Most of the women and men I know are hardworking. For example, my wife, Dr. Barbara Nemko, Napa County Superintendent of Schools, works 60 hours a week while being a good wife and mother.
However, over my 23 years and 2,900 clients in my career counseling practice, in my out-of-work conversations, and in reading trend pieces in the media, I’ve observed a dramatic increase in the number of people, capable people, afflicted with what I call the Parasite Syndrome.
Here’s how the Parasite Syndrome prototypically plays out:
1. After graduating from a brand-name college, the parasites in-training go abroad, for example to India or France, to “find themselves.” They return a month or year later, no clearer, although perhaps more desirous of a pleasant and fulfilling life.
2. They take a pleasant and/or fulfilling but low-paying job. (Most pleasant and fulfilling jobs pay poorly–supply and demand.) But because of a desire to live a middle-class lifestyle, the person mooches off parents or romantic partner.
3. At this point, many of the female parasites-in-training think guys who don’t make good money are losers. Most males don’t think that way of educated low-income women, and so are more willing to marry them. And so, many more of the women find a host.
4. Sometimes, a husband prefers that his wife not work, but that’s uncommon except among the wealthy. More often, the husband (or his or her parent) asks her to try harder to land a professional-level job so she can contribute to the family income she’s good at spending.
So, she makes a half-hearted failed effort after which she rails, for example, “You don’t understand how tough the job market is, especially for a woman, and especially with a liberal arts degree.”
Few husbands or parents have the guts to tell her, “Then why did you major in art history?! (or French literature, sociology, women’s studies, etc.)” They fear the onslaught of fury, tears, or retaliatory accusations likely to follow.
5. Soon after, she gets pregnant. Sometimes, the husband subtly or not subtly asks her if she wants to have an abortion, for example, “Do you think we’re ready?” Because he can’t force her to have an abortion, the baby comes, even if he doesn’t want to be a father, financially support it, let alone become the sole source of income so she can be a stay-at-home mom.
Men, unless you are ready to be a father or have absolute trust that your partner, without fail, takes birth control pills, you must wear a condom every time or, if you’re sure you never want children, have a vasectomy. Why? Because if she gets pregnant, you have no power: No matter how fervently you plead that you don’t want a baby, if she decides she wants it, you’re stuck with at least 18 years of enormous commitment of time, energy, and money.
Ah, relationships: They can be so rewarding yet so fraught.
6. She (or occasionally, her husband) insists it’s important for her to stay home at least until the child is five, although, as I’ve documented in earlier posts, the research does not support the validity of that assertion. See, for example, the review of the literature I present in the third-from-the-last comment on this post.
6. When the baby reaches school-age, the brand-name-U-grad mom knows it’s unseemly to remain a stay-at-home mom, so she gets pregnant again or goes to graduate school.
7. After taking a long time to finish graduate school and after another desultory job search, she fails to find more than an easy, ill-paying, part-time job, claiming the job market is tough for stay-at-home moms.
8. She creates make-work to seem busy, taking longer to do things than necessary: for example, cooking unnecessarily time-consuming meals (”I had to stop at the Indian market for this spice,”) searching for the perfect bathroom accessories, and getting overinvolved/overprotective with her kids, often creating co-dependency.
Here’s a less obvious example. After booking a teenager onto my show to talk about the book he wrote, his stay-at-home mother sent me a dozen emails filled with more information about him than I could use in five shows. Despite my saying, “I have more than I need,” she kept sending more stuff. That enables her to tell her husband and friends that it takes a lot of time to support her son’s efforts to promote his book.
9. If she lands a job, she doesn’t work hard at it. She invokes excuses she’s heard from her friends, women’s magazines, or therapist, such as “I’m so afraid of failure that I don’t try.” or, “I’m a perfectionist, which is painful, so I avoid tasks.”
10. So she continues as a mediocre worker. Or she quits, complaining that her boss is a jerk, work is too stressful, that corporate America (or government, or nonprofit employment) sucks, and/or that her workplace isn’t family-friendly. Or she claims, “It really would be better if I stayed home with our child.”
11. She’ll bury a beast-of-burden husband or two and go to her grave having taken far more from family and from society than she has given. She has been a parasite.
The saddest part is that these people–both the women and men–who are afflicted with the Parasite Syndrome are so capable; they could so abet society.
Alas, they choose to have hurt the society they could have helped. They take up slots at prestigious colleges having written application essays asserting that they want to do important things to improve society. (I’ve never known of a successful application essay to Brand-Name U whose admission essay said, “I aspire to be a stay-at-home parent.”) They then freeload off parents and spouse, and later, often squander yet more societal resources by going back for another degree without ever making much use of it. They certainly never come close to living up to their potential. You don’t need a brand-name degree or two to be a good stay-at-home parent, let alone a stay-at-home childless wife, which, as reported in a recent study, is a growing group.
If you know someone, male or female, who is afflicted with the Parasite Syndrome, consider emailing or showing the person this article. True, their first reaction will likely be defensiveness at being called a parasite, but if their behavior, in fact, fits the syndrome and they are reasonably well-adjusted, their desire to not be thought of as a parasite is more likely to motivate them to change than would a tactful request to put more effort into their career. Why? Because a tactful request rarely disturbs complacency, let alone a parasite.
Dr. Nemko is co-president of the National Organization for Men.
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