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**Yeah, parenting is *so* intellectually rotting and boring. What gibberish.**

I never said that; some people enjoy and are good at being with children all the time others may love their children but to be with them all the time is counter productive. I have a friend who is an excellent mother does loads of things with the children at weekends but freely admits she could not be with all day long and is a better mother for working outside the home with adult company and stimulation for part of the day.

***I feel bad for kids when their parents abandon them to chase fame and fortune. Duty is one thing, status and position is quite another***

The Perry children are not abandoned they are part of a secure loving family where they are being taught how to be what you are and not conform to what others expect of you especially if you are a Republican family. This is a modern family where women working outside the home is not only accepted but encouraged and is not seen as a dereliction of family duty.

This is a modern family where women working outside the home is not only accepted but encouraged and is not seen as a dereliction of family duty.

Please. I know more women who feel forced to work and wish they could stay home with their kids. And more often than not, such "modern" marriages where husband and wife both work, end up in divorce. The "modern" family has produced no end of mental and emotional pathologies in its children. The credo of the "modern" family seems to be "It's all about me--my fulfillment, my desires, my occupational goals. The needs of the children are strictly secondary. They're nice to have on stage, though, for photo-ops."

The "modern" marriage is a disaster in progress and society has yet to suffer its full effects. I leave this thread with some quotes from Teddy Roosevelt:

On motherhood as the true source of progress, Teddy Roosevelt said:

"A more supreme instance of unselfishness than is afforded by motherhood cannot be imagined."

Before an audience of liberal Christian theologians in 1911, he said:

"If you do not believe in your own stock enough to see the stock kept up, then you are not good Americans, you are not patriots, and ... I for one shall not mourn your extinction; and in such event I shall welcome the advent of a new race that will take your place, because you wil have shown that you are not fit to cumber the ground."

On the centrality of the child-rich family to the very existence of the American nation:

"It is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests....The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its borders."

On parenthood:

"No other success in life, not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else, comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed."

On out-of-wedlock birth versus practiced sterility:

"After all, such a vice may be compatible with a nation's continuing to live, and while there is life, even a life marred by wrong practices, there is a chance of reform.

In another place, on the same subject:

"...[W]hile there is life, there is hope, whereas nothing can be done with the dead."

On the behavior of 90% of those who practice birth control:

"[It is derived] from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant."

On the "pitiable" child-rearing record of graduates of women's colleges like Vassar and Smith who bore only 0.86 of a child each during their lifetimes:

"Do these colleges teach 'domestic science'?... There is something radically wrong with the home training and school training that produces such results."