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June 24, 2004

Cathy Young considers another bogus antifeminist trend story.

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|6.24.04 @ 4:09AM|#

My wife and I have been trying to figure out some way for me to stay at home with the kids, and for her to go back to work. Unfortunately, we keep running into one roadblock: she's the one who has to a.) get pregnant, b.) give birth, and c.) recover. If you plan on having 3 or 4 kids over a 10 year period, that's an awful lot of time spent "unfocused" for the chief bread winner.

|6.24.04 @ 4:21AM|#

Didn't Cathy Young issue this column about 3 months ago?

|6.24.04 @ 4:23AM|#

Didn't Cathy Young issue this column about 3 months ago?

|6.24.04 @ 4:37AM|#

"It�s difficult to vindicate stay-at-home motherhood without suggesting that working mothers are neglecting their children, or to vindicate working mothers without making stay-at-home mothers feel that their role is not essential."

It's only difficult, because political activists keep picking at the scab for their own purposes.

Which, frankly, is a rightist thing. I haven't seen a feminist denouce women for choosing to stay home in the past 20 years (I'm open to counterexamples if anyone cares to provide them), whereas the attacks on working women from Ms. Schlafley (ha!) and her ilk are a staple of cultural conservatism. What's more, those activists bend over backwards to distort working women's descriptions of their lives into attacks on traditional mothers and their values (Hillary's cookig baking, for example), in order to maintain the sense of grievance.

|6.24.04 @ 4:42AM|#

Don't forget that moms are the only ones who can:

d) breast feed

|6.24.04 @ 4:46AM|#

"I haven't seen a feminist denouce women for choosing to stay home in the past 20 years (I'm open to counterexamples if anyone cares to provide them)..."

Read the article? It gives you feminists denouncing a writer for even suggesting such a trend exists. I'd say that goes one better.

|6.24.04 @ 5:05AM|#

...which has nothing to do with denouncing women who stay home, Todd. That's pretty sloppy thinking, dude.

|6.24.04 @ 5:14AM|#

Swamp Justice,

Properly juiced with the right hormones, a man could breast feed. Then again, all one has to do is simply draw out a lot of milk in the evening and use it the next day while the mother is at work. Ahhh, yes, the wonderful appliance known as the fridge.

Its slightly interesting that in my household I am the domestic person and my wife is not; of course this might be because I'm an evil bi-sexual. :)

|6.24.04 @ 7:14AM|#

Joe, even you can get the point that there is plenty of feminist bashing going on, and that it's not just the right wing.

|6.24.04 @ 11:15AM|#

Feminists are bashed all the time, Todd. My comment was about feminists doing the bashing, and targetting it towards traditional moms, and I'm just not seeing it. Show me.