My niece recently had twins, & graduated college with a teaching certificate. She wants to teach.
Why have twins only to let a stranger in day care raise them? That is insane, IMO. Why would you miss the most formative & beautiful time of your child's life to run roughshod over other people's children? If that is her idea of parenting, SHE IS WRONG!
MY point is that it is fine if both spouses work, but when they have kids, one of them needs to raise them, not a day care center. Doesn't matter which parent stays home, man or woman. I'm inclined to believe that women do a better job of civilizing young kids, but that's just my opinion, & certainly is dependent on individual families.
IMO, the main reasons women flooded the workforce in the last 50 years are high taxes & inflation. Taxes on all levels have kept up with & surpassed inflation, while wages have not. For a family to prosper, the wife had to work.
This has had a devastating effect on the children. Parents no longer have time to civilize their children, leaving this task to strangers, with predictable results. Note to new parents: NOBODY but you loves your children! Parents are too busy or tired after work to help with school work or just interact with their children. Parents become detached from the child's world rather than being a necessary integral part.
Now, before some of you jump on me to say how there are many 2 income households with successful children - Certainly there are, but this is the exception. Most folks cannot juggle 2 jobs, kids, & home responsibilities effectively. The kids usually suffer, as does society that must deal with these maladjusted young people.
As for the sexist notion of the title: Bull Pucky!
My teen daughter came to me the other day to share that one of her teen friends has gone wild and is now involved in some terrible activities. This is the 3rd child in a family of 4 to go off the deep end and she could not understand how such nice parents could have almost all their kids go “bad” She is studying biology so she concluded that it must be bad genes. Sadly I know these very nice parents and they are both have very “important” jobs that seem to consume them. It is very hard to share your energy with two competing forces and more and more I see women who decide to give their 110% to their careers.
Spot on, as is the author. As another poster pointed out, the dynamic of a stay-at-home mom, as we remember it, is a relatively new, and almost uniquely American idea. Prior to the late 19th century, women worked as much and as hard as men, as did children, although in an agrarian culture, the wife’s work did consist of more of the “household” chores, but that was due to the work being more suitable to her than farming the fields or operating the mill (not that some did not do that).
If anything, that brief, idyllic period should remind us of what we have given up in the last 60 years as our culture and our government have changed and grown beyond all recognition. Even in some of the posts agreeing with the author, there is just a hint of condecension when referring to those who don’t “plan” correctly.
Pope Paul VI had it right all those years ago. First comes the denial of the obvious differences between men and women, and the attempt to make them the same. Then comes the “planning” of families (forget about God being a partner in your marriage) and then comes abortion as the stop-gap contraception. In a world where the act that was designed for procreation becomes simply another pastime, why wonder that culture has all but fallen apart.
This author’s opinion would not solve all of the problems to which he alluded, although it would alleviate them to some degree, however, it is only another small symptom of the greater breakdown of American society in general.