A woman's place is in the home (My wife lets me say that) By Lewis J. Goldberg The title of this column is not a sexist remark, it is a statement of fact based on thousands of years of civilized family structure. It should be no more insulting than to say 'a man's place is in the office,' or 'the assembly line,' or 'the port-a-potty delivery truck.' However, for the last 30 years, women have been told by their liberal overseers at NOW and in the pages of almost every mainstream newspaper and magazine that they have received a raw deal these past millennia. Well, just saying something over and over again does not make it true (though it works pretty good for the current administration.) Truth exists in spite of us and cannot be voted on. The women's movement began in earnest with a demand that seemed reasonable: let women vote. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton were not concerned that men were holding doors open for them or treating at restaurants, they were concerned with truly repressive policies, both written and implied. These were policies that barred women from voting, holding public office, property rights, and access to education, among others. The delegates to the first Women's Convention at Seneca Falls, NY in the late 1840's wanted to secure rights that even the "most ignorant and degraded" man enjoyed. Women's suffrage was probably the easiest concept to push, as it had wide appeal, and, due to unspecific language in the 14th Amendment, constitutional justification. Suffrage rights led to the eventual acceptance of women in all aspects of public society, enjoying the rights and privileges of even that most "ignorant and degraded" of fellows. But the movement did not stop there. One thing made women markedly different from men: motherhood. Since the beginning of time, motherhood has been looked upon as a joy and an honor. Mothers hold powerful sway over their offspring in the developing years and are greatly responsible for molding the minds of their little charges. However, motherhood is seen as a burden by the core of power-hungry elites in the modern women's movement. It is the last obstacle to total equality, as they see it. In the beginning of the women's movement, women were concerned with simply acquiring rights that enhanced their role as mothers. They could still vote and be mothers, go to college and be mothers, hold controlling ownership in a feed mill and be mothers. But now the feminists (who seem to me to be distinctly un-feminine) insist that women abdicate their duties as mothers, drop their kids off at the local day-care (which is little more than a stable for human beings,) and slave like Japanese businessmen until midnight. They let their idiot-husbands pick the kids up after their hard day, pop a can of 'Beef-a-Roni' in the microwave, and then come home and complain that nothing gets done around the house and lament that they never have any time together. It's no wonder that so many marriages end in divorce. Couples never really experience marriage, they just have an annoying roommate that they get to have sex with once in a while. We are all born with unique abilities and talents. Some men are very good cooks and have nurturing personalities, some women are superb lawyers and highly ambitious. Do I feel that we should bar all women from careers or public life? No, there will always be exceptions. But I feel that it is very wrong to brainwash society into thinking that men and women are the same, because they are not. The human race has two distinct categories of responsibilities. They are empirically obvious even when we try to circumvent them, in that the disastrous consequences of not performing these rolls become endemic in society. Look at the juvenile crime rate, look at the school shootings, look at the drug abuse, just look, fergoshsakes! Our central committee of socialism, aka Congress, keeps trying to apply band-aids to the symptoms. Or, one can liken it to a doctor that treats his patient's liver disease but doesn't tell him to quit drinking. Our homes have become a place where we warehouse or kids at night, and let someone else take care of them in the day. Large numbers of women in the job market have made labor more plentiful, and thus relatively cheaper. It should be no surprise that it takes two incomes to afford the lifestyle our parents had on one. Take 80 per cent of the women out of the marketplace and we'll see salaries go up as companies compete fiercely to retain people. We like to reminisce about the 50's and we think that the world is unfairly different today. It is largely the women's movement that screwed us out of that social structure, and only by women recognizing and cherishing their natural roll of mother and homemaker can we get back to that era. We can't do it with kids books that show women in hard-hats and men arranging flowers. Women have had suffrage, property rights, and a place in the institutions of higher learning for generations. These rights are nearly inarguable, both from a moral and constitutional standpoint. The injustices committed upon women in this nation's past are inexcusable, and we should never return to those days. But the roll of motherhood must be encouraged, strengthened, and preserved if our great republic is to survive. Of course, not all women can, will, or want to be mothers, and to them should be all the opportunities otherwise available. But, for society in general, motherhood is like one leg on a stool. The stool won't stand long without it because the future is secured through propagation and proper education of the populace. Yes, my wife approves of this philosophy. She is more educated than I
am, and could make serious dollars if she were to work, but what price
is high enough to trade for the hands-on experience of raising your own
children. She wants nothing to do with my world of work, and, being a
consultant, I am home enough to know that I don't want to run her world
either. We are mutually respectful of each other's duties and our children
are getting a first-hand example of how a partnership in marriage works.
It is the best gift we could give them, no salary could buy Lewis J. Goldberg, who lives in Missouri, is a management consultant and systems analyst for a major consulting firm in Maryland. He runs PlanetGoldberg, a conservative web site. |
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