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Want More Babies? You Need Less Patriarchy
In the United States, where fertility has been below replacement for about a decade, the average woman now has 1.77.
.. Perhaps the United States is becoming more like the rest of the industrialized world, where declining birthrates are correlated with a lack of support for working mothers.
.. Developed countries that prioritize gender equality — including Sweden, Norway and France — have higher fertility rates than those that don’t.
.. The world’s lowest fertility rates are in countries that are economically developed but socially conservative, where women have professional opportunities but must shoulder most of the burdens of domestic life.
.. Peter McDonald theorized that if women have educational and employment opportunities nearly equal to those of men, “but these opportunities are severely curtailed by having children, then, on average, women will restrict the number of children that they have
.. in Sweden, women were more likely to have a second child if their male partner took paternity leave with their first child, a proxy for his willingness to share the work of parenting.
.. In Hungary, she told me, couples that shared housework equally had a higher probability of having a second kid.
.. This correlation between feminist social policy and higher fertility is widely recognized throughout the world
.. “feminism is the new natalism.”
.. fertility rates, after reaching a low of around 1.7 children per woman in 1976, rose over the next 30 years, even as Europe’s fertility fell.
.. There were several reasons for this, including substantial levels of Hispanic immigration, a high teen birthrate, and, some speculated, America’s exceptional religiosity.
Since then, however, the teen birthrate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low, Americans have become less religious, Hispanic immigration has slowed, and Hispanic fertility rates have declined... rising cost of child care.. If my theory is right, though, it will keep falling unless America invests in paid family leave and subsidized, high-quality child care.. if a shrinking number of workers must support a growing elderly population, even our threadbare social safety net will be strained... survey data shows that women actually desire more kids than they’re having... the “gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years.”.. One lesson of cratering fertility rates is that in the modern world, patriarchy is maladaptive.
Power’s Role In Sexual Harassment
Psychologists say high-powered men accused of abusing women have different motivations but often share some personality traits
A series of sexual-harassment accusations against well-known business leaders, celebrities and politicians has left people wondering why some successful men behave this way.
In many cases, power seems to play a role. Certainly, the majority of influential men treat women appropriately. But what is going on from a psychological standpoint with the ones who don’t? Research shows they have different motivations yet typically share specific personality traits. Their power amplifies proclivities they already have.
.. Power can be isolating. Psychologists say that people in power sometimes feel removed from others, as if they aren’t subject to the same rules.
.. “Powerful people often surround themselves with people who enable them and who won’t challenge them,”.. power can create opportunities for men to mistreat women. However, those who choose to exploit such opportunities are sometimes men who felt powerless in the past and then suddenly received an increase in power... Power also can make people feel less inhibited.. “There are parallels to alcohol,” she says. “Both make you less constrained by social norms.”.. For many people this is positive. People who are compassionate before they have power, for example, tend to be more compassionate afterwards, the research shows. They’re the good bosses... those who harass or assault women often have a combination of two distinct sets of personality characteristics.. Psychologists call these “hostile masculinity” and “impersonal sexuality.”.. Men with “hostile masculinity” find power over women to be a sexual turn-on. They feel anger at being rejected by a woman. This is something that researchers believe probably happened to them a lot when they were young. They justify their aggression and are often narcissists... Men with “impersonal sexuality” prefer sex without intimacy or a close connection, which often leads them to seek promiscuous sex or multiple partners... Men who harass or assault women also tend to have sexist attitudes, such as an opposition to gender equality or a favoring of traditional roles for women
.. “It’s not automatic; it’s not that power corrupts,” says UCLA’s Dr. Malamuth. “It’s a certain type of man who uses his power in this way.”
.. men who are aggressive toward women are more likely to look for or create a situation where women are more vulnerable. So it’s no coincidence that they are the ones who seek out power—especially over young, beautiful women, who were the ones who tended to reject them when they were young.
.. “The bad behavior is a defense against being powerless,”
Inside the Race for the Top Job on Wall Street
After college, Mr. Schwartz got into finance. His first day on a trading floor was Oct. 19, 1987. The stock market plunged 22 percent on what came to be known as Black Monday. He remembers a colleague crying.
“If you’re around that environment, I don’t know anybody that couldn’t be sensitized to the cyclical nature of the markets,” Mr. Schwartz said. It left him with a permanent sense of jitters over how easily capital can be destroyed.
.. “He’s always been a good shepherd internally in terms of managing risk and balancing that with clients’ interests,”
.. Mr. Schwartz is cautious and can be tightly scripted. As a general rule, he waits 48 hours to collect his thoughts before addressing someone who has really annoyed him.
Some colleagues say he has a tendency to “mark to market” his underlings — meaning that, in accounting terms, he assesses their value to his objectives and treats them accordingly. That has frustrated some people.
.. In the early 1990s, Mr. Solomon joined Bear Stearns, where he helped run the bank’s junk bonds division, working with bankers and salespeople to devise and sell higher-risk bonds. At one point, he helped a Dallas movie theater company, which was struggling to finance its expansion into Mexico, raise money through a complicated bond transaction.
.. In 1997, Mr. Solomon worked alongside Jon Winkelried, then the co-head of Goldman’s bond division, on a deal to raise money for the Venetian resort in Las Vegas. Mr. Winkelried was impressed with Mr. Solomon’s handling of the deal and offered him a job running Goldman’s leveraged finance team, again raising capital for companies through higher-risk bonds. It was a rare instance of Goldman hiring an outsider and awarding him the rank of partner.
.. “I thought he was on the leadership track at Bear,
.. Once, he showed up to pitch for the Lululemon Athletica initial public offering wearing a maroon jacket and long sweatpants made by the brand. His colleagues were similarly outfitted. “Everyone on the other side of the table is in suits and ties,” Mr. Solomon recalled. “It threw people off.” Goldman won a lead role on Lululemon’s I.P.O.
.. Mr. Solomon also leaned on executives in Goldman’s human resources office to hire far more women. Given the nearly even split in society, he argued, there was no reason that Goldman’s ranks should not be equally balanced between men and women. He has taken that message on the road, too.