At breakfast this morning AJ explained to me the difference between orbit and rotation and also the order of the planets from the sun outward. Clearly our last trip to the library is paying off. I�m hoping he�ll be able to explain the Big Bang theory to me soon. I could use a little illumination in that area.

I went to talk with an administrator at the local elementary school about AJ yesterday. It was about as useful as I expected, which is to say, not very. I did confirm there are no programs for gifted kids before the third grade and I put my concerns about this on paper. I suppose I formally registered with the school district as someone who�s going to be a pain in the ass. Although they were, surprisingly, willing to consider early admission to Kindergarten, I had pretty much decided that wasn�t for us. I think that will just change the area of concern rather than improve his overall school experience. The kid likes doing math problems but he also likes to play baseball and soccer. He�d be at a serious disadvantage if he were a year younger than the rest of his cohort. Also several people noted that emotional development differences, even if not immediately apparent, can cause trouble down the road. So I think I�ve just committed myself to trying to get programs in place for AJ and other kids like him in our district. Go me.

Yesterday, sea-change wrote of the studies that have indicated that smart women don�t get married and when they do, they�re not happy/healthy. Such studies turn up every now and again and I find myself questioning what�s actually being studied, although I don�t disagree that there�s probably something worth studying there. The vagueness of the terms, at least as perpetuated in the popular retelling of the results, makes it difficult to come to any conclusions.

First of all, how is �smart� defined? By IQ? Advanced degrees? And are these really the best indicators? (I have both of these credentials but have to question whether it is very smart to be squandering away so much time in a Ph.D. program in preparation for a job teaching in the humanities that I may neither find nor want.) Are these studies really testing smart women or smart women who are also white and upper middle class? These are not tangential issues. In any case, in my personal experience as an intelligent woman with intelligent woman friends is that yes, many more of us are unmarried or married late than the percentages for the general population would indicate is the norm (sorry for that completely convoluted sentence). I think there are several reasons for this. First, I think we all felt it was important to have a career that was personally satisfying and in which we excel. This meant that we prioritized that aspect of our lives and devoted our prime child-bearing years to graduate school and very demanding jobs. Second, I think we all have reservations about certain social conventions historically associated with marriage. Additionally, we may have had trouble finding a partner who understood our hang-ups about the institution of marriage and was willing to tackle the social conventions head-on in order to come up with a more equitable solution. Third, after waiting it out, many have found that social conventions make it difficult to meet eligible men once you�ve left school and achieved and tolerable degree of maturity befitting one�s age.

I also wonder about whether the chronicled dissatisfaction of smart women in marriage or regarding marriage would be true no matter what situation they find themselves in. Perhaps it is in the nature of the smart woman to wrestle with her choices, to question the status quo. She wants to use what she knows to make things better. She is, perhaps, defined in part by her dissatisfaction.

Finally, I question whether it is really marriage that is being studied or parenting. I find it hard to believe that a smart woman who is a single parent is not going to run into many of the same issues that I personally find constraining about my intellectual life � the lack of time for my work, the huge amount of time spent on laundry, cooking, cleaning and other necessities of domestic life. Ditto for couples unmarried by raising kids together. By extension, I believe that married but childless (by choice � those childless against their will have a different set of frustrations) women would be free of the greater part of the things that get stand between me and my intellectual satisfaction.

All people, male or female, will feel some kind of pull between freedom and committed companionship. This is what makes any kind of committed partnership challenging. Some of us still think it�s worth working for in one way or another, but it's not right for everybody. Ultimately we all need to make choices that are smart for us.

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