SIVACRACY.NET

Ann did a great job below destroying the inane NY Times article about how it seems that more Ivy League-type young women are opting out of the workforce. Oh, wait. It turns out that there is no reason to believe that more women are opting out. The article offers no evidence to support its central claim. But, as Ann pointed out, offers plenty of evidence to undermine it. Yeesh. This is some of the crappiest reporting I have ever seen. It's worthy of the Weekly Standard or something.

Of course, the article fails to reveal that ONLY rich women can opt out of the work force in today's cruel economy. But whatever. The Times' obsession with declaring the problems of rich people central to our understanding of the world trumps any concern for reality or relevance.

This is one more example of my local paper pandering to conservative "values" and the supposedly interesting lives and minds of rich people. It's disgusting.

Here Katharine Mieszkowski of Salon.com gives it to the Times as well:

Ah, youth.

We're thankful that our aspirations at age 18 weren't chronicled on the front page of the New York Times to be Googled by future employers, dates, friends, enemies and acquaintances for the rest of our lives. But after reading yet another glowing article about Ivy Leaguers who proclaim the most important job title in the world to be "mom," we worry that the Times has lost sight of the fact that more and more American women -- whether they like it or not -- are working outside the home while raising their kids.

Dual-earner couples are on the rise in the U.S., and more American women are entering the workforce, not fewer. Sixty years ago, two-thirds of all households in the labor force were supported by a single wage earner, according to the Employment Policy Foundation's Center for Work and Family Balance. As of 2000, that number had fallen to fewer than one in four households. And if current trends continue, the Center projects that by 2030 that number will be one in five households as the number of single-earner households continues to fall.

So while the Gray Lady is obsessing about how 18-year-old female Ivy Leaguers envision their futures and what it says about men, women, feminism, the Ivies and the American workplace, the rest of the country -- as in the vast majority -- is quietly going in the opposite direction. Surely, there is a front-page story in there somewhere.