Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Our hyper-individualistic society with a huge and increasing gap between the 0.0001 of society and everyone else is certainly not helping matters.

If anything, I see backwards motion on common-sense initiatives (paid maternity leave!!!1 not sending guys on seven deployments in a row to Afghanistan) compared to 15-20 years ago.

I think I've plugged this book before, but Baby Bust out of the Wharton digital press is one of the best takedowns of the myth of having it all I've ever read. Women simply "lean out" rather than risk heartbreaking disappointment. And men aren't fooling themselves that they can be the super-dad. (These are hyper-ambitious MBA types.)

I'm not interviewing for any Fortune 500 companies (hahaha, the thought of it is truly amusing); I'm only a moderately ambitious person who has sort of a dreamy, artistic side to me. I don't think I should just be shunted into some kind of beta track because of that, I guess. I think that things like education, writing, and the arts have inherent value and I hate living in this post-Greenspanian nightmare where secular voices are shouting even louder than religious ones that the Almighty Dollar is the only metric worth measuring, just because I happen to be bright.

These two kids have SO many opportunities for happiness before them and shouldn't think their respective lives are over.

Sorry Zed- I got what you were getting at. I was more responding to Whistler. And ranting.

http://aspiringmormonwomen.org/ is a resource you probably already know of, Concorde, but it seems appropriate

You can have both a family and a career, but I feel like your life will be more stressful. But if it cheers you up any, I read somewhere that working parents sometimes spend more "quality (i.e., actually playing with them)" time with their kids every day, possibly because they're more worried about not getting enough in.

Whistler wrote:http://aspiringmormonwomen.org/ is a resource you probably already know of, Concorde, but it seems appropriate

There's a facebook group, too, and it's really great and full of sympathetic and supportive and non-judgmental people. You should come hang out!

Hmm. I guess Captain Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon made poor career choices and should have just remained single. I don't think so.

S.A.M. wrote:Hmm. I guess Captain Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon made poor career choices and should have just remained single. I don't think so.

Captain Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon are three of my heroes. One of the things that made them great was the personal sacrifices they made to defend their faith, religion, rites of worship, church, wives, children, liberty, and country (see Alma 44:5). They hated the military lifestyle and would much rather have been doing something else, but it was a matter of individual sacrifice for the greater good. They put their families, church, and country above their personal goals. If Dr.LeaveMeAlone’s career goal and choice of military lifestyle is for the same reasons as Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon, and it could be, then I really admire him as well.

I support the U.S. military, and I wouldn’t have worked for it for nearly 40 years if I didn’t. I work with men in uniform. Many of them are great people with many wonderful qualities. Perhaps many of them have some feelings similar to those of Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon, but this is not the major reason most of them are in the military. They want to travel and see the world, jumpstart their careers, gain leadership quickly, and they know that the ladies have a thing about a man in uniform. These are not bad reasons for choosing a career. I just can’t see these reasons as being equivalent to the motivation behind Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon.

The reason I see a big difference between the motivations of Moroni, Teancum, and Mormon and the modern military is partly personal observations of a lifetime, and because of the way the military is recruited. Consider the Army slogans, “Be Army Strong,” “Army of One,” “Be All (that) You Can Be,” "Today's Army Wants to Join You," "Look Sharp, Be Sharp, Go Army!" Some slogans have been more successful than others. I found this article interesting http://sbaer.uca.edu/research/acme/2005/26.pdf The conclusion is that “The lesson the Army could take from this analysis is that the 18-to-24-year-old target market is most receptive to self-actualization, growth, and achievement appeals.” Again, not bad things in themselves, but if those things become a higher priority than that which motivated Mormon, Teancum, and Moroni, then I think those who want to get married can’t use Mormon, Teancum, and Moroni as an excuse to join the military.

I've learned something from everyone's comments.