPDATE: Linked by Legal Insurrection — many thanks to Professor Jacobson.

Was The South Always Different?

A sophomore from Athens Amber Estes wrote an advice piece on how to find husband in college (via Instapundit).  The college years seem be a good time to pair up, especially when the men are conveniently pre-selected to meet certain minimum requirements, but some parents disagree.  In her cover story for The Atlantic, for instance, Katie Bolick recalled that her mother suggested that her college boyfriend break up with her daughter (many years down the road, her dad lamented that she’s unlucky in love).  A while ago, Penelope Trunk broke the mold recommending to start the husband hunt “early”, by 24.  I commented back then that’s what’s shocking about this statement is that 24 is considered early, and I think Estes might concur.

In the mid-90s, when I transferred to Berkeley in my junior year, I started out under the assumption that everyone would be looking for a spouse.  After all, this is what I knew in the Soviet Union where by the time they received their diplomas most women were married, likely had children, and possibly had already divorced.

It’s not just that I personally didn’t exactly follow Amber’s advice — I shopped for some outrageous get ups at Mars Mercantile and wasn’t too shy to parade them around campus, for instance — or that I didn’t do the Greek scene, which seems to be her thing.  I struggle to think of a single Berkeley alumni my age who married her college sweetheart — not sorority girls, not Russians, not anyone.

I found that few students were interested in romance, and that the relationships that did form on campus were often of the transient kind — one night stands, “open” relationships, or the ones that simple didn’t last long.  We were busy: the curriculum was fairly demanding, and we were on the studious side.  It’s worth noting that the atmosphere was cliquish and students didn’t talk much to each other.  Perhaps feminism played a role, and young men were unsure of themselves.  More importantly, there was the prevailing assumption that the 20s are not for childbearing.  Many of us were graduate degree-bound, and even the ones who weren’t didn’t want to be bound to a single individual at that stage.  If I mentioned wanting to have two children by the time I’m 30, other students thought it was crazytalk.  Most of them didn’t worry about such things.

They also, if you find this information relevant, didn’t think I was a motherly type.  My retort was that nearly everyone is a motherly type.  I eventually lost touch with my college friends, but I do know that at 33 I was among the first to get married, and at 34 I was among the first to give birth.  Personally, I found it very difficult to start a family in my 20s.  Perhaps I was doing it all wrong; I didn’t bake cookies for bf’s buddies as Estes suggests.  To the contrary, DH’s old bandmate called me a Zionist bitch, and I am still damn proud of it.  But I suspect that the less confrontational women fared worse than me when it comes to love, mainly because they didn’t plan for it.

I do see quite a few professional Bay Area mothers who started having kids in their late 20s.  But even within this “young mom” demo, I’m yet to meet a single woman who married a college sweetheart.  It could be sample bias, of course, but it might just be that around here we are not wired to meet our men on campus.  So either there is some kind of emerging trend for earlier marriage or the South is just different.

You Didn’t Build This, So We Are Going to Take It Away

On the other hand, you did write it, so I am going to link.

It’s napless madness around here.  If there is no child sitting on my lap at any given moment, it means that within five minutes there will be.  So basically I don’t really have a chance to read and comment, much less to post.  So I compiled a partial list of my reads… from the last several weeks.  I have a feeling half of my readers are probably looking at this and think that they wish they’d have my problems.  Consider one other mothers’ ordeal.

In sunny California, Governor Jerry Brown staged groundbreaking ceremonies for the speed train in SF and LA, where the train is popular with head-in-the-clouds types.  But not in the San Joaquin Valley where construction is actually going to take place but the project is unpopular.  I was listening to Armstrong and Getty this morning, and they were saying that although at the moment the Governor Brown proposal to raise taxes enjoys support of about 50% of Californians, 20% say that they will not vote for it if the bullet train is approved.  So hopefully Brown just killed his tax hike.

Elsewhere in California Sobek of Innocent Bystanders strongly recommends voting for Republican Elizabeth Emken for Senator.  He posted her picture, too.  Her opponent the Democratic  Senior Senator from California Diane Feinstein is endorsed by San Diego tea Party.  WHAT?  Let Leslie from Temple of Mut explain:

An important note to my Republican/Conservative friends — when the “Big Red Wave of 2010″ stopped at the Sierras and the state GOP failed to eject the contemptible Babs Boxer, then how in the hell do you think they are going to get rid of the much more respected Feinstein? As a friend, I say this to you: Direct your money and energies to battleground Senate races (e.g., Richard Mourdock in Indiana). This in not a battle worth fighting, given the field that is being offered.

Considering that it’s California, we can do much, much worse than Feinstein.  Since this unlikely endorsement, Feinstein was heard fuming over the leaks of classified information likely coming from the Obama Administration.  Not bad.  Even if she’s replaced by a Republican, I’d fear that the next election the Republican will be voted out and replaced by a doctrinaire left-winger.  Having sad that, because there is no chance Feinstein will not be elected, I’m voting for the GOP candidate.  I’m not going to go out of my way to get her elected, though.  A good place to go out of my way is Operation Counterweight.  Lets target those seats!

If a dead dog doesn’t get to vote, it’s racism because the dog is a black lab.  (Via The Daley Gator).

Lori Gottleib and Kate Bolick are missing out on the coolest party in Brooklyn.

Leslie Loftis compares marital advise then and now.

James O’Keefe shows that everything we suspect about the politics of “shovel-ready” jobs is true.  I suspect our President thinks that’s the kind of “shovel-ready” jobs that made hard-working people successful.

A related headline: You Didn’t Lose Your Job.  Somebody Else Made It Happen.

Anne’s Opinions is commemorating the Israeli victims of Bulgaria bus bombing.

A blood-curling video via Bob:

Via Instapundit, Suburban Illinois Jews are turning to GOP.  It’s about time.  I never understood why community as entrepreneurial as the American Jews embraced socialism.  I mean, I know the story about the pogroms, and the FDR fighting World War Two and all, but I still don’t get it.

King Shamus reviewed The Obama Effect.

Manhattan Infidel updates his Kennedy Malfeasance Template.

Linda NoOne is still not blogging in full force, but she did post some amazingly bad cover songs.

On Structuring Chaos I found a link to a terrific piece on the boomer generation by Nick Gillespie.  I thought of writing a response, and maybe I will if time allows.  Meanwhile, read it!

It Official: Rush Limbaugh Is My Favorite Feminist

This one is also for Andrew Breitbart

I am sure my readers have been following the trials and tribulations of a middle age (well, she’s 30, which historically was considered middle age) woman who goes by the last name of Fluke. Ms. Fluke is a student at one of the nation’s top law schools who made a claim that law co-eds forgo contraception because they are not able to cover the cost.  I say it’s bogus.  Judging by the fact that college students are pretty good at avoiding pregnancies, contraception can not possibly be such a pressing issue.  In fact, women with advanced degrees became so good at postponing childbearing, we often require medical help once we feel that we are finally ready to become mothers.

Of course, some law students do start families while in school.  A former co-worker went to Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.  There, she joked, everyone was pregnant.  Even one man was pregnant.  What she meant to say, is that religious Jewish women who eschewed birth control went to Yeshiva.  What she also meant to say, is that secular women start pushing out babies later, and to plan our lives this way is easy.  In certain circles getting pregnant while in school equals undue burden, and law students being pot-committed simply don’t go there.

Today Rush Limbaugh said the following about Ms. Fluke’s demands of “free” birth control:

I wouldn’t deny her her birth control pills.  That’s not what this is about. This isn’t about birth control pills, anyway, folks.  This isn’t about contraception anyway.  This is about expanding the reach and power of government into your womb, if you’re a woman.  This is about the Democrat Party wanting more and more control over you.  What was early feminism all about?  Emancipation, individuality, freedom, liberation, all of these things. Now here comes Danica Patrick out and she says, “I’m perfectly comfortable letting the government make my health decisions for me.”  Well, folks, I’m gonna tell you: Right there, that’s the death and the end of feminism.

As they say, dItto.  Do we really need a man to remind us what feminism is?  Feminism is about women behaving like grown ups, about being able to take care of ourselves.  We women are perfectly capable of surviving outside the protective custody of our fathers and husbands.

Sex is for adults.  People unable to take care of the consequences of sexual activity — provide for an offspring or figure out how to avoid pregnancy, for instance — might as well move into their parents’ basement.  Ms. Fluke should have her daddy chaperon her to Georgetown.  Except that now that the government plays the daddy, no biological father in his right mind will do it.

I’m not saying that fathers need to escort their middle age daughters, quite to the contrary.  Because I want to keep our freedom, I realize that we need to fight against the likes of Sandra Fluke.  I’m not about to surrender the control of my reproduction faculties to the federal government.  In the great majority of cases contraception is not a health issue, this is a lifestyle issue, and I’m opposed to giving up my personal choices to a faceless bureaucrat, male or female.

Actually, Christina Hoff Sommers is my favorite feminist.

Penelope Trunk’s Blueprint

There is a lot to comment on in Penelope Trunk’s Blueprint for a Woman’s Life (via Instapundit).  Here’s what she says about marriage:

If you want to have kids, you should aim to be done by the time you are 35, when your eggs start going bad fast. This means you need to get started when you are 30, which means you need to get the guy you want to have kids with by the time you’re 28. People who marry too early are very likely to get divorced. But by age 25, you are safe from those statistical trends. So why not marry early? In any case, start looking very seriously for a husband by the time you are 24. Here is a blog post that summarizes this argument and links to the research to back it up.

The only thing shocking about this paragraph is that 24 is an “early” start.  When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, the popular wisdom was that a woman has to be done having kids by the time she turns 25.  In the 80s, college students were making their trip to ZAGS before receiving their diplomas.  Now Russians are also delaying childbirth.  I recently tracked down my former classmates.  Family planing-wise women my age fall into three groups:  First, there are the ones who followed the 80s path, got married and had children in early twenties.  Then there are the ones like me, who married and had children late.  The third group is comprised chiefly of those who moved to Israel,  married and had children early, but given how in Israel everyone is baby-happy, by the time their children were bni mitzvah, they observed plenty of women braving advance maternal age to have #6 or #7, and went for more.  Who knew Russian women were capable of bearing three or even four children?

Initially I planned on getting married early, only it didn’t work out that way.  Maybe I was looking for the right guy in all the wrong places, and, actually, I was about to give up on the whole arty hubby idea when I found DH.  It’s good that I gave myself plenty of extra time, then.  I don’t think starting to look at 24 is “early”.  I don’t think 18 is early.  Or even 15.  Mind you, a girl doesn’t need to sleep with her dates to be looking a for a future husband.  And if a girl is going to date, she might as well date the kind of men she can see herself marrying.

While it’s true that early marriage is correlated to divorce, correlation is not causation.  Certainly older people are less attractive to the opposite sex, but being unattractive didn’t stop many millions from having affairs.  Being older and wiser is a factor too, but then there is Newt Gingrich.

Two generations ago, people married early and didn’t get divorced.  It might just be that the demographic averse to divorces is the demographic that spends its early twenties establishing themselves and thus delays marriage.  Marrying within that crowd, even if the bride is 21, will probably not increase her chances of divorce.  Staying together while going to school and starting a career can be a challenge, but nothing is impossible for people in love.

The Generation X blueprint was “I’m going to wait until my late 30s-early 40s to have children because it’s, like, totally possible.  Like, my great aunt did it.”  I’m not saying it never works out, but my 39-year old neighbor conceived via IVF after three years of trying.  DH reminds me that for Bay Area the overall Generation X the blueprint is to wait for the inheritance.  Many an overpriced house was purchased with late great grandpa’s money.

I noticed that late motherhood ages women.  “Are you pregnant?” is often an uncomfortable question to ask a woman in early stages of pregnancy.  The uncomfortable question on the playground is “Are you a grandma?”  I asked it one time too many… actually just one time, I learned quick.  I was convinced that I’m talking to a grandmother.  Her kids were a little older than mine, and she had them in late 30s-early 40s, with difficulties and without much break in-between.  Pregnancy pounds are hard to shed, especially for older moms, and especially when they have children in quick secession.  Younger moms have an easier time keeping up with babies and toddlers.  They get tired, for sure, but they don’t seem to age so much.  If a younger mom lets herself go, she can put herself together and still look hot.  If a 40 year-old mom lets herself go, she’ll find a middle age woman in the mirror.  That woman I met on the playground was not 10 years older than me, but she looked like she was a different generation altogether.

Women who marry and have children early will sure miss out on some of these coveted Sex in the City experiences, but they will have some extra time to have an extra kid or two, as some of my classmates did.  They will enter the empty-ester stage quicker,  which will leave them with more time at the tail end of the careers, and more time to spend with their husbands while they are still relatively young.  Say, a woman who had one child at 24 and another at 26, will be 44 when the youngest goes to college.  She’ll be heading out to opera or the Wine Country with her still hot hubby when other women in her age group will be attending PTA meetings.  Something to consider.

The State of Feminism in San Francisco Bay Area

A while ago I promised to write a response to King Shamus and No One’s post about feminism and motherhood.  Their proposition is that the Left would be far more dangerous if feminists would not insist that women work instead of raising children because the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.  I love both blogs, but I don’t think either one of them had the data when it comes to contemporary feminism or left-leaning women.

I’m surrounded by liberal Bay Area mothers.  Most of them are middle class middle age white women born in the United States.  Almost everyone is married, and their husbands are usually middle-class and middle age, white and born in this country.  Men and women spent their twenties and typically a part of their thirties in school, pursuing white-collar careers and/or being an artiste.  Not every mother around here chooses feminist as her primary identity marker, but if asked if they are feminist, most would say yes.  I don’t think any of them would have anything negative to say about NOW.

I’d say that a little more then half of women in my neighborhood are stay at home moms, and the ones who work wish they didn’t have to.  The cost of living around here is high, so many women have to return to work full time after maternity leave runs out.  Women with relatively wealthy husbands and/or trust funds, as many liberals are, stay home.  Unless they have truly illustrious careers, which, by definition, few do, there is no point.  Who wants to go back to that associate position, putting in 80 hours a week, while pumping and freezing and worrying herself silly about that diaper rash?

In the 1970s feminism took a certain mothering-friendly turn.  The 70s “visionaries” encouraged women to go to the woods and have painless, erotic childbirth without the evil male doctor and his evil male science.  Hippie and now yuppie women breastfeed their babies, sleep with them, wear them in slings (preferably over one shoulder, Bjorns are dad carriers, apparently) and in some cases homeschool, although I don’t think the last one is any longer hip, for obvious reasons.  This kind of motherhood is considered “natural”.  Because they all worship Dr. Sears, sometimes, if I’m in a feisty mood, I’d say something like “Do you know that Dr. Sears is a big Christian?”

"Natural" childbirth gets feminist stamp of approval.

One reason this is happening is because Marx trumps Friedan and Drerida trumps all.  Instead of being a cog in the capitalist system, mother gets to stay home, do something crafty on her spare time, and maybe sell it on Etsy.  She can take up a new hobby like photography, gardening or blogging.  One or more of these hobbies applies to someone you know.  Gourmet cooking for her family is another option, and, again, since the 70s, lefties have been very much into gourmet cooking.  One of the really nice things about living in the Bay Area (and you won’t catch me saying that often) is food.

This is not to say that those women embrace traditional gender roles.  They have cartoonish ideas about traditional gender roles, actually.  Many times I have heard it said: “I’m not your typical housewife!!! I read books!!!” as if that is anything new.  Bay Area mothers have something to prove.  If she’s selling her knits on Etsy, it’s because she’s still an artist.  Many remain career-minded overachievers at heart who view their children as projects and always try for extra credit.  For instance, when Yelena was born the extra credit was potty training at birth.  That particular initiative, although environment-friendly, didn’t square well with Doc Sears theories, though.

Stay at home mom is very much in synch with the environmentalist calls to return to the middle ages.  She cooks locally-sourced organic food from natural ingredients.  She does her linens in a front-loading washer in cold water.  She prefers “natural” parenting (see above).  She buys expensive organic cotton onesies.  Most importantly, she teaches her kids to recycle and to turn off the lights as well as other received liberal wisdom, such as never using skin color to describe a person’s appearance.  This is how she raises a moral child.  OK, I’m exaggerating.

Another reason why stay at home liberal motherhood is possible is difference feminism championed by Carol Gilligan that teaches that men and women are different, and that women are better.  Difference feminists will say that men should strive to be womanly, and that girls deserve special attention.  Therefore our society has to work to accommodate women’s careers while respecting our choice to raise kids.

Around here we no longer attempt to accomplish raising boys and girls the same.  That experiment was undertaken in the 70s, and it flopped.  From time to time a genderless hold out pops up, and then there is a stray lesbian couple, but there is no movement to raise boys and girls alike because few people want to set themselves up for a disappointment.  Now we are merely raising kids who are not too excited about becoming either men or women.  A case in point is the insistence on the part of quite a few moms that their sons pee sitting.

What this all amounts to is that women take maybe a half a decade to a decade off, and that our husbands help with housekeeping.  Women around here take it for granted that somebody out there lobbies on their behalf, so that when we return to work, our careers take minimal damage.  If we don’t quit work, we expect generous maternity leaves and flexibility from our employers.  I’m mystified by the number of visibly pregnant women who, in this economy, were able to score lucrative positions.

Me, I consider myself a feminist in Christina Hoff Sommers vein.   I can’t imagine what it would be like to leave my child in daycare and head to work.  I know my professional life will take a beating, and that’s just the price to pay for having this amazing stage in my life.  I don’t ask anyone to lobby for longer maternity leaves on my behalf, and while I will want an understanding employer in the future, I don’t expect to be compensated as generously as single women or fathers.  Above all, I want to raise my son to be a gentleman, and my daughter — a lady.