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.”
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Pox - if you want to know what Hitler thought about religion, please read the two links below. Then you'll be well-informed to discuss this topic. Right now you're just repeating some statements you've read, but have no understanding of Hitler's actual philosophy.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/895696/posts
Hitler's Forgotten Library: The Man, His Books, and His Search for God
The Atlantic Monthly ^ | May 2003 | Timothy W. Ryback
http://www.abidingtruth.com/pfrc/books/pinkswastika/html/the_pinkswastika_4th_edition_-_final.htm
The Pink Swastika Online
Really, there's no need to be ill-informed and parrot silly talking points.
Note my comment and links above.
I agree with your post. I would add however that most of the poeple of Jesus time were religious or, at the very least, agnostic.
Yeah, "things for women to study so they don't have to study icky hard boy subjects like math and history."
I can see how raising healthy, well-adjusted children just pales in comparison to an achievement like being a professor of "women's studies."
Ignorant [coarse female-anatomical term, that mostly only feminists use in polite society, deleted].
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Well isn't this a big slap in the face. If this is the thinking of many, I now understand what is wrong with alot of the younger generation. Many of them are learning nothing at home and even less in school.
Ang f'n ugly too. She just resents the fact that the family dog wouldn't even play with her.
That is funny!!!!
Reminds me of my late Stepfather. He used to say stuff like that just to spin up my Mom. It was funny because it worked. EVERY TIME.
She is a fantastically good mom to our kids. When they were preschoolers, she was molding them into decent human beings, all day every day. They are in school now, and during the day she can spend a lot of time at the gym or lunching with her girlfriends, but she's always there to keep an eye on things when the kids get home.
I make enough money that she can have a maid come by weekly, lots of restaurant meals, yard service, dog groomer, etc. Since she's not tied down to a job, and I have lots of vacation, we can do nice trips several times a year.
She leads a very pleasant life, and our kids are growing up better than I could have ever expected. Her female relatives and friends definitely envy her lifestyle. Even some ball-breaking feminist career women we know have confessed that they would do the same if they could. Our whole family is happy and content. We can't imagine living any other way.
What possible attraction could this idiot feminist's Brave New World vision of family life hold for the average woman? Just a wild guess, but I would say nine out of ten women at a minimum would rather have my wife's life than live in the nutty professor's dystopia.
-ccm
Speaks volumes about THEIR mothers.
Women should be blocked from expressing themselves when they are under the influence of PMS.
BTW, I love your tagline and agree with the sentiment.
If I recall correctly, Ms. Hirshman was #77 in Bernard Goldberg's book about 100 people who are screwing up America. Good call, Mr. Goldberg.
I believe it was Swedish progressives who dreamed up this whole travesty, around 1900. Let me see if I can explain the thinking in a brief paragraph or two.
The progressives decided that stay-at-home mothers were a wasted labor resource. They didn't contribute their share to the common pot. That's a bad thing under socialism because everybody gets paid out of the common pot. If those lazy women stay at home with their children and don't work, there's not as much in the pot for others. So women have to be driven out of their homes and into the labor force. The government is to do that with tax policies, laws, abortion, day care for children, and propaganda.
Socialism turns everyone into a busybody! What you produce (earn) is everyone else's business. If you aren't pulling your load, shame on you! Socialism also turns everyone into a slave. Everyone works! The common pot demands it! And finally -- as we see in our own Death Culture movement today -- the logic of socialism is to kill the weaker 50% of the population. They aren't doing their fair share. They may even be completely "useless eaters" consuming resources but putting nothing into the pot. The Death Cult answer is to abort unborn babies and to kill off the weak, the elderly and the disabled as fast as possible; though they fudge the language (reproductive rights, choice, non-voluntary euthanasia, assisted suicide, futile care, and so on).
NONE of this gruesome policy applies to a free society. With free markets, nobody is a slave to the common pot.
a rat is a dog is a pig is a feminist (with profound apologies to rats, dogs and pigs).
Sorry, honey, but raising children is the riskiest thing anyone ever does !
You pour your whole heart and soul into it, at great personal cost to yourself; and you have no idea how it will all turn out.
It's called LOVE; not that you'd know anything about it.
Guess again. My response was to Hirshman, the writer of the article not the poster. The whole big lie of feminism was that supposedly women should have choices. The writer makes it clear that was not the true intent and that the only choice she thinks women should make is to work outside the home. That is her view as stated in her own words, certainly not mine.
Let me ask any guy out there - would you hop into the sack with this broad, even on a bet?
Therein lies the answer to small voice's question...
CA....
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