Next Month in Forbes Magazine: The Benefits of Whoring

Forbes Magazine has an article up telling men not to marry career women - with a photo slide show.

She's more like to cheat because when your spouse works outside the home, chances increase they'll meet someone they like more than you. "The work environment provides a host of potential partners,"... Perhaps if you're so insecure and uninteresting that the fact that she works means that she might cheat is a concern, you're not quite ready for a serious relationship yet.

Women have dealt with this issue for years, after all. Men moved in broader circles and had more opportunities to meet other women. Now, women have that some opportunity. Perhaps Maxim and the other men's magazines should start adding helpful columns on "how to stay interesting for your wife". I assume they will be as insulting as the similar articles filling the pges of Cosmo every month.

Basically the article says that marrying a career woman is risky because if you're a lousy husband, she has the wherewithall to leave your sorry ass. Of course, it makes this out to be that she is less committed to marriage. Gah! It also infuriates me because if this same article appeared in a women's mag, it would no doubt be telling us how to change to become "better wives".

According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extra-marital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas.) Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat.

Can we get a gender breakdown, please? Because thanks to the Victorians, men both make more money than women, and for most of our social development as a society were encouraged to sow their seed among as many fields as they could manage to plow. I notice the fact that these statistics are based on income neatly sidesteps the question of gender.

Also, it's true that a woman dedicated to her career might not want children. If you want children, marry someone else who wants children. Don't assume that you can knock some woman up and that she's going to be happy staying off with your crotch spawn.

And if you're the type of man who is going to be depressed because your wife makes more money than you, buy a bride. They'll be happy to live off your leavings afterall, she comes from a situation where she felt compelled to sell herself to you in the first place.

There is so much wrong with this article, I don't even know where to start.

Your house will be dirtier? If both of you make more than $30k annually, you can probably afford to hire a cleaning service. My husband and I have already discussedthis as part of our household budget, because not only do I intend to have a career, but I'm a lousy housekeeper anyway.

I LOVE this: A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.

So the article makes all these assumptions, but when the author notes that marriage might be a good idea in the first place, we'll make a corrlation/causation distinction. Why not for the whole damn article?

I hope to god every businesswomen in America cancels her subscription to Forbes.

ETA: The cowardly editors over at Forbes apparently aren't happy about the ruckus, but they didn't want to actually take the article down, so they moved it to here:

http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html

with a "counterpoint". I prefer the counterpoint on BoingBoing where someone just reversed the gender pronouns to make their point.