Season four of “The Mindy Project” featured Mindy Lahiri battling her traditional fiancé (Danny Castellano) to continue working as an OBGYN rather than becoming a stay at home mother. In the United States, stay at home mothers are still far more common than stay at home fathers–so the couples’ fight, although fictional, reflected our national gender expectations.

In the second-to-last episode Mindy finally says the things to Danny that had probably come to the wealthy, New York doctor’s mind the minute she had first heard of his desire for her to give up her career and her new fertility clinic.

Here is an excerpt from the climactic argument:

Danny: Oh, yeah, right, right, your career.  You’re too busy getting half of Manhattan knocked up, and Leo, he’s just out there by himself alone, playing pat-a-cake against a wall while his Mom’s working?…
Mindy: Every time that you disagree with something that I do, it’s a referendum on my character. If I want to go to work, it means I’m a bad mother. If I want to have a second glass of wine, it means I’m out of control.…In your eyes every single thing I do is more evidence that I’m a bad person.
Danny: You’re not a bad person. You want me to help you make good decisions, don’t you?
Mindy: Yeah, I thought I made good decisions, and now you’re just making all the decisions for me.
Danny: So what, if it’s the right decision?…You are an amazing mom…Why not do it again?
Mindy: I’m also a good doctor. I don’t want to have to give up any more to have more kids.
Danny: That’s selfish.

And don’t worry, the fight does not end there. Mindy makes clear, in no uncertain terms, that her desire to keep her career, which she has invested at least 11 years of her life just to be trained in, does not make her selfish. At last she stands up for herself. After Danny’s season-long agonizingly belittling utterances, to the mother of his child, Mindy’s rational, valid points are more than welcome. She even throws in some impressive diction (i.e. “referendum”). But the one thing Mindy doesn’t say to her partner is: Why don’t you be the stay at home parent?

The season finale takes viewers back to Mindy and Danny’s introduction. Mindy is able to perform a difficult delivery that Danny had scheduled as a C-section. The plot suggests Mindy is the better doctor because she performed a difficult maneuver so the patient could have her preferred natural birth plan, instead of Danny’s preferred C-section plan. So, from a logistical stand point, why should the better doctor stop working just because she is a mother?

Working moms are nothing new to American television or American reality. In 2012, 29 percent of mothers, with underage children, stayed at home and did not work. Meaning that, in the United States, working mothers are the norm. But despite the power of those numbers, 51 percent of participants in a 2013 Pew Research Center survey said children were better off if they had mothers who stayed at home rather than worked, while only 8 percent said the same about fathers.

So, in 2015, is it too radical to suggest, on television or in reality, that the man occupy the domestic sphere? Too radical for even Mindy to utter? Apparently so.

Ruby Hutson-Ellenberg

Ruby Hutson-Ellenberg is a 2016 Hunter College graduate, where she majored in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. As a native New Yorker, Ruby loves going to the theater and writing plays, which have been particularly well received by her parents. Contact Ruby at staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post What’s Wrong With a Mr. Mom? “The Mindy Project” Explores the Working Mom’s Conundrum appeared first on Law Street.

If you are/were an English major, you’re going to completely understand this post. And so is most everyone else — at least, that’s how it feels when you opted for an unspecific, general course of study in college. It can feel like you’ve signed up to be unsure about your future, like your education was a waste.

Have no fear: majors don’t always matter. Of course, you couldn’t go into a medical field without the proper training (I mean, I wouldn’t want an English major slicing and dicing my body during surgery…noooo thank you), but vague majors (English, Communications, Liberal Arts — you know who you are) might have hidden benefits. They don’t pigeonhole you. If you major in something incredibly specific, it’s sometimes harder to break out into something different — especially for your first job out of college. If you major in something more open ended you can more easily alter your resume to fit a variety of positions.

So, don’t worry — what you decide to study at 18 won’t cement you into a lifetime of potential dissatisfaction. I remember that notion always scared me as a senior in high school. I was so worried that when I started as a freshman at college, my whole life would be decided. OK, so I was a tad dramatic, but still…that shit is scary. And it’s drilled into the heads of high school and college kids everywhere.

Very few careers require that you had a specific major. Employers just want to know that you have the skills the job requires, regardless of what it says on paper. If you’re still not convinced, pick a more specific minor such as marketing or business. There are some skills that are always applicable to any position and are consistently appealing as most careers develop in accordance to our world being more technologically savvy.

Side bar, it’s never too late to change directions (well, it probably is at some point but let’s be positive). My boyfriend majored in percussion and is now working as a website developer. Sometimes all it takes is one or two extra credits or professional development courses to set your career down a whole new path.

Thanks to our Content Development Specialist, @TaylorGarre013, for the idea for this post!

Happy hunting/studying!

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Alexandra Saville (@CapitalistaBlog) is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

Alexandra Saville

Alexandra Saville is the Media and Writing Specialist at Law Street Media. She has experience in the publishing and marketing worlds and started her own publishing company right out of college. Her blogs, The Capitalista and Capitalista Careers, focus on the young and the entrepreneurial.

The post Is Your Major, Major? appeared first on Law Street.