If a list of qualifications were drawn up for a stay-at-home mom, some radical secular feminists would add to the list "Intelligent human beings need not apply":
"Linda Hirshman, a feminist US writer on cultural issues, has told the world why she thinks staying at home with the children is an occupation ‘not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings.’ She complains at length that the feminist movement, while making some gains in public life through legal activism, has largely failed in the one area where it counts most: the family.
"She upbraids women who stay at home for failing the feminist agenda, saying, ‘They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.’
"Writing in the November 2005 edition of The American Prospect [sic, it was the December 2005 issue], Hirshman admitted that the real intention of the feminist movement was not ‘equality,’ but to destroy what she calls ‘the unreconstructed family’ of a husband and wife rearing children. She writes that the goal was to see as many women as possible abandoning family life for high-level professions and politics."
It wouldn’t surprise me if radical secular feminists of the Hirshman mold would prefer that children be hatched from pods and raised by Big Brother. In any event, such sentiments certainly demonstrate the raw hatred of children that makes more understandable — though not any more excusable — the commitment of radical secular feminism to abortion. After all, if Intelligent Human Beings cannot be bothered to raise children, why should the IHBs among us suffer the indignity of bringing preborn children to birth in the first place?
Confidential Aside to Lifesite.net: It would be extremely helpful to your readership to provide links to the articles in question. I thought that there was only one link — to The American Prospect article — to search out. Turns out there were two. The older article from TAP and a recent article from The Washington Post, the Post article and not the TAP article per se being the reason why the current brouhaha is raging.
Hello Michelle,
You might appreciate the thread Pam Pilch and I have going on this over at the HMS Blog. My contribution to that discussion can be found here.
http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/weblog/BlogDetail.asp?ID=31467
Thanks for your great work here. I always enjoy your posts.
Greg
I bet you a dollar Linda Hirshman had a stay-at-home mom. What sort of impression must she have made on her I wonder?
Nonetheless, the radical feminists of yesteryear are dieing out. They don’t reproduce after all. And twenty-somethings, like myself, can see plain and clear that the free love and “liberation” of the sixties has left us with a generation of very angry and bitter women. If only they could figure out why!
Hirshman said:’They do not involve (the)risks and the rewards that risk brings.’
Please! Raising a child to be a responsible adult is very risky, because, if you fail, that child could become a criminal!
It’s true that a trained monkey could raise kids the way SOME do it.
Raising kids PROPERLY takes more guts and intelligence than any cubicle-jockey position in the world.
But it also takes selfless love, that puts the needs of others before one’s own, a concept very likely opaque to the rad-fems.
Again, I think they’re own paucity of offspring is what makes them so keen to control the public schools… “If I can’t indoctrinate my own family, I will indoctrinate YOURS…”
Note that her polemics against mothers could with little alteration also be directed against nuns.
Where to begin with this foolish woman? She doesn’t equate work at home with any value whatsoever. Doesn’t she know that a huge number of small businesses are run from home by women? Is she too stupid to understand that, when it comes to “future value”, children ARE the hot commodity? It’s almost as if she believes in spontaneous generation, with adult workers bursting out of the air to replace the aging population. Has she not read the reports that say that elderly people with grown children are more likely to receive good care as they age and become debilitated? Or is she just planning to Kervork herself when she slows down?
Her quote says it all, “this represents not a loss of present value but a loss of hope for the future — a loss of hope that the role of women in society will continue to increase.”
I’m a feminist. I look around and see appalling conditions for women. Legalized prostitution that – especially when combined with government interest in taxation – forces young women to use their bodies as commodities. Even girls are being used to make pornography. I don’t see Hirshman or other old radicals addressing this. Then again, she and her ilk don’t seem to understand that real feminism is allowing women to have choices, not devaluing them if they choose marriage and motherhood.
I married at the end of my junior year at MIT. I finished my degree and then stayed home to raise a family, which I am still doing. Several of my “enlightened” feminist friends had the gall to ask me why I’d bothered going to college in the first place, if I was “just going to stay home.” My “old-fashioned” Catholic friends, otoh, were horrified by the very question, since they had actually read and understood JPII’s writings on the dignity and vocation of women.
You’re a threat to your “‘enlightened’ feminist friends”, Margaret. But I bet you’re a heroine to your kids.
Well, that’s an intellectual ellitist attitude. First of all, she’s implying that intellectual indevors are the only indevors worth persuing. Which’d probably make her pretty mad if her garbage never got picked up again and if there were no more frozen dinners (necessary to the ‘busy’ life of an intellegent working mom) at her grocery store because the factory works and truckers got tired of the monotony of their life’s work. Some things in life ar monotonous and someone hasta do them. Guess what?? Even after I have my phd… i’m still gunna haveta fold my own laundry. And trust me, that’s an even more thankless task than parenting. At least kids’ll get you a gift for mother’s day. your clothes don’t thank you.
Intellegence CAN be a great benefit to a SAHM. Creativity and enginuity can go a very long way with raising kids. It takes a lot of technique and patience to raise self-aware, responsible adults capable of succeeding at what they decide to do with their lives.
And so WHAT if you arn’t the most intellegent mom?? LOVE, concern for your children’s welfare and unselfishness make a successful mom too.
I think she’s pissed that “Stay at home mom” is not a prestigous title. It’s not something you have to “work for” and “earn.” Any 16 year old can become a mother. And there are good mothers and bad mothers. Just because someone holds the title of “mother,” you can’t make a judgement on who that person is or envy them in any sort of way, like if someone holds the title of CEO or faculty member at a university.
I’m “successful” in the worldly definition of success. But I hate my job. If I could afford it, SURE I’d stay at home… just to stay at home. A clean sink is way more fulfilling than my job. And if I had kids, I’d probably home school. Mostly because I think I’m smarter and wiser than any teacher they might have, and could give them a more balanced view of the world.
Feminists keep trying to act like they’re radicals. They’re the old regime. They might have been hot stuff in the 60’s and 70’s, rebelling against the “old boy’s club” and the 50’s image of stuffy white men in leather chairs smoking pipes… now they ARE those guys.
Exactly Tammy.
Isn’t it better to stay at home and serve a husband and children who love you than have to obey some boss, who’s only interested in results and profit?
I would like to say may God richly bless those of you who are parents and are working to raise your children to be servants of Christ.
Note that her polemics against mothers could with little alteration also be directed against nuns.
But at least nuns don’t have children, Kevin.
Feminists see stay-at-home mothers as a drain on society, useless eaters who do nothing to contribute to the economy (even though having children who will work some day preserves the nation’s future success), and who take jobs away from others (those “child care” professionals they expect you to leave your child with while you’re at the office).
When my husband and I have children, I will be taking a third-shift job. We can’t feesibly make do with one income, and it’s not feesible for my husband – a teacher – to work two jobs.
But I refuse to hand my child over to strangers for care. They are *my* responsibility, and no one in this world can raise my children with the same rules, discipline and love that I can give them.
Do I have a degree? Yes.
Do I consider giving up my current job for my children a crime? NO.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the same group of women who accuse men of trying to dumb-down women basically argue that women who aren’t going to hold 60-hour/week jobs don’t need education?
Who’s more oppresive here?
My vote goes for those pesky feminists…
By the way, I am aware it’s “feasible”…but this is, ironically, a busy week at work that does involve 10-12 hour days. Literacy is not my strong suit at the moment…
I’m a feminist. I look around and see appalling conditions for women. Legalized prostitution that – especially when combined with government interest in taxation – forces young women to use their bodies as commodities. Even girls are being used to make pornography. I don’t see Hirshman or other old radicals addressing this.
At my school, the leadership of the Progressive Student Movement and Feminist Majority Alliance clubs both intimated to me that pornography should be a viable, respected profession for women.
It sickens me to hear professed ‘feminists’ state such things.
I do not think that “confidential” means what you think “confidential” means.
Inigo: “You keep using that word — I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Sure it does, Cowardly-Anonymous-Person. It isn’t Michelle’s fault you lack the decency to respect the confidentiality of plainly marked confidential missives.
But then, you lack the huevos to sign your name, so ’tis par for the course.
One of the roots of modern feminism were prostitutes who organized back in the 19th century, in New York City, I think. It kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?
I hoped my brief remarks about nuns would highlight the connection between the contemplative/”cloistered” life of both the nun and the stay-at-home mother.
Non-teaching, non-nursing nuns and religious brothers were hated by early industrialists because they thought they were a drain on the economy, better off in the workplace or even in the military.
Actually, I think the comparison of mothers and nuns is an apt one–those being the two vocations that feminists would ‘prefer’ that women not choose, primarily because they are ‘traditional’ ones. I’m kinda surprised that they haven’t started publicly condemning women who choose other traditionally female professions, like nursing, teaching, and secretarial work.
I actually don’t get very upset about diatribes like this, just sad for the women who make them. Let’s all say a “Hail, Mary” for Linda Hirshman.
Sure it does, Cowardly-Anonymous-Person. It isn’t Michelle’s fault you lack the decency to respect the confidentiality of plainly marked confidential missives.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
The word “confidential” only appears two times before Mr. Jennings’s post. The first is Ms. Arnold’s “Confidential aside the Lifesite.net.” Of course, a message that’s posted on a website for all the world to see isn’t really “confidential,” as “Cowardly-Anonymous-Person” pointed out, in a gently humorous, non-confrontational way, in his/her 8:15:02 pm post, which is exactly the second place the word appears.
To this, Franklin Jennings replies with accusations of (1) cowardice, (2) lack of decency, and (3) lack of huevos–all in the space of three lines. Wow! Either Mr. Jennings was making a joke that fell flat, or he needs to chill.
I am glad there is more discussion nowadays about women making the deliberate choice to stay home and raise their family. This was not the case 20 years ago – remember the “bring home the bacon” commercial? When I was growing up, as an identified “gifted” child, I was constantly fed expectations by my teachers and others who assumed I would be some high-powered professional something-or-other, and I naturally came to assume this about myself. Yet I also yearned to have my own family. In medical school I watched as one by one my female med student friends married and tried to start a family, bringing them face to face with the reality that you cannot have “it all” – and we talked about how unfair it was that we had been encouraged along this professional development path for our entire lives, yet no one had ever told us how little we would care about our precious careers the minute we held our first child.
I know quite a few MD moms who put their medical careers on hold to stay home, and working moms married to stay-at-home dads (including myself). And I make a point to bring this issue up to any girl I hear talking about wanting to be a doctor when she grows up.
I have been a SAHM/Wife for 13 years and I love it.
I held an office job for many years before that- and the one I have now is much harder- takes more intelligence, creativity, common sense, energy- and guts.
Guts for many reasons (Like the Dobson book says- Parenting is not for Cowards)
But it also takes guts to listen to criticism from friends and welll meaning family, including even conservative Christians as to why some one of my ablilties is at home and not out making a career for myself. Why am I not working – they want to know?
When I was growing up- it was the opposite way around – most women didn’t work, if they had families- I’m glad women have choices now-
but I think women like this Hirshman have been more influential in a way then people might think- Christians have fallen for the birth control mentality- and the dual career mentality-
Now I know there are women who have no choice but to work- please understand-
but think we have bought into a culture of materialsim- where people have to have things things things- and that is often the reason you have to have a dual career couple today.
Money and power are all that count.
BTW most of these types of feminists are very elitist- remember the “trailer park trash’comments with Paula Jones?
As to the “confidential” issue: It was meant in the style of those advice-to-the-lovelorn columns in which the author speaks to a particular individual without printing his letter. It wasn’t meant to be taken literally but simply meant to be a humorous means of addressing an annoyance I encountered in preparing the post.
To add- Baking apple pies and going to movememnt classes isn’t “oppression”
It’s called doing things with your kids- making memories that last a lifetime! That’s something that these brave new world devotees hate- they’d rather their was no family- as an above poster aptly put it- they’d rather kids were decanted from bottles and raised by the state.
Does she realize she just called all teachers “unintelligent”?
My wife and I BOTH bought into the “two career” template very early in our lives, and only slowly and painfully realized that it was not what either of us really desired.
My wife deeply wanted to stay home and be a MOM, and I deeply wanted to provide that opportunity for her. But by then we were deeply in debt, like a lot of our peers.
Ironically, I ended up staying home with the babies (since my work could be done from home on a freelance basis) and working as I could at night and on weekends.
Recovery is tough, but we may yet get there. Our kids will learn the concept of “vocation” in the fullest sense, and hopefully will be open to the call of God, rather than their own momentary wishes or modern fads.
Hirshman correctly identifies Christianity as the primary enemy of the “feminism” she professes. However, she rails against a caricature of Christian anthropology, rather than the real thing.
Whimsy
Cjmr, I thought I’d respond to your comment, “I’m kinda surprised that they haven’t started publicly condemning women who choose other traditionally female professions, like nursing, teaching, and secretarial work.”
Actually, I wish they’d come out and give a public statement to that effect. I would prefer it to the private condenscending comments and the peer pressure at university. I recall one professor who made snerky comments about an alumnae who graduated with honors and “wasted” her education by getting married and starting a family.
My sister is a secretary. She had worked her way through university (about 6 years) and made big bucks in sales for various corporations. One smart, efficient cookie! (I’m admittedly prejudiced.) But after a layoff, she started temping as a corporate secretary. When she was offered a full-time job as an executive secretary, she took it. She has worked in secretarial positions for more than 15 years now. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve boiled with anger about the way other women have spoken down to her, especially women who haven’t half her drive or intelligence.
I won’t even go into detail about what happened when I left the corporate world for teaching. Suffice to say that the ribbing about “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” is very mild compared to being mocked by the “pro-choice” sisterhood of co-workers who think teacher certification programs are a throwback to the “normal schools for unmarried women”.