Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, exemplifying mainstream media’s pervasive bias, unleashed a firestorm recently. Ms. Rosen ridiculed Mitt Romney’s wife regarding the economic literacy of stay-at-home mothers; contemptuously dismissing Ann Romney for “never having worked a day in her life.”
Many mothers managing family finances implicitly understand economics better than political strategists or government bureaucrats. Housewives engage markets constantly. Ludwig von Mises noted of inflation, the “housewife knows much more about price changes as far as they affect her own household than the statistical averages can tell.”
The myriad advantages of full time motherhood extend far beyond finance, but there are substantial economic benefits too. Work costs money, from transportation and wardrobe to the cascading cost of dining out frequently. Unless a second salary far exceeds daycare expenditures, couples may fare better with one breadwinner and frugal budgeting.
Some families have insufficient means for a spouse to stay home but wish they could. Others can afford acceptable care. How parents navigate such crucial decisions remains their choice alone, but that some mothers sacrifice material abundance is apparently threatening to women who perhaps take motherhood less seriously.
Rosen’s condescension reflects a recurring assault on Republican women. Last election, Sarah Palin suffered ferocious abuse, but her self-made success would be lauded by feminists were they honest, or had Palin been a Democrat. The 2004 campaign witnessed Teresa Kerry level similar “has she ever had a real job” invective at Laura Bush.
Women today have plentiful options, but apparently all must pick per feminist mantra. Don’t choose life in Palin’s case or support husbands like Romney and Bush. Defying the politically correct image of knuckle-dragging men waging the Republicans; perceived War on Women; once again feminists smeared homemakers for making what is an individual, personal choice.
The president exacerbates this divide by subtly depicting his presumptive Republican challenger as old-fashioned, replete with a submissive wife, which to Team Obama is demeaning to women. Maybe the Romneys reflect Fifties values, but any notion of that era being inferior because most mothers minded the hearth is ludicrous.
Is there a more life affirming profession than motherhood?
It was middle class women who extracted themselves from harsh Nineteenth Century workplaces to enjoy the timeless ideal of nurturing their young. A century later, led by radicals like Betty Friedan, women plunged back into a by then a much safer, sanitized and more comfortable work setting; trumpeting that women were now un-tethered from traditional norms.
It was not an oppressive culture which consigned motherhood to the fairer sex. No patriarchal tyrant dictated that only women would bear children or breastfeed. We were clearly designed for distinct functions. Denying this to reverse roles found universally through time and space affords women no justice.
How does mimicking men advance women?
Our complementary characteristics coming together as a completed, life giving unit ought to be celebrated. Feminists may consider “gender” as basically interchangeable, that our historical roles resulted from an oppressive division of labor. They can reduce our innate dissimilarities to plumbing while the administration mandates free birth control and abortificients to manipulate the faucets. But confusing impressionable girls only engenders conflict and confusion between sexes.
On everything objectively measurable, from our physical attributes, intellect and hormones, men and women differ. George Gilder observes, “The differences between the sexes are the single most important fact of human society.” Science confirms that we even think differently with male brains “compartmentalized” and females “networked.”
Despite hordes of government programs and research intent to prove otherwise, we thankfully still differ. Feminism’s folly has been betrayed by nature. Yet don’t say so publicly as Larry Summers learned. The former president of Harvard was censured for suggesting, in an obsequious speech catering to feminists, that women’s lower representation in science may involve “intrinsic aptitude.”
Has anything ever been objectively proven for which men and women are identical? Why then presume subjective traits are similar between sexes. This defies both reason and experience. Even as chemists can nearly replicate breast milk, and disposable diapers allow men this thrill, it is preposterous to pretend our unique gifts are inconsequential to child rearing.
Popular culture has debased fatherhood into a second, less skilled mother, sans a maternal instinct. Capitalist bounty makes both parents working outside the home feasible. Many fathers stay home while their wife provides financially. Good for them. But children will thrive best with both parental roles filled.
Rosen’s solutions, per usual liberal answers for any ill, real or imagined, prescribe social engineering under the guise of public services. More federally funded daycare and subsistence for single mothers. The feminists substitute cradle to grave government dependency for the mutual reliance and fulfillment of marriage.
Ms. Rosen may be determined to prove that “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” but why must childless couples or those putting children first subsidize moms who elevate materialism over maternal concerns? Or, who bear children illegitimately?
As tax burdens escalate, it becomes increasingly challenging to cope on one income. Why discourage stay-at-home mothers by raising taxes to finance social engineering? Why dilute the economic benefits from tending the hearth through subsidizing daycare? Government deliberately skews the scale.
Sweden, as relayed by John Lott in Freedomnomics, purposefully expanded both taxes and social services to push mothers into the workforce and children into government care. As former PM Ingvar Carlsson proclaimed, “School is the spearhead of socialism.” Single mothers too provide a reliable voting block of government dependents.
But this beckons cultural suicide. There are irrefutable repercussions from single motherhood. Children reared by single mothers engage in much more promiscuous sex, dabble in drugs, garner poor grades or commit suicide. Children with only one parent present are twenty times more likely to be imprisoned.
Despite a dearth of research, minimal extrapolation suggests that teenagers from two parent homes who do befall these pathologies are disproportionately latchkey kids similarly lacking parental attention; or those abandoned to the care of strangers.
Manifold problems derive from daycare including much higher incidence of disease and aggressive or unruly behavior. Bernard Goldberg deemed it, “The most important story you never saw on TV.” The mainstream media dares not mention this.
There are other cultural tides propelling crime, drugs and illegitimacy, but given external pressures, the benefits of engaged parents are even more pronounced. Unfortunately, these truths are unmentionable to avoid inflicting guilt on working moms. Better it seems if mothers stay deliberately blind to the underlying reasons their children suffer.
Some families simply cannot afford a spouse staying home. Others made poor life choices in the past. But rather than competing politicians carving nooks and crannies throughout the tax code; or redistributing wealth for social schemes, the state should cease socially engineering parenthood.Three cheers for the mothers with the courage and integrity to resist the feminist charlatans.