September 20, 2005 11:29 AM

Opting out? But you haven't even opted in yet.
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 11:29 AM

Yesterday's NYTimes ran a story about how college-aged women in elite schools like Harvard and Yale are planning to be stay-at-home moms.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Perhaps the best comment in the whole article came later, when a professor pointed out a possible reason for this:

Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale[:] "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."