Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions

In Louise Story's article "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood", Story finds that trends are beginning to show that women are planning to put their children ahead of their careers at earlier stages of their life. Story explained how women's opinions were changing and why this is a big change from the way things were expected to be.

Story reported on a survey of incoming freshman at Yale asking the females what they had in mind for their futures outside of college. The interesting information in these surveys were that many women indicated that they intended to become stay-at-home moms or cut back on their working hours after having children.

Story alluded to another element of this study which surveyed alumni from Yale asking women how their lives changed in relation to the workplace after having children. Many women reported that despite planning on continuing to work full-time that they would cut back on their work to take care of their children. Story stated that the result of this study was surprising to Laura Wexler "a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale" (2). Wexler believed that women and men would be sharing these responsibilities more equal than before.

Overall, this article showed that the view women have of their futures has differed from the way feminists have fought for in the past. The women, who have been striving to make these changes like Wexler, are not upset with the results of this study, because now it's the women's choice to focus on their children.

John Meyer

Dallas Cooper

Works Cited

Story, Louise. "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood." The New York Times [New York] 20 Sept. 2005. Print.