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.”
Excellent point!
Children are only young for a short period of time. I have the rest of my life to go "back to work" and/or get another degree. I "find myself" on a daily basis when I'm with my boys!
(Here is a little something you must have missed in Rhetoric 101: When saying something deliberately outrageous, it needs to be redeemed by some kernel of truth, some wicked piercing of conventional wisdom, something expecially funny and forbidden...it needs to be redeemed by SOMETHING. The fact that something is obnoxious is not, in itself, a reason to say it.)
Too bad her mother didn't take this advice.
Alouette: proud mother of NINE and grandmother of FIFTEEN!
as opposed to..... who should be having them?
Today's skewed version of the "feminist" would fit that perfectly. However, I consider myself a "true" feminist in that I actively support a woman's right to life, I'm against the sexual degradation of women through pornography, the sexual abuse of women through prostitution and the sexual servitude of women through sexual slavery. I actively encourage women to take joy in the physical, emotional and mental differences we have with men. I don't begrudge men when they are stronger than me because I am confident in who I am as a woman and peaceful in the knowledge of my own strength. I think raising a child is the highest calling in life, for either men or women, but God has blessed women by giving them the greatest role in raising a child.
The usual elitist garbage. Probably would like a setup like in Brave New World where all the children are conceived outside of the womb, born in artificial wombs, and raised in age ranked creches....
Feminist Says Child Rearing not Worthy of Time and Talents of Intelligent Humans
But no doubt it is perfect work for any man.
That is what she really means.
I'll give you odds that she is a lezzie.
Are you sure you're a Jew and not a Catholic?! :-)
Alouette: having the babies other Jews don't want to have, since 1972
Well, if they were boys you sure did keep the Rabbi busy!
Actually she's happily married and the mother of three grown daughters.
Or simply lesbianism.
Hmmm. Well, she chose to get married, have children, and go back to work. My guess is that you think your choices are the right ones and hers are the wrong ones.
LOL!!!
There is one thing no one mentioned. What do the children say. The kids in their 20 and early 30s were the first on a large scale to be raised by parents who both worked and dropped the kids in daycare. I bet the kids didn't like it and have vowed to never do this do their children.
I met one guy at work who didn't have nice things to say about his parents dropping him off at daycare during his youth.
I don't want 'em raising kids anyway!
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