It's easier for men to have it all because we want so much less.

No, men can't have it all, either. But who cares about that? They're MEN. Fark 'em.

Where would we put it?

Women can have it all when they stop biatching about how hard it is to juggle work and taking care of a baby.

The entire gender gap would go away if women would stop whining about how hard they have it.

Tag is spot on. Men can't have it all either. Men have not in the past had close relationships with family and friends. Oh sure, we would hang out, but the father of the past sacrificed family life for business success/economic stabilty. Many women are waking up to this reality and seeing that it really isn't possible. So are many men (myself included). I could make more money, probably at least 50% more, if I moved into consulting. I wouldn't see my family this way. I take that tradeoff readily to have some semblance of a normal life at home. This just means that I have limited myself professionally. Many more men aren't as luck as I am; the job/career they have doesn't give them a lot of flexibility for a home life. Same could be said for almost anyone who enters the workforce.

I don't care who you are - 73 hours of work a week is too much farking work.

Who says we want it all?

I just want some. Slightly more than a bit but less than most.

The extreme work culture in the US is why nobody can have it all, regardless of gender.

men are soooo lucky.

Inmates: 1,499,573 men, 112,822 women - http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf

Homelessness: 67.5% of the single homeless population is male, and it is this single population that makes up 76%
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html

Drug addiction: Men were more likely to abuse illicit drugs than women - 9.9 percent of all males as opposed to 6.3 percent of all females.
http://www.survivingdrugaddiction.com/us-drug-addiction-statistics.ht m l

College Education: In 2010, a record 36% of women ages 25-29 had attained a bachelor's degree. This compares with 28% of men in the same age group.

Life expectancy: Life spans county to county across the USA range on average from 66.1 to 81.6 years for men and 73.5 to 86 years for women.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/health/story/2012-04-19/Lif e -expectancy-improves-slower-for-women/54419298/1

Apparently for men, "having it all" includes dying 5 years earlier.

Maybe, just maybe, the reason that no one can "have it all" is because we don't have unions any more to protect our fundamental human right to the pursuit of happiness.

/yes, I'm serious

You can tell America is fundamentally racist sexist because whites women have higher life expectancy, higher high school and college graduation rates, higher employment rates, lower incarceration rates, and lower violent crime victimization rates than blacks men.

RyansPrivates: Tag is spot on. Men can't have it all either. Men have not in the past had close relationships with family and friends. Oh sure, we would hang out, but the father of the past sacrificed family life for business success/economic stabilty. Many women are waking up to this reality and seeing that it really isn't possible. So are many men (myself included). I could make more money, probably at least 50% more, if I moved into consulting. I wouldn't see my family this way. I take that tradeoff readily to have some semblance of a normal life at home. This just means that I have limited myself professionally. Many more men aren't as luck as I am; the job/career they have doesn't give them a lot of flexibility for a home life. Same could be said for almost anyone who enters the workforce.

This.

Women aren't treated badly because they are women (well, some are, but) but because they are willing/expected to have a family AND a job. Men who put family ahead of job also don't get promoted, bonuses, corner offices; women who sacrifice family for extra hours at the office do. But nobody ever puts it that way when they do these studies. Top men "have it all" because their wives don't; but those top men don't have great family lives. Top women either don't have families or if they do, they have the same terrible relationships with their spouses and kids that the top men do.

You can either have a family life or a high-end career, no matter whether you're male or female; but not both.

When someone works "73 hours a week" what they really mean is they actually work 55 hours that week and fark off (to include: go out to lunch, shop online, work out, drop the kids off at soccer in between meetings, commute to and from work, buy groceries, etc.) the other 18 hours a week and claim it's actually related directly to their employer's job requirements.

Gyrfalcon: RyansPrivates: Tag is spot on. Men can't have it all either. Men have not in the past had close relationships with family and friends. Oh sure, we would hang out, but the father of the past sacrificed family life for business success/economic stabilty. Many women are waking up to this reality and seeing that it really isn't possible. So are many men (myself included). I could make more money, probably at least 50% more, if I moved into consulting. I wouldn't see my family this way. I take that tradeoff readily to have some semblance of a normal life at home. This just means that I have limited myself professionally. Many more men aren't as luck as I am; the job/career they have doesn't give them a lot of flexibility for a home life. Same could be said for almost anyone who enters the workforce.

This.

Women aren't treated badly because they are women (well, some are, but) but because they are willing/expected to have a family AND a job. Men who put family ahead of job also don't get promoted, bonuses, corner offices; women who sacrifice family for extra hours at the office do. But nobody ever puts it that way when they do these studies. Top men "have it all" because their wives don't; but those top men don't have great family lives. Top women either don't have families or if they do, they have the same terrible relationships with their spouses and kids that the top men do.

You can either have a family life or a high-end career, no matter whether you're male or female; but not both.

Well said. I hate gender contests because it always comes out us against them whoever you may be. Let's just say we're all screwed, but in different ways.

People can be anything they want to be. But,they can't be everything they want to be. For each choice we make there are consequences. For every door we open, another one closes and this is not a problem. This is natural.

Freedom to choose does not mean freedom from consequences, whatever sex you are.

If you have a lovely family with 4 children whom you raise with constant personal care, you aren't going to get to be a CEO. Not because your a man or woman, but because you are a human who made a choice and this is a consequence.

Came for classic Fark misogyny. Leaving satisfied.

Just to clarify:

peripatetic; adjective
I could never get used to her peripatetic lifestyle: nomadic, itinerant, traveling, wandering, roving, roaming, migrant, migratory, unsettled.

usage: unseemly, bordering on humiliating

Only a peripatetic douchenozzle would use the word "peripatetic". Fortunately the asshat's unbecoming use of unfitting words was quickly squashed, by the ungentlemanly boot of an uneducated indigent.

DR(most of)TFA, but man or woman, America's extreme work culture is to blame for why anyone, except the top 1% of course, can't have it all.

This country is so consumed with work and corporate slaves have to work such long hours to meet strict demands and deadlines. Office work is full of stress and headaches; petty bs, drama, politics, and paper pushing.

I know I sound Tyler Durden-ish, but we work long hours for stupid materialistic possessions. Stuff to impress people we probably don't even like in the first place.

America doesn't even have decent maternity leave.

Corporate America just makes me so farking sick.

imgod2u: Dual income families are more and more common nowadays. It'll be interesting to see what their kids turn out to be like, what with the lack of parental attention and all.

I'd like to think I turned out just fine, thanks. I also don't have a sense of entitlement, like a lot of my fellow peers who had a stay-at-home parent (well, let's be honest - mom). I don't expect anyone to give me everything I want, and I have mad respect for the families that make it work.

Which is hilarious, considering I live in the middle of SAHM land in Seattle. Never in my life have I met a bigger group of shallow gold diggers. Good lord.

Feminism is the downfall of modern society.

What women (those that stay home and raise the kids) fail to grasp is that they are the ones wo usually get the first word, the first steps, learning to read, first day of school and so on, because their guy is working for de man 50+ hours a week. They miss a lot of their kids lives (and the kids miss a lot of their father's lives) that I'm sure they would rather see and be involved in. Many fathers don't really get to know who their children are until those children become adults...

...and now women are finally experiencing a little bit of that. Welcome to the club, ladies. We have a 10,000 year head start on you from the time the males in the tribe left the village for weeks at a time to hunt, but I'm sure you'll manage. No one can have it "all"... sacrifices must be made.

If you look at "world of tomorrow" dreams from the 50s, they all had us working less while improving our standard of living. Somewhere along the way, we were convinced that continually working harder for less and less was somehow a virtue.

We chose a society where the actual value creators are trivialized and the do-nothing executives are glorified.

AverageAmericanGuy: Women can have it all when they stop biatching about how hard it is to juggle work and taking care of a baby.

The entire gender gap would go away if women would stop whining about how hard they have it.


"Women are just constantly patting themselves on the back about how difficult their lives are, and no one corrects them because they wanna fark 'em." (Pops)

Corporate Self: If you look at "world of tomorrow" dreams from the 50s, they all had us working less while improving our standard of living. Somewhere along the way, we were convinced that continually working harder for less and less was somehow a virtue.

We chose a society where the actual value creators are trivialized and the do-nothing executives are glorified.

Oh man so much this.

In the office world, the actual workers get paid just enough to live paycheck to paycheck, while the moronic top executives make 6 figures, work from home most days, come in late and leave early, have no idea what they are doing, and you scratch your head in awe wondering why they are even there in the first place.

danpanic77: When someone works "73 hours a week" what they really mean is they actually work 55 hours that week and fark off (to include: go out to lunch, shop online, work out, drop the kids off at soccer in between meetings, commute to and from work, buy groceries, etc.) the other 18 hours a week and claim it's actually related directly to their employer's job requirements.

Nope. Some of us really work 80 hours a week.

It's almost as if you have to prioritize and make tough decisions about what to do with your life.

/Says the guy who spends 20 hours a week on Fark

Linkster: Corporate Self: If you look at "world of tomorrow" dreams from the 50s, they all had us working less while improving our standard of living. Somewhere along the way, we were convinced that continually working harder for less and less was somehow a virtue.

We chose a society where the actual value creators are trivialized and the do-nothing executives are glorified.

True, but what happened is that washing machines, dryers, dish washers, TV dinners, items that made life easier for the "stay at home Mom". Then she realizes, that daytime tv sucks and that she should get a job because taking care of the house and kids is "Soo" much easier now, I can do both!

What now?

I think rather than making things easier and avoiding boredom, it was more so that "hey honey, now that we have kids, shat is getting expensive and I can't do this all on my own, so maybe if we had some more money coming in it would be a little easier on me?"

OgreMagi:
And the sad statistic is the man who sacrifices everything for his family will one day be presented with divorce papers because his wife, "doesn't feel fulfilled." Then he gets to give the biatch half of everything and if he's lucky gets to see his kids every few weeks while she goes cougar and starts farking a bunch of young studs who don't have families or careers to worry about.

THIS.
F: Honey, I want X, Y, Z, and a vacation to the Bahamas next year."
M: Okay. *WORK* *WORK* *WORK* *WORK* *WORK* *WORK* *WORK*

- a year later -

F: "I'm divorcing you."
M: "WTF! What is this?"
F: "I've fallen in love with someone else... you were never around."
M: "That's cause I was working my ass off you stupid b-"
F: "Talk to my lawyer. You don't have to clean the pool this week, Raul... we're going to the Bahamas."
R: "Si senora."
M: ...

Ambivalence: As a woman I actually want very little. No kids. Decent house (not even a "nice" or "fancy" or "large" house) that's paid off quickly. savings in the bank. no outstanding debt. Husband that adores me.

I am very happy. I have everything I want becuase I really want very little compared to many people.

It's taken me pretty much my whole life to realize that there really are two kinds of women: Women like you, who are pleasant and smart and realistic about what they want versus how they can get it. And women who just sort of want to get knocked up and let god sort it out.

I have no great statement about the greater meaning of this, but I defy anyone to tell me it's not true.

Maybe the real problem is that people have bought into the consumer treadmill that says you must have everything to be successful in the first place. Maybe you don't need a big SUV with computerized step by step GPS and a digital surround sound DVD player for the kids in the back. Maybe you don't need a 3000 sq. ft. home in the suburbs with designer furniture that's on layaway from Ikea's Premiere Collection to replace the things you got three years. Maybe you don't need to eat out at a restaurant every night because it's easier than cooking. Maybe you don't need to buy a new wardrobe every single year just because that's what the fashion magazines told you to do. Maybe you don't need a brand new phone because it's the model GT3.5 instead of the GT3.4 you got six months ago.

You could just drive a basic car without a bunch of gadgets in them that you don't even use anyway. You could buy a smaller home that costs a lot less or even rent a decent apartment. You could buy better quality furniture at estate sales that is selling for pennies on the dollar and will last decades. You could learn to cook decent food at home that costs half the price and gives you more to eat. You could buy wardrobe classics that will be in style five years from now. You could even just say you don't need that phone because the old one works just fine.

People always go on about how recycling is such a good thing, but maybe you should try reducing instead and then you wouldn't have to work 80 hours a week to support your over-privileged lifestyle in the first place. I'll say it even more simply...

STOP BUYING STUPID CRAP!