Susan A. Patton, a Princeton University alumna who was among the 200 ‘pioneer’ women enrolled in the Ivy League school in 1973, penned a fascinating letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian addressed to the “daughters I never had.”
Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.
I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless. Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.
As a college-educated professional, I admire Patton’s bravery in challenging the notion that career should be the #1 driving force in a young woman’s life. I detest the fact that gender-feminists promote the idea that women postpone childbearing until their career is established, despite the fact fertility drops significantly with age.
In fact, the response to Patton’s letter prompted her to follow-up in the Huffington Post, where she expanded on the reason for promoting marriage-oriented priorities:
I understand that this can be seen as retrogressive, but for those women who aspire to what used to be thought of as a traditional life with home and family, there is almost no ink addressing personal fulfillment outside of the workplace. Specifically, finding lifelong friends and the right partner with whom to share a life and raise a family.
Interestingly, Patton’s advice is part of an intriguing trend I am seeing among younger women. As I noted earlier this week, women are “dropping out of feminism” and choosing to stay-at-home to raise their children.
But young women aren’t the only ones rebelling against the progressive feminist agenda. At College Insurrection, I reported on an event by University 0f Toronto’s Men’s Issues Awareness Society,during which Dr. Janice Fiamengo (an English professor at the University of Ottawa and former radical feminist) denounced women’s studies.
The focus of Fiamengo’s critique was the “women-as-victim” template used by equity feminists. She also gave the men a few words of praise, noting “self sacrifice and heroism are not exclusive to men…but they are distinctive to men.”
It is good to see that an Ivy League mom and a former radical feminist have come to the same conclusion as I: We all want young women to make fully informed choices about all aspects of their lives.
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Comments
http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2013/04/10/swug-single-washed-up-girl/
SWUG…single washed up girl.
In their twenties, Ivy-league young women are sexually and emotionally jaded, hopeless little sacks of nihilism.
Wow. Way to go, feminists.
A quick note: the link to the Daily Princetonian letter is broken.
Now then: there are some who might wish to applaud Ms. Patton for her ‘honesty’ in pointing out that a woman can and should consider her entire life, not just her career and work. Indeed, many women consider marriage and child-birthing to be vitally important to their entire sense of self. I’m a physician, and I see plenty of women physicians who integrate career, family, husband and social life.
However, I don’t approve of her letter at all. What bothers me is this: the insufferable smugness contained in her opinion, which she makes clear in several ways, that she and her fellow women classmates were and are part of elite womanhood in this country.
Consider this gem:
Well now Princess, you do seem to be the sort of person who would reduce the entire measure of a person’s worth to a two or three digit number commonly referred to as ‘IQ’. Might we have a look at your Stanford-Benet scoresheet?
I’m a doc. My wife was a paralegal until we started our family. According to Ms. Patton, I ‘cast my lot with a dumb woman because she was attractive’. Except, of course, my wife (who is certainly attractive) is far more perceptive about people than I am and is able to read people better. She’s more widely read than I am. She focuses quickly and gets to the heart of issues. She’s very clever with color and style.
So Ms. Patton: which one of us is ‘smarter’?
Read the comments Ms. Patton made about her sons, particularly the older son who married a classmate from Princeton. Wonder what the holiday dinners would be like if Sonny Boy had married a girl from the local community college?
What makes me reject her letter is that Ms. Patton, and those who think like her, are willing to spit on me and my wife (and everyone like us) because we see people as a whole rather than as members of a particular class or order.
Ms. Patton is NOT being brave, she’s trying to maintain the supremacy of her ordained class. The smart feminists, like the ones who went to Princeton, are supposed to have it all, and the ‘dumb’ women are to work as their maids and secretaries — and leave the ‘smart’ guys to the Princeton gals.
Know your place, ladies.
1. Occupation doesn’t equal intelligence.
2. “Smart” women and men, don’t waste their time proclaiming their intelligence.
1. The letter is here. Google cache is here.
2. I don’t have time to do better than off the top of my head, so please make allowances:
Patton may be describing life as she perceives it to actually be, not necessarily as she would like it to be.
LordLady Chesterfield’s Letters toHis SonHer Daughter(s), perhaps?I wonder what Christmas dinners would have been like had sonny boy married a hot 21 year old Ukrainian from from Kiev.
There might be NO dinner if the hottie is Orthodox , not just because she can’t cook – because Mum In Law will be 2 weeks early.
Added to that – sadly – there will be no Chicken Kiev on her plate because there is no such thing in Kiev.
My hottie is orthodox and that has had zero influence. Food is food.
Are you from The Soviet Comunist Party ?
Do you tell her to Bow DowbBitch & feed her turnips ?
Are you psycho or just humorurless?
Thanks, Steve. You beat me to it. She makes some very good points and I am sure that the campus progressives greeted her dissonant opinions by responding with facts, respectful argument, and a spirit of open-mindedness. Or something like that.
But yes, my three degrees are from state universities. My undergraduate school is entirely unknown outside of Michigan except to very rabid NCAA basketball fans. No one out of state has ever heard of the school that gave me an M.A. and people have heard of my law school (Michigan) but, again, it is a public college.
So I am grateful that someone from Princeton, whose sons are also Princeton people, was gracious enough to give me the opportunity to read her thoughts. And certainly, there is a direct correlation between the college one goes to and one’s intelligence.
In any event, in my case one reason why I’ve never been married is that I am attracted to women who are at least as bright as I am (whatever level that may be) or even more intelligent–but that means they’re too smart to go out with me.
Long, long ago, I read in MS magazine a little news blurb that feminists in the then-existing Communist bloc were rebelling against the government’s pressure to work outside the home, choosing to stay at home and raise their children. At that time, Ms. magazine approved, saying something like “We get to decide.”
The simple fact is that the feminist movement in the United States has already won everything that normal people needed from it: namely, the right to keep banks from denying loans to families based on the presupposition that the woman was going to quit working and make babies (as an excuse for denying a loan to buy a house) and the enforceable right to equal protection under the laws.
Big organizations and movements take on a life of their own, and some people will still be members of them long after their goals are defeated or accomplished. When that happens, the entity tends to veer off into unexpected directions.
So, what some people are pleased to call “Progressive Feminism” now is neither, because there is no existing problem for Feminism to solve.
It’s absolutely true that people underestimate me because of my voice and size. It’s absolutely true that I have taken a hit on my career in order to free up time for my children, and that this decision will very likely affect my personal income potential for the rest of my life. However, none of the fake big shots that have prejudged me nor any person of ill will has been able to stop me and my husband from raising our family and providing well for them. Freedom means being able to meet an idiot with a prejudice against you, and just keep rolling on.
God bless the USA.
Valerie, you’ve hit on the point about which Simone de Beauvoir once remarked and to which I think a lot of feminists subscribe: If you’re going to go around giving women these choices, they might make the wrong ones.
Notice what should by now have been obvious–what for want of a better term we can call establishment feminism has a serious problem of class bias.
Either have a stultifying life as a homemaker or have a wonderful and engaging job as a lawyer, professor, doctor, that sort of thing.
But the average woman who works is not a college professor. She’s a clerk, a secretary, does light assembly, is that nice lady who sells me a slice of pizza at Costco. They may find the alternative to staying home not as alluring as, say, Princetonians may. Then they go out and insist on being given privileges because they “represent” these women.
I clicked through and read the whole article. Ms Patton only thinks she knows herself. Does she recognize that she is not promoting marriage between equal intellectuals, despite what she says, but marriage for social status by staying within a small limited circle to choose a mate – what European royalty used to do? Just another person telling us “those aren’t our kind of people.” That isn’t educated – it is bourgeoisie.
The longer I live, the more I agree with Arthur C Clarke’s observation: “It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.” I hope Ms Patton and others like her will come to understand this, and find value in themselves beyond what entertains the madding crowd…
I have five sisters, and one of them in particular, a few years older than me, was a feminist warrior in the 1970s. Wanting to strike a symbolic blow against the social norms she asked me, her own brother, to marry her and I went right ahead and did it. As a burgeoning young conservative I was against most feminist issues, but I was persuaded down the aisle by one specific benefit of marrying one of my own sisters: No in-laws.
Is this supposed to be the sexual equivalent of Godwin’s Law?
I have a few words for Susan A. Patton, a Princeton University Princess:
You must lead a very sequestered life if the only intelligent men in your life were those at Princeton. [Roll Eyes]
Perhaps you have other issues… like being a prima donna with an elitist complex.
Any excuse will do to cover your failure as a woman who is not good mate material, right Susie? you poor poor thing you?
It’s likely my IQ is well north of yours and I will tell you from first-hand knowledge, there are *lots* of really smart guys in this world.
Your most likely problem is… you didn’t value having a life mate and raising a family and instead focused all your energy and years of young womanhood in a world of liberal feminist pretense where such things are not important. Sorry, Princeton Queen, you don’t get your life back… you time travel is one way. Now excuse me while I continue not to give a damn about your life choices.
As one of the earliest “Practise Hunsbands” in the 60s I was stunned by the venom of the Feminazi movement…the demands for elimination of 90% of men, Abortion up to age 2yo, serial managomy, instant divorce etc.
But it was decades later, still unremarried, that I blessed that usless slut because now I could surf, hunt, own guns,mountain climb, fish, drink beer, fart etc.
If I had married that French chick in college I might still be married, still a millionaire but without the adventures.
I don’t think women, & even men, know how essential they are to marriage, society & raising kids
“Patton spoke by phone from her home in the Upper East Side, where she runs her own business as a human resources consultant and executive coach.”
This is code speak for, “I worked as an HR generalist for 20 years. When my position was downsized, I couldn’t find work anywhere, so now I write resumes for $150 apiece. I refer to myself as a ‘human resources consultant and executive coach,’ because as a Princeton grad, it would be too embarrassing to admit that I’m composing resumes for a living.”
H/T PatrickByrne
It’s a foolish man who marries a woman who cares only about social status: what happens if he ever loses his job, or gets in a disfiguring car accident? Or simply fails to keep the same pace of social climbing that she has decided he should achieve?
The key phrase in marriage is: “for better or worse”. Because when you’re talking decades, plus having kids, THERE WILL BE “worse”.
OTOH, if you marry someone for their innate personality and abilities: kindness, generosity, able to work well with others – those things will always be there.
Since when have biological imperatives, procreation, socialization, and evolutionary fitness been seen as retrogressive? The first level of social organization is the family. Each family, composed of a mother, father, and their children, is a society unto itself.
Placing a priority on dreams of material, physical, and ego gratification, on the other hand, is retrogressive. It becomes a dysfunctional and corrupt ambition when it cannot be reconciled with the basic requirements of nature and respect for individual dignity.
The first victim of progress was reason.