Stephen Miller's [Nov. 22]column is utterly without statistical basis, but he has received a thorough tongue-lashing elsewhere, so I will leave him alone.
His critics, however, are dramatically over the line. For Levenberg and Johnson to accuse Miller of wanting women "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen" is a maudlin straw-man of Miller's argument, which-however false it may be-is simply that women are probabilistcally less likely to seek high-paying employment for a variety of reasons. He certainly says nothing about shoes, contraceptives or culinary aptitude.
Some women, it is hard to doubt, feel socially (or at least maritally) pressured to stay at home and raise children without external work. Some women, whom his critics seem to conveniently ignore, feel pressured to go to work despite their desires to devote themselves full-time to their families (see Boston Cote's offensively normalizing Sept. 30 reaction to a recent Yale article).
Just as Miller should not assume all women who stay at home do so out of their own desires, we also cannot conclude that all women who stay at home do so out of laziness or conformity to Miller's norms. To do so is blatantly false and, worse, steps beyond the boundaries of available evidence.
In the absence of evidence, Miller should stay quiet; his critics should do likewise. I will do the same. Women-and men!-ought to be allowed to pursue their career and family goals however they see fit without punishment either via prejudicially lower wages or extremist haranguing.
Mike Lee
Trinity '06
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