Career, Babies and Marriage

The internet is somewhat blowing up over this recent article by the controversial Penelope Trunk.

She tells the world to get pregnant at 25 if you want a high-powererd career.

Well, I happen to be 25, pregnant and desiring of a high-powered career. I just had my 25th birthday, and I am in my mid-twenties now. I'm very pregnant, and I see myself as the director of some department on a university or college campus in my forties.

Clearly, I had to read this article.

Here are some highlights:
I loved that women are coming forward to say that it is literally impossible to have a high-powered career while you have young kids, if you want to be involved in your kids’ lives. The best thing older women can do for younger women right now is to tell the truth. It’s hard to tell the truth because if you are trying to do the high-powered job and the kids, you will kill your career by admitting that it’s impossible.

But here’s the truth for women: You should not plan your life so that you work until you’re 30 and then have kids, and also have a huge career. Because you will be taking care of kids during the very time when all the men you worked with are working harder and longer hours than ever before. Men who have kids are in a great position to climb the ladder. They have wives at home. Women cannot go full speed ahead until the kids are grown up. Slaughter has great evidence for this. But you should be able just to look around and see that this truth. My favorite example: All the male Supreme Court Justices have families. Two of the three women do not. And the one who does, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, did not start her career until her kids were grown.

Slaughter lays out a great plan. It’s tucked into the article, among a lot of other calls to action. But she says, if you want to have a huge career, have kids when you are 25 so your kids will be grown when you are 45, because there will still be time to have a huge career.

This also means women will need to start dating men who are older than they are. This also seems like a good idea. Men, of course, love younger women. But more than that, women who are in their twenties are in their prime in terms of self-confidence. They are physically very desirable, and they are doing better at work than men. Men, on the other hand, are at their nadir of self-confidence in their twenties. They are not making money, which is something that is very valuable on the dating scene. And they are not doing as well as women at work. Men look way better in their 30s when the women have left the workplace and the men have a more solid grip on their earning power.

So look. Here’s my first post directed solely at Generation Z women: Spend the years from age 20-25 focused on getting married. There is no evidence that doing well in school during that period of your life will get you worthwhile benefits. There is no evidence that waiting longer than 25 makes a better marriage. And there is not evidence that women who do a great job early in their career can bank on that later in their career. There is evidence, though, that women who focus on marriage have better marriages. There is evidence that women who have kids earlier have healthier kids, and there is evidence, now, that women who have grown children by age 45 do better at getting to the top in the workforce than all other women with kids.

You can bet I'm forwarding this article to my two (younger) sisters.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

During our Magical Movery Tour of the East Coast, we visited almost every friend we have. We visited Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Carrboro, Greenville, Easley, Charleston, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Gainesville, Clemson, Indiana and Kentucky.

Along that trip, we asked our friends to give us advice for Oklahoma. Here it is.

Advice from Friends from Bryan and Alyssa on Vimeo.

My Dad Blogs, Too!

My dad is one of my favorite people. He's hilarious, super cool and killer at choosing restaurants. He also is a worship pastor at the church I was raised in, and he's finishing up his Music Performance degree from the University of Central Florida. One of his classes required him to create a personal website for promotion. I told him to add a blog, and he did.


Here's what life is like for my dad, the worshop pastor and funnyman, David Mander:
TODAY I BECAME AN ORGAN DONOR
We have had an organ in our church since I came there with my family nearly 16 years ago. We also had a Grand Piano but that is another story. The organ was played at the early service by an elderly man who went to the early service. I used to think he was kind of a quirky man and then I went to his home one day for a church party. In his home he had not one, but two organs. IN HIS HOME. Now I thought that was a bit strange, especially when one of them was a true pipe organ, complete with a set of very loud pipes in the living room. The Music Minister before me was an outstanding musician, a pianist especially. He would play the organ on many Sundays. Since I took over as Music Minister or Worship Pastor, or whatever title works for you, I have not played the organ in a service. We have had a few fill-in players but mostly it collected dust. So after 10 years I did some research and found our Rodgers 3 tier organ was built in 1963. With most instruments that would be great, but the new technology in organs is MIDI and digital interfaces it made our instrument obsolete. Not a problem I thought. We can list in on Craig’s List and sell it for $500. Not the case. Instead, I had a Hatian Pastor with a strong French accent call me to inquire about the organ. He told me they were buying a new building and had nothing. He wanted a good deal. So, thanks to a generous church, we decided to give him the organ and speakers. He came today in a U-Haul truck and we sent it off. We also threw in the old sanctuary cross that used to hang in the church until we got a new one. The Hatian church was so pleased to have these things and he promised me a CD of his choir singing French/Creole praise and worship music. When I get his CD I will post a sample on this site.

Follow his blog here.

Stand by Me?

Reading my blogs this morning, I read this from The Frisky:

A study in the medical journal Cancer found that a man is seven times more likely to leave his partner if she is seriously ill than if the tables are turned. This might be due to women’s conditioning to be caretakers of their loved ones. Times of London — Insert tasteless John Edwards joke here.

Pretty disappointing to hear.