The New York Times has a piece today, Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood, that reeks of the same old shit Lisa Belkin wrote about two years ago.

Belkin wrote about all the high-class ladies with MBAs and such “opting out” of work to stay home with the kiddies. Today, Louise Story writes the same about women at “elite” colleges:

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Yawn. Sounds exactly like Belkin’s cringe-worthy quote: “Why don't women run the world? Maybe it's because they don't want to.”

Another similarity between the two pieces is that both authors gloss over the fact that most American women don’t have the financial capability to make that kind of choice—even if they want to. Story only mentions this once:

It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed. The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic necessity.

Another thing that really pisses me off is the assumption that privileged women are somehow more worthy of examination.

But perhaps the scariest thing about this latest article were the students (male and female). First of all--who in the world is making decisions like this at 19 years old?!

Second--just check this shit out:

Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American Family class last fall approved of women's plans to stay home with their children.

"A lot of the guys were like, 'I think that's really great,'" Ms. Currie said. "One of the guys was like, 'I think that's sexy.' Staying at home with your children isn't as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is for women who are in their 30's now."

Am I really supposed to be shocked that some guy "approved" of having a wife who stayed at home? And what the hell is up with the sexy comment? Ew.

Now, clearly I believe feminism is about choices, and that the work women do at home is just as important as work in the paid economy. (But somehow I don’t think that’s what this guy meant by his “sexy” comment.) But shouldn’t we be focusing on the women who don’t have the ability to make choices about their child care?

Check out RebelDad on the same. And Echidne, Stone Court and Culture Cat.