Women's work

Washington Monthly, June, 2003 by Tracy Thompson

You can drag out all the fancy sociological explanations that you want as to why women seem far more concerned than men about homeland security, but it boils down to one thing: Men just don't "do" risk assessment ("Homeland Security is for Girls," Garance Franke-Ruta, April).

This fact first became clear to me several years ago, when on a vacation trip to the beach I watched my husband and the husband of a friend--both of them men with advanced degrees from prestigious institutions of higher learning and with off-the-charts IQs--casually conversing in the ocean, while my husband would occasionally lift our two-year-old daughter over his head so that the breakers, which were over his head, wouldn't actually drown her. It did not occur to either man that maybe they should come in from the water. Subsequent adventures in child-rearing have convinced me that persons with the Y chromosome are much, much better at creating danger than in foreseeing it, much less figuring out how to forestall it. You bet homeland security is for girls. And if it's a girl who has had some experience in doing six different things while keeping a toddler away from the steak knives, so much the better. Sally Quinn would be an excellent replacement for Tom Ridge, but just about any old mom would be eminently qualified.

TRACY THOMPSON

Bowie, Md.