Posted on 01/22/2005 10:04:36 AM PST by Fido969
Janice Shaw Crouse: Younger women are more conservative
BY JANICE SHAW CROUSE
The writer, a senior fellow at Concerned Women for America, wrote this column for Knight Ridder Newpapers.
Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, has said that the next four years under a Bush administration are going to be "tough" for the feminists and they will have to be "tougher."
Well, conservative women, who have been marginalized, stereotyped, put down and humiliated at every turn over the past couple of decades, have gone through tough and tougher. Now that our time is here, we're the toughest gals around.
Women like Beverly LaHaye and Phyllis Schlafly worked tirelessly to halt years of liberal momentum when it seemed there was no end in sight.
Women like Kathleen Sullivan and Leslee Unruh launched an abstinence movement to combat the notion that adolescents inevitably become sexually active because it is "normal" and they are simply "at the mercy of their hormones."
Today's teens are leading the way by responding to the challenge to choose virtue over the fast crowd's acceptance and approval, to value their innocence and purity. These are the messages conservative women are working hard to spread.
After peaking in 1994, unwed teen births are down 24 percent. Teens are the reason the overall out-of-wedlock birthrate has improved; there is no change in the 20-24 age bracket.
It would appear that we are making headway in teaching abstinence at the high school level. But sadly, we are losing our young people at the universities, where the moral relativism of the secular humanists and radical women's studies programs still are having a devastating impact.
Clearly, current trends are passing the feminists by, and they are out of step with the concerns and issues that are important to women.
Mothers don't want federally funded day care but the chance to nurture their children without government interference.
Women don't want abortion on demand but husbands who will cherish them and be committed to their wife and children for a lifetime.
Girls don't want a one-night stand but a great guy to take them out for a nice dinner, pleasing conversation or good entertainment, not a jerk who treats them like a sex object and won't call the next day.
Parents want their daughters to reach their potential, not squander their lives and mess up their emotions. They also want to be informed and involved in their children's lives even during late adolescence, when decisions with lifelong impact are made.
By focusing almost exclusively on abortion (euphemistically called "reproductive health" and "choice"), feminist groups have lost sight of real women's concerns.
While feminists have been marching for abortion, young women have been earning law degrees, becoming doctors and getting their doctorates in record numbers. And they have been entering occupations with better training than many of the men they compete against.
The reality is that millions of young women have been deeply wounded by promiscuous sex and cohabitation. Over the past 10 years, college counselors have seen their caseloads expand dramatically. Depression cases have doubled, suicide attempts have tripled, and sexual assaults have quadrupled.
In becoming a one-issue organization, NOW has made itself irrelevant and unattractive to the next generation, once their hope for the future.
Today's young women have seen friends' ambitions short-circuited by the "sex is no big deal" culture. Abortion rates among young women are declining because many of them are realizing that instead of solving problems, abortion can make them worse.
Young women are growing increasingly knowledgeable about the sexual revolution's disastrous consequences for their mothers and grandmothers. They are a lot wiser and much more conservative.
Having grown up while liberalism reigned, this generation possesses more tough young ladies. I've enjoyed mentoring a number of them. It's going to be fun to see them come of age!
Contact the Omaha World-Herald newsroom
And those two things will never fit together.
glad to be part of the trend: young, female, ambitious, and conservative. I do consider myself a feminist, but I identify that word with the so-called "first wave" of feminism which fought for women's equality, suffarage, and was pro-life. The baby-killing, man-hating, perversion-promoting, second and third wave "feminists" aren't worthy of the label.
Bump for later reading.
This is great news. I hate liberals, but I love younger women!
My wife is the worst kind in the eyes of liberals. She slaps down the stereotypes of conservative women in a lot of ways.
She's young (30), highly educated, career oriented and the primary wage earner in our household and worst of all increasingly conservative.
WELL....SO GLAD to hear more young women are conservative these days. Count me in, young black conservative too ;)
Ditto. :)
My daughter is, and she is younger... 3 years old
Conservative women are Hawt!
Much better than those annoying ditzy liberal chicks.
She wasn't calling me Tater last night when I called her a Fleshy headed mutant.
I think it had already lost its credibility long before then. BUt the behavior of "feminists" during Clinton's escapades surely helped many women see that these ideologues did not represent them or their interests.
Bump
"Younger women are more conservative"
I sure would like to meet some.......
"primary wage earner" Does she have an available sister?:)
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