Thursday, April 12, 2007

Are They Trying to Break My Heart?

This infuriates me:
"My success as a scientist depended on my neglecting my first set of children."

I mean, what the hell? Does he really think that? Could he have manged to say, I don't know, "Unfortunately, my sucess as a scientist etc."? Or is it all okay because he gets this second family and he can do it right?

If anyone's success depends on neglecting children, it's not worth having. I say that from my incredibly spoiled position as a "stay-at-home" mother of three children with an increasingly successful father. But he has not always been so successful. He has always been, and continues to be, intimately involved in the lives of his children: my absolutely equal partner in their upbringing, if not always their physical daily care.

Maybe we're not talking about money here. Success as a scientist, after all, is probably measured by research breakthroughs, by standing and respect in the community.

Still. To paraphrase Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons--it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world...but for success as a scientist?

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