...our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden [of raising children] on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean.
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
-- G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
I was just about to look for that and post it.
G K Chesterton, well said.
“How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
The job is large indeed and vitally important. So why not celebrate and validate its importance? Why the attack on motherhood-as-career/avocation? feminists want to undermine the ‘patriarchy’ and the only way to do that is to dissolve the family. And the center of the traditional family is the dual star of income-creating Dad and child-raising Mom - married of course. Divorce, feminism, economics have eaten away at it, but it is a durable and successful structure. But success has enemies. Never mind that economic conditions and standard of living make it easier not harder to have a 1 income family, its all about status and pride. Such things are more important than the next generation and the family.