Rant: Where should I begin?

It's been a while since I've had time to post. Even as we speak I am writing frantically, glancing frequently in the direction of my little one who is sleeping fitfully - a potential sign that she is about to demand my attention. This is also how I shower, eat (I cannot tell you how many meals I've swallowed without even registering the taste), and even sleep these days. But that is not what I am writing to gripe about.

Today I went to a baby shower. It is important to go out and do things, I feel, even though it is a million times more complicated to get into the car and go anywhere with a 5-week-old baby than most activities are worth. However, you've got to do it, I reason, because at some point it will get easier, but how will you know when that is if you aren't going out to notice the change?

Anyway, I attended a shower on the other side of town. The guests were a bunch of folks I don't know (not counting the mother-to-be and one other guest). I arrived 30 minutes late because there was an accident on the highway and because my mapquest directions had me on a road that is closed for construction. But I digress...

When I arrived at the shower, the topic of conversation was one of the guest's working mothers blog and a NYT article she discusses on the blog about Harvard students who aspire and/or expect to be housewives/stay at home moms. Now, I know there is room to argue claims about the upswing in women staying home (or men, for that matter). However, what the folks at the shower wanted to talk about was how it was wrong for women who planned to "stay at home" to "take up a space" at Harvard when someone who would make "better use" of their Harvard education could have attended.

I am not sure what frustrated me more, their implicit devaluation of home-making vis-a-vis other things a college grad might do or their view that an elite college education is of no value to those who choose to stay at home. I said I disagreed with the notion that future homemakers should be banned from the Ivy League. Your career aspirations are not factored into college admissions and that is as it should be. What about those folks like Natalie Portman who waste their Harvard degrees as actors? What about all those super wealthy and well-connected kids at elite schools who will never have to work a day in their lives or who will land those CEO positions even if they go to BU because it is in their blood? From where I'm sitting, there are plenty of folks taking the spots of people who would "really use" a prestigous BA, whatever that means. When it comes to the value of education at an elite school to those who choose to stay home, the most obvious benefit, even though it ain't pretty, is locating a spouse. However, just experiencing college is of value. Just because one may eventually end up staying at home doesn't mean one can't be well-read, well-traveled, etc.

Anyway, E. is telling me that my time is up.