Posted on 11/15/2011 7:08:33 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Family life can just as intellectually unrewarding than work.
I periodically write, and regularly broadcast, about male–female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, to get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the Left thinks. For example, one of the biggest left-wing websites (Daily Kos) wrote that “Dennis Prager advocates marital rape.” Why? Because I wrote a column in which I suggested that if a woman loves her husband, and if he is a loving and good man, she might not want to be guided solely by “mood” in deciding whether and when to have sex with him.
And just a few weeks ago, the same website declared me a misogynist for my column on what I believe to have been four negative legacies of feminism for women. I actually wrote the column on behalf of women, yet I was labeled a misogynist. Why? Because I suggested that feminist pressure on women to emphasize career over finding a husband, career over marriage, and career over child rearing has not been good for most women, or for society. That means, according to the Daily Kos writer, that “basically Prager is upset with contemporary women because they seek a life beyond being confined to domestic space and swapping their brains for a mop.”
To suggest that children benefit from having a full-time parent — which will usually be the mother — is, in the eyes of the dominant intellectual culture, equivalent to advocating suppression of women and “swapping their brains for a mop.” The Left views full-time homemakers as individuals who, because of patriarchy and other nefarious forces, have abandoned their minds to the lowest intellectual activity the human being can engage in — homemaking. Being a full-time homemaker, mother, and wife is the Left’s vision of hell.
Why that is so is not my subject here. Rather, I seek to refute the idea that full-time home making is intellectually vapid and a waste of a college education.
Let me first state that I have no argument with those mothers who need or even just wish to work outside the home. My argument is with those who believe that staying at home is necessarily mind-numbing.
Nor do I wish to romanticize child rearing. As a rule, little children don’t contribute much to the intellectual life of a parent (although older children who are intellectually curious can spur a parent to seek answers to challenging questions they may not have considered before). Any intellectually alive woman who is a full-time mother must therefore find intellectual stimulation elsewhere.
The point is that she can find such stimulation without leaving her house. Furthermore, the intellectual input she can find is likely to be greater than most women (or men) find working outside the home. There is a reason that about half the audience of my national radio show is female — they listen to talk radio for hours a day and broaden their knowledge considerably. To the Left, the notion that talk radio enhances intellectual development is akin to fish needing bicycles. But that is because the Left’s greatest achievement is demonizing the Right, and because they never actually listen to the best of us.
I am syndicated by the Salem Radio Network. My colleagues are Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. Two of us attended Harvard, one Yale, and one Columbia; one of us taught at Harvard, another at the City University of New York, and a third teaches constitutional law at a law school. In addition to reviewing the news and discussing our own views, we all routinely interview authors and experts — left and right — in almost every field. The woman who listens to us regularly will know more about economics, politics, current events, world affairs, American history, and religion than the great majority of men and women who work full-time outside of the home.
Lest the latter seem a self-serving suggestion, there are many other opportunities for full-time homemakers to broaden their intellectual horizons: recorded books and a few television networks, for example. And if a woman can get help from grandparents, neighbors, older children, or a baby sitter, there are also myriad opportunities for study outside the house — such as community-college classes, book clubs, etc. — and for volunteer work in intellectually more stimulating areas than most paid work.
Let me give an example of the woman I know best, my wife. She is a non-practicing lawyer with a particular interest in, and knowledge of, taxation and the economy. She decided to stay home to be a full-time mother to her two boys (one of whom is autistic) and her two nieces (who lost their mother, my wife’s sister, to cancer when they were very young). Between talk radio, History Channel documentaries, BookTV on C-SPAN2, recorded lectures from The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, and constant reading, she has led a first class intellectual life while shuttling kids, folding laundry, and making family dinners.
So, it is not only nonsense that full-time home making means swapping the mind for a mop. It is also nonsense that the vast majority of paid work outside the home develops the mind. One may prefer to work outside the home for many reasons: a need or desire for extra income, a need to get out of the house, a need to be admired for work beyond making a home, a need for regular interaction with other adults. But the development of the intellect is not necessarily among them.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist
I enjoy listening to Prager, and find his opinions usually well researched, well reasoned and pretty much based on fact.
What he fails to understand, is that arguing with a Libtard is like arguing with an immature 6th grader. He’s trying to reason with a person incapable of ‘critical thinking’, who has little or no concept of ‘cause and effect’. A libtard’s reasoning is constantly changing and evolving - because of how they are ‘feeling’ at any given moment.
If you try to ‘reason’ and use ‘logic’; why you are just being mean spirited. They know what they want, at that particular moment - and whether that makes any sense, has any wisdom or intelligence behind it, is of no consequence to them.
I was told staying home was a waste of my education - those same people are now shocked at how bright my children are...
My great grandmother was probably the single smartest person I’ve ever known.
Apparently she didn’t know that she was a gender slave.
I enjoy his radio show immensely. He displays calm, reason, and intellect...all absent in the few remaining liberal talk shows.
“I was told staying home was a waste of my education”.
I was told that as well. I was actually told, “I thought you were smarter than that?” Personally, I never had a job or a class that was harder than trying to be a good Mom. That is the hardest (and most rewarding) job that I have ever held or will ever hold. IMHO.
I have observed that being a stay at home wife/mother or working part time not only doesn’t stifle intellectual growth, many women realize their creative and intellectual potential.
Look at the Pioneer Woman blogger, the Fly Lady blogger, the creators of Weight Watchers and TOPS, and the innovators of several health and beauty products.
The small businesses/side businesses I know about are amazing. From urban apiaries, to competition cake decorating, to bags made from recycled material (a little hippy, yes, but still very cool), I see women accomplishing some neat things when they are primarily beholden to their family.
Get together with a group of people and observe, no matter how big the group. Most of the women who are talking, socializing, laughing, telling tales and stories - they are in the middle, at the center of the event. There is smiling, laughing, joy, stories told - it is rapid fire, story after story - and about what? The children!!! Their children - and all the goings on.
Then go outside the center - there are the men - calmly, methodically, fairly emotionless - talking business and work - and a few women may join them. The women who are with them have become like men, talking business. The women are dry, unenthusiastic, dull and —— dead emotionally for the most part. They have been re engineered, chopped down to the size, all emotion, passion, enthusiasm long since extracted in the workplace.
Same with communities and towns where the majority of women work full time and are not involved much with their children's lives - even the communities have a whole spirit of deadness and lifelessness about them.
Women who are moms who are 24/7 into their kids, family - they have the joy and life that makes families and communities all worth the living no matter the circumstances and all those around feed off the joy that the moms have because they love and serve their families full time. Undeniable.
I’ve learned more from being a stay at home, homeschooling mom than I ever have anywhere else.
I had an interesting conversations with some Moms at the pool this Summer. I was the only stay at home Mom. One asked me how I “did it... didn’t I just want to go crazy being at home all the time”. Anyways, I learned a new/hip phrase... “I’m just not that MATERNAL”. All of the women said the same phrase. I then asked where they learned such a “unique phrase” and it was taught to them in college. Essentially, women should remove any sort of true “maternal” feelings/urgings etc... to better their career and they would be better off. When I went to college, the phrase “you can do it all” was taught and talked about. I wonder if it is well known that you can’t “do it all” and you need to remove the idea of being maternal?
Full-Time Homemaker is a key to a strong and happy family.
Now, with the internet, it is possible to be at home AND work at something you love. A lot has changed, so the debate needs to change.
Women have so many more options these days and even men realize that going off to the office to shuffle papers for “the man” is not as rewarding as things he could be doing on his own, with his own time and talents.
This is a more fundemental shift in the way we view ‘work’ Personally, I’d rather own my own business than work for someone else. I’m seeing that increasingly men and women are turning towards self-employment for many different reasons, the economy being a big one.
I see it as a good thing for individuals,families and communities. I also see at as good politically. The more local the focus of your work the more you tend to focus on local politics and work towards more autonomy locally (and less big government intrusion).
Prager is onto something but it’s bigger than what this article implies.
“...“I’m just not that MATERNAL”....”
And the answer phrase is similar, “I’m just not that material” as in “materialistic”.
Feminist insist on “A Woman’s Right To Choose”, yet they sneer at any woman who chooses:
Life over Abortion
Motherhood over Career
Homeschooling over government schools
Self-education over college
Self-Employment over Pink-Collar Corporate Jobs
Femininity over Sexlessness
Love over Narcissism
The epitome of hypocrisy!!!!
Which is exactly how G-d designed it. The basic social 'building block' *is* and is supposed to be, the *family*. All else has sprung from that.
Where did we go wrong? Simple, we decided, as Lucifer before us, that we could order the arrangement better than the original author. We failed, utterly and miserably, of course.
We made the family dysfunctional, and with a corrupted basic building block, all that springs from it is likewise, corrupted, debased, and unable to stand...
the infowarrior
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