Ninety years ago, the dominant theme in pop culture was the love between mothers and children. FDR, Churchill, MacArthur among others were shameless mama's boys. It was a point of honor. America prided itself as the first nation where mothers weren't expected to have a job.
Now, face it - the Erica Jongs have won. Even here on FR you'll see people glorifying mothers who leave their infants behind to go off to war!
My favorite thing about Sarah Palin is that she quit her “important” job to be with her family. That is incomprehensible to most Americans today.
There are hopeful signs, particularly the homeschoolers. But here in the 21st Century, we are children of the state.
Since Ms. Jong has made it back-to-the-'70s day, I'd like to add what George Gilder said back then. One of the facts in his book Sexual Suicide was lifted from Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament In Three Primitive Societies: she detailed, and he excerpted, descriptions of three minor tribes where traditional sex roles were either bent or reversed.
Two of them had passive men, with passive women in one and aggresive women (the gender reversal) in another. The third stuck in my mind because there are obvious reasons why the first two tribes would be in trouble. The last was a tribe where the women were aggressive...and the men were more aggressive. Think of it as a grafting of traditional roles onto female aggressiveness. The women were feminist types, but the men countered by becoming hyper-aggressive.
As it turned out, this tribe was in trouble too. Child abuse was rife, as children were treated brusquely. The aggression overdose was leading to it breaking up into hostile factions.