They drive me crazy. There's an article in the New York Times today, entitled "Off to Work She Should Go". It's by a woman named Linda Hirshman, author of the book Get Back to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World. You can look it up on Amazon, but only if you want to get angry. Quote from the article:
That the most educated have opted out [of work-- ed.] the most should raise questions about how our society allocates scarce educational resources. The next generation of girls will have a greatly reduced pool of role models.
1) What, I can't be a role model to girls because I chose to stay home and raise my child? Talk about feminist garbage. They say they're all for women having choice-- as long as it's the choice to kill their unborn children. If I should want to choose to stay home and raise the baby that I brought into this world, well I've obviously been brainwashed by some patriarchal despot, and that's the end of the story.
2) Why should SAHMs (Stay at Home Moms) raise questions about how society allocates educational resources? I don't know how many of you saw the article (also in the NYTimes, I believe) quoting professors lamenting the fact that so many of their grad students chose to be full-time mothers, masters degrees and all. One of the quotes from one of these great "intellectuals" flirted with the idea of using a woman's desire or lack thereof to be a SAHM as a litmus test. If she wanted to, then she would be less likely to be accepted into her masters program because she would "waste" it. And a lawmaker in Europe (Belgium, I believe) went even further. In her country (yes, this was a woman), the state pays for higher education. This woman wanted SAHMs to have to pay the state back for their education, as they had "wasted" the state's resources.
This is sick. Sick and wrong. Nobody has the right to tell me what to do with my life-- except me. Nobody has the right to decide who should raise my child-- except James and me. Nobody can say that I wasted my education or anything else, just because I chose to be a SAHM. What are they thinking? That because I had the temerity (as they view it) to produce a child in the first place, I should be uneducated, barefoot and in the kitchen? That because I chose to work here instead of there, I don't deserve to learn and grow? That because I choose to raise kids, that makes me so unworthy that kids can't look up to me? Society will be in a pretty state then, when children shouldn't look up to their mothers.
I chose this life. If they don't want it, fine, but I do. I haven't been brainwashed, I haven't been abused, I haven't been bullied or indoctrinated. I simply love my family and my home. I love what I've accomplished here. I've even (gasp) learned and grown. This is my life, and I love it. So, Ms. Hirshman, I'll thank you to keep your indoctrinating, insulting, bullying feminist nose out of it.
2 comments:
I am SO glad that you and I are friends.
March on, Anti-Feminists! Rebel and bake some bread! :)
P.S.
How do you think kids learn a love for educations? Where does an Einstein or a Jefferson or a Roosevelt get their love for books? Where does a Bach or a Mozart first discover his love for music?
Well, Einstein was a drop-out. Guarantee he didn't gain a love for math & physics from your "state-paid education," Ms. Belgium. People who contribute great things to the world don't do it because they're educated. You can have all the education in the world and still contribute nothing to this world.
Being an educated mother though...I think that's the biggest contribution you can make. Why? Because you'll raise the Einsteins and the Jeffersons and the Mozarts and the Bachs.
Even if you don't raise one of those, you'll raise a kid who is smart, and who wants to do something worthwhile with their education, just like their Mom did with hers.
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