I don't care how many studies somebody publishes stating that XYZ is the case. If my experience has always shown ZYX to be the case, I will continue to believe ZYX, despite any "evidence" or "research" offered for XYZ.
Hmmm. I remember learning in another thread that research and evidence are elitist, obscurantist, and ultimately irrelevant in the face of experience, common knowledge, and common sense.
Women do bear a deeper and more demanding role in child rearing than fathers; at least initially.
If you see this as nothing more than a construction it will strike you as utterly unfair and perhaps that can explain incessant womanly griping about the matter. If you see it a part of the natural order then one need not gripe. I think taking the later view actually allows women like the OP to be optimistic about doing graduate studies. She is naturally predisposed to nurture and provide a level of care that her husband cannot. She just needs to make space for that. I think it can be done.
The other option is to consider "talking, guilting, or culturing" her man into filling that role so she can be completely free of her womanly duties. That's not going to happen. One can blame men but that's just the way we're ordered. Fish don't fry in the kitchen and beans don't burn on the girll... that must be some sort of veiled commentary for this stuff.
Women are far less capable of teaching a child (or modeling for a child) emotional strength and confidence; just as a men tend to be less adept at nurturing.
I know this is controversial given our society, but it's been common knowledge for the vast majority of humans that have ever lived. I'm not saying that past societies were superior by any means, but intelligent people throughout history have recognized these things as part of their theory of men and women, not merely because they were products of those societies.
The fact that this is controversial to us now is hardly my fault. It is simply counter-intuitive to draw the opposite conclusion as to whether women are better nurturers by nature and whether men are better protectors. You basically have to be educated out of the standard, pre-theoretical view.
Despite concerted efforts to change things, if there is a crash in the middle of the night the husband is the one tasked to get up and check things out. We would think very little of him if he cowered under the covers and insisted his wife go look--I don’t see much 50/50 sharing in that department. Likewise, a woman who does not take the foremost place in caring for the children (with ample assistance from her husband… I do a lot of housework and diaper changing, no matter what you may think of me) is and should be viewed as shirking her role.
