Your response reflects more on you than the author - you are a 20-something who has no experience at all with children/job pressures, and you probably believe in sexism as much as you believe in the tooth fairy.
It's not the same article to talk about this in a gender-specific way - men don't face the same type of conflicting pressure from society to raise children and be a career success. As a fairly recent dad, with a lot of fairly recent dad friends, it's way different for a man than a woman. Everyone just by default assumes the woman will hold the baby all the time, and they catch flak for using daycare, and a million other things you'll rarely experience as a dad. Dads get kudos for doing barely acceptable jobs with their kids and focusing on their career, while women get trashed for the same behavior.
There is this one fundamental physical thing that tends to make me think there is some natural logic to this order - that the woman has to be up at night breast-feeding, and so it's hard for the man to assume the default caretaker role without bottles and other nonsense. But this gets extended to all parts of a woman's life, and I think even today there is undue pressure on women to raise the children (and if you want to do some work, schedule it around your babies).
Would add to what you've written above that "house husbands" are not necessarily revered in a positive way by popular culture (like business titans, celebrities, athletes etc.) as important high achievers. Nor do women (anecdotally over many many years) seem to give high social standing to house husbands. I mean sometimes they talk a good game or use semi patronizing words. But in the back there is always an underlying "couldn't cut the mustard apparently" floating around. Women in general want men who can slay the dragon and bring home the meal and make a comfortable life (which of course varies greatly on the woman).
I would caution by the way anyone who is "young" who has a spouse, girlfriend etc. that tells them "money isn't important to me I want you to spend more time sharing responsibilities around the house and helping with the kids" to wait until later when you aren't living in the right school district or can't pay the bills whether all that means anything that is when idealism collides with economic reality.
>Would add to what you've written above that "house husbands" are not necessarily revered in a positive way by popular culture (like business titans, celebrities, athletes etc.) as important high achievers.
Would you say that "house wives" are? Plenty of popular culture now portrays the woman who stays home to raise her children as a traitor to her gender who should instead be serving as an example to young girls by climbing the corporate ladder and achieving income equality with her husband.
>Women in general want men who can slay the dragon and bring home the meal and make a comfortable life (which of course varies greatly on the woman).
I think it would be more accurate to say that women want both, and when that doesn't obtain and it comes down to a choice between "has a stable well-paying job" and "never has to stay late for work" the man standing on the unemployment line tends to lose. Which modern society has caused to be increasingly the case for women as well -- hence the increase in demand for daycare but not the increase in demand for homemakers of either gender.
"who should instead be serving as an example to young girls by climbing the corporate ladder"
Agree that seems to be the case.
"I think it would be more accurate to say that women want both"
Agree once again but I'll add this to that thought.
People (men are probably just as guilty) want to be able to combine the best qualities of many different people in one person to come up with the uber human. Using the example of women my ex wife comes to mind. She would take the best qualities of several different husbands of her friends and hold me to the standards of the combined person.
It's not the same article to talk about this in a gender-specific way - men don't face the same type of conflicting pressure from society to raise children and be a career success. As a fairly recent dad, with a lot of fairly recent dad friends, it's way different for a man than a woman. Everyone just by default assumes the woman will hold the baby all the time, and they catch flak for using daycare, and a million other things you'll rarely experience as a dad. Dads get kudos for doing barely acceptable jobs with their kids and focusing on their career, while women get trashed for the same behavior.
There is this one fundamental physical thing that tends to make me think there is some natural logic to this order - that the woman has to be up at night breast-feeding, and so it's hard for the man to assume the default caretaker role without bottles and other nonsense. But this gets extended to all parts of a woman's life, and I think even today there is undue pressure on women to raise the children (and if you want to do some work, schedule it around your babies).