Why most women will never be happy again

Cruxnews.com ^ | 18 June 2004 | Dale Vree

[Alfred Hitchcock]

Throughout almost all of human history, women who bore children actually took care of their own children. Imagine that!

[Alfred Hitchcock]

To be honest, I very much like Rosie the Rivetter. Any woman who weighs less than me and can beat me in arm-wrestling, well...

[AMDG&BVMH]

"and by her uneasy knowledge that at-home mothers are giving their children much more time and personal attention than she is giving hers. "

Exactly. Why should I pay a minimum-wage nanny to take care of my child, when I (a professional and educated woman) can give MY OWN child much more?

And why does my husband sometimes give me grief about it? Even tho I work from the home, when he gets angry, he tells me I should go out and get a higher-paying "real" job. . . Bought into the feminist argument; IMO a man should be proud of providing the bulk of the household income, so that the mom can nurture the child.

Rosie the Rivetter served her purpose; made up for the shortage of men to keep the factories running in WW II. There are still other ways for a mother to get muscles . . .

[RobbyS]

Socialism was built on the idea of "economic man." To which feminism adds the idea of economic WO-man.

[narses]

"And why does my husband sometimes give me grief about it?"

The World is calling him. Help your husband resist that call. Increase your family prayer life is my suggestion.

[xzins]

According to free-market laws, the (almost) doubling of the labor supply will reduce wages to (almost) half. And so it was. While hubby’s wages declined and the wife’s wages were even less, the capitalists could have two laborers instead of one at essentially the same price. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

Not surprisingly, the ratio of pay between a CEO and an ordinary worker went from 25 to one in the late 1960s, to 42 to one in 1980, to 419 to one in 2002. As you can see, feminism has been a great boon to the capitalist class, and it’s no wonder that the power elite has promoted feminism assiduously.

This is an excellent article.

[NYer]

No need to excerpt from CruxNews ... Full Text

* * * * *

Throughout almost all of human history, women who bore children actually took care of their own children. Imagine that!

But thanks to feminism — and capitalism — that’s changed. When America went from a manufacturing to a service economy in the 1970s, the idea of a family wage (or a just wage) for the man of the house went out the window. The husband’s (real) wages declined, and the wife was forced to enter the labor market. Fortunately for capitalism, feminism came along at just the right time. Feminists pushed contraception and abortion, and denigrated child-rearing and homemaking, telling homemakers who had no idea they were oppressed that indeed they were oppressed, and that liberation could be found in becoming glamorous wage slaves. The herd instinct kicked in, and soon women went massively into the labor force. Had feminism not coaxed women into the labor force, thereby supplementing their husband’s income, there probably would have been a proletarian revolution.

According to free-market laws, the (almost) doubling of the labor supply will reduce wages to (almost) half. And so it was. While hubby’s wages declined and the wife’s wages were even less, the capitalists could have two laborers instead of one at essentially the same price. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

Not surprisingly, the ratio of pay between a CEO and an ordinary worker went from 25 to one in the late 1960s, to 42 to one in 1980, to 419 to one in 2002. As you can see, feminism has been a great boon to the capitalist class, and it’s no wonder that the power elite has promoted feminism assiduously.

Moreover, feminism has greatly exacerbated the vast discrepancies in income and wealth. To simplify: If a professional-class man makes, say, $100 an hour and a working-class man makes $20 an hour, the professional man is making $80 more per hour. Professional-class men usually marry professional-class women, and working-class men usually marry working-class women. So with women in the work force, if the professional man’s wife is making $90 an hour and the working man’s wife is making $15 an hour, the professional man’s family is now making $155 more per hour. That’s almost double! So the "haves" have even more.

Now, what happens when the professional-class woman has children? According to the dictates of feminism, she cannot interrupt or sacrifice her career. But what to do with the children? Major problem!

As it turns out, serfdom has saved the feminist movement. This is what we learn in The Atlantic (March) from Caitlin Flanagan, a wife and mother and professional writer. She herself is implicated in the mess, but, God bless her, she tells all.

About three decades ago, the solution to "the problem" was to force the husband to share equally the child-rearing, cooking, and housework. Alix Kates Shulman came up with a famous "marriage contract" that was designed to do just that. In actual life, Shulman’s husband (dumbly) signed the contract, and guess what: They eventually divorced. Of course. What self-respecting man wants to be emasculated? Who wants to marry a woman whose love is so niggardly that she only begrudgingly cooks, tends to the children, and feathers the nest? Or as Flanagan says: The marriage contract is "a way to husk the marriage of any pretense to emotional fulfillment and reduce it to a purely labor-sharing arrangement." And as Flanagan also says: "Certainly Shulman has earned herself a spot on almost any short list of very silly people."

So then what? There was, says Flanagan, "the notorious Wages for Housework campaign (‘WE WANT IT IN CASH, RETROACTIVE AND IMMEDIATELY. AND WE WANT ALL OF IT’)," which also "came to naught."

Then there were the communes, "which turned out to be yet another bust." The typical commune recruitment ad went something like this: "Wanted: groovy, well-built chick to share apartment and do the cooking and cleaning."

So what about government-funded universal day care? Not appealing, says Flanagan: "A good mother doesn’t want to admit to having to make ‘deliveries’ and ‘pickups’ of her children, as though they were so many dirty shirts being sent to the laundry." Also: "Get a bunch of professional-class mothers together, and they will freely admit that day care sucks…."

So, what’s left?

Nannies (AKA maids, servants, serfs).

"Like magic," says Flanagan, "global capitalism" came to the rescue "with the arrival of a cheap, easily exploited army of poor and luckless women" from the Third World. Presto, problem solved.

But some saw a pesky fly in the ointment, saw hypocrisy. Says Flanagan: "Many middle-class American women went from not wanting to oppress other women to viewing that oppression as a central part of their own liberation…. Any supposed equivocations about the moral justness of white women employing dark-skinned women to do their s- - - work simply evaporated."

Actually, it didn’t really evaporate, for guilt set in.

And double-guilt. Not only is the feminist exploiting another woman, but she is neglecting and damaging her own children: "The professional-class working mother…is oppressed by guilt about her decision to keep working, by a society that often questions her commitment to and even her love for her children,…and by her uneasy knowledge that at-home mothers are giving their children much more time and personal attention than she is giving hers. She feels more than oppressed…."

And while a child receives much more personal attention from a nanny than he would in an impersonal day care center, this becomes a source of deep anxiety, as the mother sees the nanny as her rival for the love of her child. Says Flanagan: "Small children develop an immediate and consuming passion for the person [the nanny] who feeds and rocks and bathes them every day. It’s in the nature of the way they experience love…. There isn’t a nanny in the world who has not received a measure of love that a child would rather have bestowed on his mother…. When a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will…. That the separation of a woman from her child produces agony for both is one of the most enduring and impressive features of the human experience…."

Mother Nature intended that mothers be mothers. What could be more self-evident than that? It’s really dumb to mess around with Mother Nature. And doesn’t the Good Book say that the love of money is the root of all evil? But then who pays heed to the Good Book anymore?

As long as feminism and global capitalism hold sway — and we see no end in sight — most women will be perpetually unhappy and guilt-ridden. And the fat cats and shrinks will be laughing all the way to the bank.

[dighton]

Welcome to FR.

To be honest, I very much like Rosie the Riveter.

In your shoes, I'd have preferred Kim Novak.

[Notwithstanding]

Great post, Alfred.

[Rodney King]

Even tho I work from the home, when he gets angry, he tells me I should go out and get a higher-paying "real" job. .

I have the opposite problem with my wife, I'm trying to get her to stop working.

[pro Athanasius]

It is sad that men think this way about there wives but they have been brainwashed to think that women should work outside the home and take care of kids after their payed job.

Children are second or third priority for some mothers today. (I am not saying you.) The Church has always taught the man should get a living wage to support his wife and family so that she can stay home to take care of them. Children should be nurtured not carted around to day care centers. For those women who have to work because they have no choice at all- they are the sole income of their family or their families or their husbands make poverty level income- they have my sympathy. The family should do without so that a wife can stay home with her family.

By the way Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto that women should work outside the home and that the state should care for the kids. It seems that communism has hit the U.S. and the entire western world- in the form of dialectic materialism. God help us.

[Alfred Hitchcock]

Kim Novak, well yes. But then there's Grace Kelly...

[Brian Allen]

Why (most) women will never be happy again
Throughout almost all of human history, women who bore children actually took care of their own children. Imagine that!



But thanks to feminism — and capitalism — that’s changed. When America went from a manufacturing to a service economy in the 1970s, the idea of a family wage (or a just wage) for the man of the house went out the window. The husband’s (real) wages declined, and the wife was forced to enter the labor market. Fortunately for capitalism, feminism came along at just the right time. Feminists pushed contraception and abortion, and denigrated child-rearing and homemaking, telling homemakers who had no idea they were oppressed that indeed they were oppressed, and that liberation could be found in becoming glamorous wage slaves. The herd instinct kicked in, and soon women went massively into the labor force. Had feminism not coaxed women into the labor force, thereby supplementing their husband’s income, there probably would have been a proletarian revolution.

According to free-market laws, the (almost) doubling of the labor supply will reduce wages to (almost) half. And so it was. While hubby’s wages declined and the wife’s wages were even less, the capitalists could have two laborers instead of one at essentially the same price. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

Not surprisingly, the ratio of pay between a CEO and an ordinary worker went from 25 to one in the late 1960s, to 42 to one in 1980, to 419 to one in 2002. As you can see, feminism has been a great boon to the capitalist class, and it’s no wonder that the power elite has promoted feminism assiduously.

Moreover, feminism has greatly exacerbated the vast discrepancies in income and wealth. To simplify: If a professional-class man makes, say, $100 an hour and a working-class man makes $20 an hour, the professional man is making $80 more per hour. Professional-class men usually marry professional-class women, and working-class men usually marry working-class women. So with women in the work force, if the professional man’s wife is making $90 an hour and the working man’s wife is making $15 an hour, the professional man’s family is now making $155 more per hour. That’s almost double! So the "haves" have even more.



Now, what happens when the professional-class woman has children? According to the dictates of feminism, she cannot interrupt or sacrifice her career. But what to do with the children? Major problem!

As it turns out, serfdom has saved the feminist movement. This is what we learn in The Atlantic (March) from Caitlin Flanagan, a wife and mother and professional writer. She herself is implicated in the mess, but, God bless her, she tells all.

About three decades ago, the solution to "the problem" was to force the husband to share equally the child-rearing, cooking, and housework. Alix Kates Shulman came up with a famous "marriage contract" that was designed to do just that. In actual life, Shulman’s husband (dumbly) signed the contract, and guess what: They eventually divorced. Of course. What self-respecting man wants to be emasculated? Who wants to marry a woman whose love is so niggardly that she only begrudgingly cooks, tends to the children, and feathers the nest? Or as Flanagan says: The marriage contract is "a way to husk the marriage of any pretense to emotional fulfillment and reduce it to a purely labor-sharing arrangement." And as Flanagan also says: "Certainly Shulman has earned herself a spot on almost any short list of very silly people."

So then what? There was, says Flanagan, "the notorious Wages for Housework campaign (‘WE WANT IT IN CASH, RETROACTIVE AND IMMEDIATELY. AND WE WANT ALL OF IT’)," which also "came to naught."

Then there were the communes, "which turned out to be yet another bust." The typical commune recruitment ad went something like this: "Wanted: groovy, well-built chick to share apartment and do the cooking and cleaning."

So what about government-funded universal day care? Not appealing, says Flanagan: "A good mother doesn’t want to admit to having to make ‘deliveries’ and ‘pickups’ of her children, as though they were so many dirty shirts being sent to the laundry." Also: "Get a bunch of professional-class mothers together, and they will freely admit that day care sucks…."

So, what’s left?

Nannies (AKA maids, servants, serfs).

"Like magic," says Flanagan, "global capitalism" came to the rescue "with the arrival of a cheap, easily exploited army of poor and luckless women" from the Third World. Presto, problem solved.

But some saw a pesky fly in the ointment, saw hypocrisy. Says Flanagan: "Many middle-class American women went from not wanting to oppress other women to viewing that oppression as a central part of their own liberation…. Any supposed equivocations about the moral justness of white women employing dark-skinned women to do their s- - - work simply evaporated."

Actually, it didn’t really evaporate, for guilt set in.

And double-guilt. Not only is the feminist exploiting another woman, but she is neglecting and damaging her own children: "The professional-class working mother…is oppressed by guilt about her decision to keep working, by a society that often questions her commitment to and even her love for her children,…and by her uneasy knowledge that at-home mothers are giving their children much more time and personal attention than she is giving hers. She feels more than oppressed…."

And while a child receives much more personal attention from a nanny than he would in an impersonal day care center, this becomes a source of deep anxiety, as the mother sees the nanny as her rival for the love of her child. Says Flanagan: "Small children develop an immediate and consuming passion for the person [the nanny] who feeds and rocks and bathes them every day. It’s in the nature of the way they experience love…. There isn’t a nanny in the world who has not received a measure of love that a child would rather have bestowed on his mother…. When a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will…. That the separation of a woman from her child produces agony for both is one of the most enduring and impressive features of the human experience…."

Mother Nature intended that mothers be mothers. What could be more self-evident than that? It’s really dumb to mess around with Mother Nature. And doesn’t the Good Book say that the love of money is the root of all evil? But then who pays heed to the Good Book anymore?

As long as feminism and global capitalism hold sway — and we see no end in sight — most women will be perpetually unhappy and guilt-ridden. And the fat cats and shrinks will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Cruxnews.com Note: Each week we will be bringing you a "New Oxford Note" straight from the venerable New Oxford Review. This week's originally appeared in the May 2004 issue.

[Askel5]

Stay true ... you're doing the right thing.

[pro Athanasius]

I got a good laugh out of that one- Aflred Hitchcock and Kim Novak -you're good!

[AMDG&BVMH]

"Increase your family prayer life "

Without a doubt, a very good suggestion.

My innocent, wide-eyed daughter is invaluable in this regard. Whereas he might -- WOULD -- not listen to me, he cannot (for long anyway) resist her pleadings that he go to Church with us, etc., as she fears for his soul . . .

BUT -- where did she learn that? Hmmmmm . . . If I had not taken the time to teach her religion in Kindergarten, and to send her to an absolutely authentically Christian school . . . which I could not have found if I had been wrapped up in an external career, . . . and I have to drive her 20 minutes each way, which means four trips a day for me, which I could not do serving corporate-America . . . etc.

[AMDG&BVMH]

"This is an excellent article."

Quite so. And it did not even point out that totalitarian states were the first to exploit women and herd them into the workforce; which, in addition to the "capitalist" wage advantages which you quoted, also got the kids into state-baby-child care, where they could be indoctrinated to the Communist system. AND to stay in the labor force, of course, the women "needed" abortion -- which the Soviet Union was the first nation to provide, in the 1920s . . .

[AMDG&BVMH]

"I'm trying to get her to stop working."

Yes, it is a type of addiction.

The attraction of the "self-worth" that comes with a paying job, conversing with "adults" during the daytime, etc., can be relatively hard to turn away from . . . for benefits which are not clearly understood by the working woman. . . .

As mentioned, I had an Army career. It is all-consuming, while you are in it. BUT I KNEW that I should be seeking a family, because "it was the right thing to do." I had no DESIRE per se for children; I just KNEW that it was a part of life: contributing to the next generation. If you let personal desire/preference determine your course, you will miss out on some of the very best and most fulfilling things in life -- because you do not know of them in the fulness it would take to appreciate them.

This is the mistake modern women all too often make. At least until the fertility clock starts loudly ticking. When they desparately attempt to conceive a child to fulfill THEIR need; then go back to work in 2 or 6 weeks . . .

An employee of my husband is the father of a new baby. The wife plans to convert to the bottle when she (soon) goes back to work. MISTAKE. When you are working, bottle feeding is MORE work (OF COURSE, she counts on her husband to be able to help with that!!) Breast feeding -- you let the baby nurse at will during the night. You don't have to even stay awake the entire time. I worked til my baby was two, and breast fed by pumping at lunchtime. MUCH easier than bottle-feeding and better for the baby. But how do you convince them?

Babies are like the Army: the first twenty years go a LOT faster than you ever expected! I remember that old Kodak commerical about a little girl: turn around, turn around, turn around and she's a young woman with babes of her own. A real tear-jerker: I think I saw tears in my father's eyes! But we had time: on the tractor, at the feed store, driving to the stock yard and getting a milk shake at the Monroe truck stop on the way back, in the silo, at the bench grinder where he made me a giant ring out of wood, in the garage handing him tools . . .

Those 20 years you have them will FLY by. GRAB every moment you can! My self-esteem is in the sure knowledge that she could not get what I am giving her from a minimum wage "care giver". I read Rudyard Kipling to her as a toddler. She has now a fantastic vocabulary and literary sense. She is twelve now; summer is for her life skills. She is learning about grasses and soils (we live in the suburbs, but she will inherit the tree farm, where I encourage her to just hang-out with Grandpa, who will teach her reams of stuff); she is a phenomenal sewer, but this is her fifth year in sewing, it is really starting to pay dividends, BUT it would not have happened if I had been working outside the home in the summers! She would have been shuffled off to "camps". Etc.

Shouldn't go on like this . . . I would be glad to have a personal-mail conversation with your wife, if she would be so inclined . . . You have to cut the umbilical cord to the job-world, and embrace -- fully -- REAL life in the REAL world.

I have too much business work that I do at home; but I keep struggling to find solutions to off-load, so I can do the REALLY important stuff. Like go to the state fair with her.

May God Bless you all . . .

[AMDG&BVMH]

"the man should get a living wage to support his wife and family so that she can stay home to take care of them. "

How right you are. A few decades ago, we might have preserved the living family wage in this country, if the women had simply NOT joined the workforce in droves. I fear it is too late for that -- corporate America would simply outsource more jobs to Asia and import more immigrants to keep the wage base LOW LOWER LOWEST . . . I guess we will just have to wait until the entire WORLD reaches a just living wage -- and that will be a LOOONG time in coming.

The only alternative is family business. It is a LOT of work, but the family is WORKING together, so they ARE together. I read of one woman who started a bakery business, and her kids are right beside her. Goes along with Chester-Belloc distributism. But we have to do it ourselves, as we can't rely upon government regulations to make it easy; and may not even want government interference. Just level the playing field: eliminate the death tax, which destroys the family business when it goes to the next generation; etc.

[AMDG&BVMH]

"Stay true ... you're doing the right thing."

Thank you. :)