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Feminist Says Child Rearing not Worthy of Time and Talents of Intelligent Humans
LifeSiteNews ^ | 6/20/06 | Hilary White

Posted on 06/20/2006 3:34:11 PM PDT by wagglebee

NEW YORK, June 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Linda Hirshman, a feminist US writer on cultural issues, has told the world why she thinks staying at home with the children is an occupation “not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings.” She complains at length that the feminist movement, while making some gains in public life through legal activism, has largely failed in the one area where it counts most: the family.

She upbraids women who stay at home for failing the feminist agenda, saying, “They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.”

Writing in the November 2005 edition of the American Prospect, Hirshman admitted that the real intention of the feminist movement was not “equality”, but to destroy what she calls “the unreconstructed family” of a husband and wife rearing children. She writes that the goal was to see as many women as possible abandoning family life for high-level professions and politics.

Hirshman a committed radical, was a member in the 1970s of the feminist lobby, the National Organization for Women (NOW), a donor to the pro-abortion political organization, EMILY’s List, and a professor of women’s studies.

But, she complains, the movement has “stalled”; while the “public world has changed…private lives have hardly budged.” Childrearing is still seen by both men and women to be the natural purview of women. She writes of her “shock” to discover that among those professional women whom she called the “logical heirs of feminism”, large numbers were leaving their careers to opt for childrearing.

“Marriage is essentially unchanged,” she laments. “The real glass ceiling is at home…Looking back, it seems obvious that the unreconstructed family was destined to re-emerge after the passage of feminism’s storm of social change.”

She writes, “this represents not a loss of present value but a loss of hope for the future -- a loss of hope that the role of women in society will continue to increase.”

Some of the women she interviewed confirmed her worst fears: they liked being mothers. One declined to be interviewed because she could not leave her activities with her daughters: “We’re all in here making fresh apple pie,” she said.

Another, an “an Ivy Leaguer with a master’s degree” described her at-home activities: “I take my [3-year-old] daughter to all the major museums. We go to little movement classes.”

The article ignited a blaze of online outrage from feminists and traditionalists alike. Bloggers and editorials in print and online editions of a number of magazines have run comments blasting Hirshman.

In an op-ed at the online edition of the political magazine, the Huffington Post, Ann Coulter wrote that Hirshman and those who think like her, are “expressing an intolerant world view that women who don't work are losers.”

“Hirshman isn't just expressing an opinion about what she thinks is best, she is saying that any woman who makes a choice different from what she espouses is unequivocally ‘wrong.’”

Coulter writes that feminism is losing its sway in public because it focuses on “problems that hardly exist…while spending precious little energy on issues that indisputably have a negative impact on women: pornography, sex trafficking.”

“If [feminists] spent a fraction of the time on these issues that they spend trying to get women to get their men to vacuum the living room, the world would be a better place.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: childraising; feminazis; feminism; lindahirshman; moralabsolutes
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To: cripplecreek

"I suspect that they still want babies to be born.....in a predetermined male/female ratio, and then shipped of to the social education and engineering center." Otherwise, referred to as Hillary Clinton's *State Village* in lieu of the cohesive social unit of the human family based on the biological imperative of mother and father.


41 posted on 06/20/2006 3:56:11 PM PDT by purpleland (Elegy 9/11/01 Vigilance and Valor! Socialism is the Opiate of Academia)
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To: wagglebee

A small tidbit MZZZZZZZZZ. Hirshman forgets: I raised 3 conservative kids. How many liberal kids did she abort, I wonder? Thinking themselves wise, they became fools. Without remorse and learning nothing, they prattle on. Hoping to convince the world they are right, while the evidence speaks for itself. I have no pity for them. none.


42 posted on 06/20/2006 3:56:17 PM PDT by small voice in the wilderness (Quick, act casual...if they sense scorn or ridicule, they'll flee)
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To: wagglebee

"Maybe the feminazis will start to encourage celibacy."

With their looks they hardly need to encourage it.. who wants them? That's exactly why they do what they do.. they hate men and homemakers because they can never have a man or a real family.


43 posted on 06/20/2006 3:56:24 PM PDT by Awestruck (All the usual suspects)
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To: wagglebee

Tell any woman who stays at home and raises a family
that she doesn't "work" and prepare to get punched
in the nose.



44 posted on 06/20/2006 3:56:28 PM PDT by Sabatier
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To: wagglebee
"... this represents not a loss of present value but a loss of hope for the future..."

Apparently this woman is too slow-witted to understand what any primitive anywhere understands - there is no future without children!

45 posted on 06/20/2006 3:56:28 PM PDT by thoughtomator (A thread without a comment on immigration is not complete)
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To: RDTF

LOL. True.


46 posted on 06/20/2006 3:56:34 PM PDT by EmilyGeiger
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To: wagglebee

Screwing a feminist is not worth the time of an intelligent male.


47 posted on 06/20/2006 3:58:22 PM PDT by Modok
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To: wagglebee
We can hope wagglebee!

I think if they feel that way, then surely the feminists should feel the same way about teaching. Get out of the public schools too!
48 posted on 06/20/2006 3:58:32 PM PDT by gidget7 (PC is the huge rock, behind which lies hide!)
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To: freedumb2003

"Feminism was dealt a mortal blow when it left Paula, Jennifer and Monica to twist in the wind.

It showed its true colors as a power movement that couldn't care less about the problems of women."

You should hear them talk about the help or the secretaries or every woman not at the University level. Ugly. Butt ugly. The dears are only self-interested to the point of fanatically fascist playground behavior.

Fortunately, I fight really dirty. They leave me alone.



49 posted on 06/20/2006 3:59:30 PM PDT by OpusatFR ( ALEA IACTA EST. We have just crossed the Rubicon.)
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To: wagglebee

She sounds like something right out of Brave New World, but I think she's off her Soma.


50 posted on 06/20/2006 4:02:50 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: Sabatier

My university-employed friend who spends more time going to conferences than being with her 2 year-old daughter tells me she doesn't know how I do it...meaning, staying home with my children. She can't handle it; it's too exhausting!


51 posted on 06/20/2006 4:03:05 PM PDT by jnygrl
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To: Choose Ye This Day

Because she's a writer and people read it.


52 posted on 06/20/2006 4:03:32 PM PDT by visualops (If you build it... www.visualops.com ...they won't come. Build the fence!)
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To: A Troop 1-14 Cav
I wonder what career her mother had?

i wonder if this cu*t even had a mother or father.

53 posted on 06/20/2006 4:04:26 PM PDT by dearolddad
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To: karnage
I wondered what the mothers of these "lovelies" ever did to rate such contempt from their own daughters.

Maybe my wonderful mother is why I'm not a feminazi. I must remember to thank her for this, too.
54 posted on 06/20/2006 4:05:48 PM PDT by bannie (The government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.)
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To: wagglebee

This feminazi is proof 'intelligence' and 'stupidity' are not mutually exclusive.


55 posted on 06/20/2006 4:06:06 PM PDT by PISANO (We will not tire......We will not falter.......We will NOT FAIL!!! .........GW Bush [Oct 2001])
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To: wagglebee
Interesting, in that it seems to contradict the aims of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Miss Margaret Sanger:

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit—that is the chief aim of birth control.":Margaret Sanger. May, 1919.

56 posted on 06/20/2006 4:07:00 PM PDT by zaxxon ("A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes ." -Mark Twain)
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To: wagglebee

There won't be any humans, intelligent or otherwise, if this woman's view becomes widespread...


57 posted on 06/20/2006 4:07:03 PM PDT by Unam Sanctam
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To: wagglebee

world would have been different if women throughout time had felt that way.

Takes more intellect to run a family well than it does to be a college instructor. I know this from first hand experience...


58 posted on 06/20/2006 4:07:07 PM PDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
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To: wagglebee

Obviously neither of her parents felt she was worth the time and effort. She has some real issues. Idiot.


59 posted on 06/20/2006 4:08:20 PM PDT by daybreakcoming (If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. A. Lincoln)
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To: wagglebee
In addition to raising their children, intelligent humans find the time to flip Hirshman the birdy.

Make no mistake, communism is alive and well in the U.S.

The destruction of the family unit is one of their primary goals.
60 posted on 06/20/2006 4:08:45 PM PDT by Nickname
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