“Why weren’t we told?”

From a Commentary article on the unprecedented Harvard faculty vote of no confidence in the Harvard President (described earlier here in Professors Dis President ).

Indeed, many things have happened since the advent of women’s “liberation” to complicate its peculiar idea of progress, and one of those things is that the ideological drive for equality has outstripped many women’s enthusiasm for the project. As the columnist David Brooks has reminded us, the fraction of women over the age of forty and without children has nearly doubled over the past quarter-century, to about a fifth of the cohort. According to the Gallup poll, 70 percent of these women now regret that they are childless.

As it happens, a friend of mine who is a member of this same group recently attended her 25th reunion at one of the “seven sister” colleges. She told me she went with misgivings, since she had dropped out of the work force to raise four children. Though she is exceptionally clever, and her volunteer work exceeds in creativity what most of us do professionally, she was afraid she would feel outperformed by her old schoolmates, the majority of whom had become successful professionals. But instead of flaunting their achievements, many of these classmates resentfully took the occasion of their reunion to rail at the school’s administration and faculty for not having encouraged them to aim for husbands and families while they still could. “Why weren’t we told?” My friend was stirred by their misery, but struck by the futility of their complaint. One can sooner recapture the lost snows of yesteryear than the chance to bear and raise children.

Let us ask the One who turns the hearts of kings like rivers of water to turn the hearts of those in authority over today’s young that they might better inform them of the realities of our natural life.