Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms [feminist screed - on Father's Day]

The Washington Post ^ | June 18, 2006 | Linda R. Hirshman

[backinthefold]

I wonder if the writer's Mother had a full time nanny and housekeeper.

 

I have known a few feminazis in my life time, and my guess to the answer is no. The writer saw her mom doing the cleaning and the cooking, and she thought to herself, I don't need to do that menial crap, I can have it all!! What the writer fails to realize is I do it, just as her mom most likely did it also, for love of family. I do all the crappy jobs in this house because I love my husband and my children. I will fetch a sandwich or a drink for my hubby when he comes home from work, because I love him, and never ever does it make me mad to do this. He works hard as an over the road truck driver, and I spoil him when he comes home ( his 4 to 8 days a month) My children can do their own laundry, wash dishes and cook, but its my job to do it, and my job to train them to be able to do this when they grow up.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

" Women spend more time cleaning and cooking because they (often) have a lower threshold of "I can't stand the mess""

This is very true. According to an interesting article I read a few years ago, the "fault" lies with women's magazines of the 1950's. Post-war households were getting all the new labour-saving devices, such as laundry machines, etc. In addition, families were smaller than in previous generations, and large numbers had left the farm for the suburbs. The women's magazines took it upon themselves to tell women how to use up their new-found free time by overly meticulous housekeeping, more complex meal preparation, and a multitude of home-decorating craft projects.

While it would be dangerous to let the average single man set the household cleanliness standards; it actually seems that it is also dangerous to over-clean. Household antibiotic soaps might be breeding super-bugs; and an epidemic of asthma and allergies appears to have resulted from weakened immune systems; due, ironically, to overly-clean houses.

[Dan(9698)]

She became a philosopher because she couldn't get a date.

My parents always told me that when something bad happens, I had just as well be philosophical about it. I probably couldn't do anything about it anyway.

When you look at her picture, you understand why she couldn't get a date, and why she became philosophical.

Her parents probably told her the same thing, and it was true.

[operation clinton cleanup]

You are an excellent Mom/Wife with a firm grasp on reality!

My children can do their own laundry, wash dishes and cook, but its my job to do it, and my job to train them to be able to do this when they grow up.

For kids, those are chores, for grownups, it is called life.

[Clock King]

Evil, just evil. How does such a useless, and I mean absolutely useless, waste of human skin get up in the morning?

[operation clinton cleanup]

When you look at her picture, you understand why she couldn't get a date, and why she became philosophical.

I see your point.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Blithering idiot is right. Clueless doesn't even begin to describe it.

I doubt she has any kids of her own. And if she does, I have doubts about whether they will come to visit her in the nursing home.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

This gal reminds me of an old girlfriend who was entrenched with the feminazi movement. She chided me non-stop for putting my life on hold to raise my kids and engineer the household. She finally admitted she was jealous. These are sad people with sad, empty lives.

Interesting.

[backinthefold]

I don't know why some people have to post that they will not read the article.

 

I didn't need to read anything beyond this...

 

I said that the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.

 

According to this writer, in these two sentences alone, she cuts me, as a stay at home mom, to the quick as stupid and uneducated. Now tell me why I would want to read any further? I am more than willing to hear any other point of view in almost any matter, but not when what I chose to do with my life is looked at as insignificant and stupid in the very opening of the discussion.

 

I can tell you, from experience, getting 3 babies, all in diapers to the store for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread is challenging, exciting, risky, scary, frustrating, and above and beyond... funny. Great intellect? The writer should try doing my job some days, I would love to see her try it, but I know she would fail, she is out of her league in my house.

 

And why does everything have to be done to be honored? My children honor me, as does my husband. I do not need the adulation of anyone else but those 4 very special people in my life.

[backinthefold]

You are an excellent Mom/Wife with a firm grasp on reality!

 

I don't get all bent out of shape by much in this world, kids give you that... but I just cant stand having my life belittled by articles like this.

 

I just want to make that writer go out and pick a switch... wait, she has already been beaten with an ugly stick ;)

[Jonah Hex]

But I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives.

I though that was a mother-in-law...

[Politicalmom]

It starts early in some families. My best friend before high school had these pushy, "Boston"-type parents.

I got so sick of her telling me that I had no ambition, because I wanted most of all to have a family, that I dumped her. She never really understood why, even though I tried to explain to her.

She is now a twice-divorced, childless, 40 year old museum curator. I am raising 4 children under the age of ten with my wonderful (and ONLY) husband. I am frustrated and exhausted much of the time and certainly not rich. I will take my life over hers anytime. : )

[NativeNewYorker]

I thought that was a gag photo you posted! OMG! What a shrew!

[Fairview]

You think that being exhausted, overworked, and stressed-out, unable to find enough time to write or engage in other creative pursuits, is commendable? There's nothing inherently virtuous about being overworked, any more than there is anything virtuous in being poor or being rich, being sick or being healthy. There is more to life than work, but those who are working themselves to death don't have time to experience those other things.

[NativeNewYorker]

She's a retired hackademic from a second-tier Boston area school, who's pushing a book. That sums up all the motivations, I think.

[kcvl]

Hirshman is an elitist nutjob loon. She thinks she knows how you should live your life better than you do!


******


Ms. Hirshman is concerned that the number of working mothers has dropped. She is concerned that feminism may be stalling, due in large part to women--especially elite women, specifically those who graduate from hoity-toity colleges--choosing to stay at home to raise their children. She says, "Among the affluent-educated-married population, women are letting their careers slide to tend the home fires."


http://tinyurl.com/qjb9w



Ms. Hirshman believes that the choice to stay home is really not a reasonable choice at all . . . she suggests that, "The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, "A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read."




In her words, "Women who want to have sex and children with men as well as good work in interesting jobs where they may occasionally wield real social power need guidance, and they need it early. Step one is simply to begin talking about flourishing. In so doing, feminism will be returning to its early, judgmental roots. This may anger some, but it should sound the alarm before the next generation winds up in the same situation. Next, feminists will have to start offering young women not choices and not utopian dreams but solutions they can enact on their own. Prying women out of their traditional roles is not going to be easy. It will require rules -- rules like those in the widely derided book The Rules, which was never about dating but about behavior modification."

[kcvl]

Whoaaaa....what a beauty. /sarcasm


ROFLOL!

Well, that explains a lot!

[operation clinton cleanup]

she has already been beaten with an ugly stick ;)

She is no Andrea Dworkin. If she got some new glasses and washed her hair, I'm sure she could find a willing sperm donor.

[kcvl]

08/28/00
By Linda R. Hirshman

From the "wilding" attacks in Central Park to systematic rape as a war crime in the Balkans, women are vulnerable to violence. Even more than reproductive choice, this writer argues, women must demand a safe enough world.

[operation clinton cleanup]

A picture is worth a thousand words... shrew is one of those!