Posted on 01/20/2006 6:37:55 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
What’s the most important thing most of us will do? The answer is, obviously, raise our kids. And that’s what New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in his New Year’s Day column, but believe it or not, he caught all sorts of grief.
Brooks was responding to a recent piece in the American Prospect by Linda Hirshman of Brandeis. She criticized the idea that “staying home with the kids is just one more feminist option.”
For Hirshman, “the family—with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks— . . . allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government.” She adds that women assigning domestic roles to themselves is as “unjust” as their being forced into these roles. Well, so much for women’s “choice.”
Brooks calls this whole assertion “astonishing.” He urges his readers to look back over their own lives. Then he asks, “Which memories do you cherish more, those with your family or those at the office?”
While Brooks found Hirshman’s views of the family “astonishing,” there was nothing surprising about the reactions to Brooks’s column. The most virulent—and, thus, easiest to disregard—objections accused Brooks of having a “problem with educated, achieving women.” They caricatured his position as saying that women should be content with “birthin’ babies and fixin’ vittles.”
And of course, their comments drip with contempt for the millions of women who have chosen to stay at home with their children.
A more substantial and troubling response comes not from the left but from the libertarian right. Former Reason magazine editor and Times columnist Virginia Postrel reduces Brooks’s argument to “errands are what matters most.” Well, that’s not what Brooks is saying. He is talking about priorities, not “to do” lists.
After noting the obvious—“somebody’s got to do the errands of life”—Postrel turns to the heart of her argument: “I do not believe there is One Best Way to live.”
Postrel writes that a life lived “attending to small chores” is not “inferior to one devoted to more focused pursuits.” But the use of words like errands, small chores, and focused pursuits reveals that, while she will not berate women for staying at home, she does not think much of their choice.
In fact, calling these decisions choices misses the point. When Postrel or anyone else calls for “neutrality” of any kind toward childrearing, they are overlooking the obvious centrality of that task. Forget about the satisfaction Brooks writes about: We’re talking about simple survival, on both a personal and societal level.
Ask the Japanese: Last year, Japan’s population declined for the first time since 1899. As a result, Japan could face economic ruin and, some say, possible extinction because of the “choices” its young adults have made.
While our situation is not that dire, there is still, according to Brooks, the matter of our children’s “I.Q., mental habits, and destiny.” Is this the kind of thing we should be “neutral” about?
That it’s even necessary to ask this question is a mark of a culture obsessed with “choice,” pleasure, and personal autonomy. There is nothing we will let get between us and our idea of “full human flourishing”—not even the future.
There are links to all three columns and other information at the source document.
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Staying at home and raise kids is my dream. I wish I could do it!.
And the Libs are wondering why they are losing population in blue states and why they are losing the next generation politically?
Let me recommend a couple of books that may change your life. They're changing mine:
Less than 28 bucks if you buy both from Amazon, less than $40 if you buy them from your local bookstore, and if you have even a sliver of writing talent you can make a good living doing it. It's perfect for stay-at-home Moms and Dads (it even has an appendix of interviews with Moms who've started these businesses up) because it requires almost no starting capital and it allows a lot of flexibility. And since your target market is businesses, you don't have to fight past 8 billion other writers to get your stuff published for a pittance. Instead you are in a market with a high demand and very good pay rates. Me, I only like to do hard things when it is for some great and noble cause...when it comes to making money, I prefer it to be as easy as possible!
The Everything Home-Based Business Book is also really good, especially if you aren't a good writer.
BTW, I also write for a blog called HomeBased Life. Couldn't hurt to check it out.
Mind if I ask what your situation is like?
Yep. Some argue that if the Left weren't in favor of abortion (and the only members of the serious electorate getting them) they'd be running the country by now. I'm not so sure because abortion is used to keep so many dem voters in line, but for sure it is one of the factors that will lead to the eventual extinction of American liberalism.
I have good news and bad news.
Bad News: The Muslims, and especially the radical Muslims, are outpacing us on births.
Good News: The Americans who are having the most kids and passing on their values the most successfully are the conservative ones.
So, the scenario we're going to see in 25 years is Cowboys and Muslims.
Which reminds me: I never understood why Libs in this country, of all places, use "cowboy" as an epithet and insult.
Oh, well. A "cowboy" future is good enough for me.
What a bizarre argument. Unless someone is having kids, there is no market, no government. No public, therefore no "public sphere."
The traditional family worked a farm. Women did the major work of the household, an unending and tireless effort. Men worked in the fields or shops - also doing far more work than most people expect to have to do today. Factories worked long hours. I recall an old hand telling me, when I was starting out, of having come in to work on Easter Sunday. The boss dismissed the crew to celebrate the holiday - but in principle it was a work day.Men don't work nearly as hard as they used to. You can't expect women to work as hard as their grandmothers did, while their husbands relax. That's just not gonna fly, and it doesn't. Women - all of us - take for granted so many things made of plastic or synthetic fibers, so many things made efficiently by machines, so many things that run on electricity and radio communications, or run on gasoline, travel by airliner and enjoy such efficient health care for themselves and their loved ones, that the typical American woman today would blanch at the idea of living like Queen Victoria (1819-1901) did.
Seen from that perspective, we are all rich. Women who have too much work are, often, simply demanding too much of themselves and then complaining about the result. All too often they do it simply by allowing the children to walk all over them. Part of me believes that if they had so many children that they knew they couldn't possibly afford to spoil any of them, they would actually have life easier. As would the children themselves, bottom line. But when you think you can control your parents, you go to a lot of trouble to try to do it.
Liberals have a strange definition of flourishing. Maybe it means stuff that you don't want to do in front of the kids.
Interesting thoughts.
Okay, lemme try typing and barfing at the same time...
Is it just me, or is this woman's comment over-the-top insulting to all moms, particularly those of us who enjoy staying at home? And another thing...I have been a professional (retail management) and I am active politically (Ingham Coutny Executive Committee member, Voter ID Chair). In my 36 years, I have "worn many hats" besides that of being a homemaker to my husband and children. Many of those jobs were fulfilling. None of them was as enriching as my current role of wife and mother.
Pardon my language for a moment, but this lady is in dire need of a good ol' fashioned b!tch slap.
"And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double State much greater, instead of being less than he expected." -- Benjamin Franklin (Reply to a Piece of Advice)
What has your experience been like? If you don't mind me asking.
Nope, it's not just you. She looks down her nose at you. One wonders what she would think about my family with the registered nurse wife working and the husband staying home with the kids. Would she cheer because my wife supposedly gets all the fulfillment and isn't enslaved at home wiping noses, or would she think I'm a wussy boy? Would she look past the American fighting man with no remarkable effeminate tendencies and see an emasculated drone?
Nah...never mind, I forgot the usual press mindset. I'm sure she would just figure I'm a religious fanatic because I don't turn my kids over to the secular system for indoctrination each day and go out and get a full-time job. But on a genetic level she'd only respect me if I was wearing flannel, drinking Bud and carrying a bear carcass. when we met. ;-)
Pardon my language for a moment, but this lady is in dire need of a good ol' fashioned b!tch slap.
More like she needs prayer, but I certainly understand your frustration. Funny how she would call herself a feminist...do you think somebody like Jim Dobson has even a hundredth the derision for career women that this woman has for women who want to run their own lives and do it differently from her? As usual, "diversity" and "choice" mean "You choose to think and act like me or you're an idiot."
Ms. Hirschman is just another of those miserable people who can't understand why other people are happy - and can't stand it that we are. Scrape 'em off our shoes, honey!
Roger that.
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