Posted on 10/06/2016 11:44:08 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Yesterday, Republican nominee for POTUS Donald Trump released a campaign video about his plan for paid maternity leave. In it, his daughter Ivanka, who has become Donald’s stand-in for “women,” explains the plan for him. Unsurprisingly, the very first thing out of her mouth is kind of a problem: “The most important job any woman can have is being a mother.”
Using “any woman” here is just a nicer way of saying “all women.” What that sentence really means is that Ivanka — and by extension, her father, whose platform the video was created to advertise — thinks that all women should have children, because it’s “the most important job for them.” Of course, this line of thinking isn’t exactly reflective of American women’s lived experience: More women today are either putting off having children or choosing to not have them at all. Saying that women’s most important job in life is motherhood suggests that women without children are lacking not just children, but a true calling in life.
By declaring motherhood the most “important” job, we’re also forcing women to organize priceless parts of their lives by value. First Lady Michelle Obama has famously said that raising her daughters is her proudest achievement during her time in the White House, and that makes sense: Creating two people out of thin air isn’t easy, and it’s right to feel extremely proud when you don’t, as she said, “mess up your kids.”
But the reality is that we rarely ask men to rank their jobs in life: Is being a father more important to Keith Richards than being in the Rolling Stones? I have no idea; I didn’t even know he had children until three months ago. The question itself is an impossible test for women who have children: Which do you value more, your kids or your job? The trick is that there’s no right answer, so no matter what your response is you’re wrong.
Of course, being a mother can definitely feel like a job sometimes. It is, in base terms, labor. There is extra laundry and cooking and cleaning up. The hours are longer than anything even my forefathers saw in the mines. But many of the people who tout motherhood as their most important job aren’t single mothers juggling a kid and an actual paying gig: They’re not people who worry about the cost of day care or health insurance. In short, they’re people like Ivanka Trump.
Still, if Ivanka wants to say that motherhood is a job, I’m happy to agree with her. Because if it is, then I assume Trump’s maternity plan comes with the bare minimum of benefits for its workforce: universal pre-K, affordable and high-quality child care, and health insurance. Throw in a salary and a retirement plan and I’ll change my business cards to “Mother” right away.
Hey, Laura, there’s more important things in life than money.
ROFL!!! She(?) could easily switch places with Pajamaboy and nobody would really notice the difference.
Most women say Motherhood has been or is their most important job.
She’s one mean ‘Mother’.
There are lots of things that the Lord will take people to task over, either in the forms of lost reward for saints or what will be learned when the books are opened for the lost, and treating parenthood as something other than a priority will be one of them.
How much money you made in your career or how far you advanced because you worked hard in your younger days won’t win you any awards.
Actually, she’s right. “Wife” is more important.
These people really do think the government is God.
I don’t need anyone but my God-given conscience to tell me what the most important job is.
Others rely on the president How silly
I’m really glad that my mom thought it was important. Working early bus duty this morning & it makes me so furious how many (these are K-3 kids) get off the bus w/ untied shoes, filthy clothes, girls who haven’t had a brush or comb thru their hair. It is shameful to send your child looking like that. And the others get off clean & neat as a pin.
OK, just have them say “my kids comes somewhere after second....”
They preach this song and dance to Caucasian audiences.
If it’s a Hispanic family, the mother figure is revered.
If it’s a Black family, the mother is revered.
This is simply another angle at eugenics.
Sadly, a lot of folks buy into this nonsense.
They’ve done their job well, these academics and their fellow travelers. Whites not side with BLM against themselves, or at least their long term interests.
Beats anything I’ve ever seen.
She’s married to a man and has a daughter named Zelda.
Might still be crazy, however.
Stop Telling Women Motherhood Is the Most Important Job, unless if you mention that Fatherhood is also.
BullS#it.
Raising WBill Jr. is the most important thing that either my lovely wife, or I, will ever do.
This article smacks of jealousy.
“This is from a woman who’s had at least one abortion. “
Bingo!
Ah. Explains a lot. Thanks for the pic.... I think.
“probably ranks right up there at the top”
A lot of the idiot liberals out there are the result of negligent parents.
It goes hand in hand with liberalism.
Your off by 25 years. I remember my mother having a cow when she heard this crap. She would say, “I raised 5 human beings. You pushed a lot of paper. How do you rate your life better than mine?”
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