I found the following tweet by Private Man very interesting:
http://theprivateman.wordpress.com/
I have a feeling he was responding to this article by our favorite screechy wingnut, Amanda Marcotte, but not necessarily:
[Update: This is actually a quote from G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, which ended up in my feed via Private Man – he knows all the best stuff!]
What’s an ambitious woman to do? Obviously, the price tag put on your employment is just another version of the pay gap, and for some reason, the elegant solution of professional women refusing to have children until someone fixes this situation has been taken off the table. It’s a major conundrum. So why not look to men for answers? Men have managed the sticky situation of both having a job and having a home life for decades now. Their solution is possibly even more elegant in its simplicity than the “don’t have children” one: Marry a woman.
Wow! A treifecta of cluelessness, as we have come to expect from dear old Mandy. Let’s unpack this picnic basket, shall we? Who thinks we’re gonna come up a few sandwiches short?
..the elegant solution of professional women refusing to have children until someone fixes this situation has been taken off the table
By whom? Oh, wait! You mean ladies with careers eventually figure out that having children is actually really, really important to them? Why, even lifetime harridans end up chucking all their hard earned bucks at fertility clinics long after their eggs have expired and their ovaries have shrivelled into prunes to match their bitter faces?
http://byrdeye.blogspot.ca/2006/11/aging-radical-feminist-regrets.html
Whodda thunk it? This is the number one reason I think feminism as a political movement needs to die: it outright, unashamedly, remorselessly LIES to women about how they will feel about babies and then tries to make them feel guilty about loving their children more than they could ever love their jobs. The reality is that most women die inside dropping their children off at the day orphanage for some other woman to raise. Most of those women would much rather be at home, especially when their children are very young.
It’s true in most of the modern Western world, and absolutely true in the United States as well. Want to find out HOW true? Offer paid maternity leave. In countries where paid maternity leave is available, the sweeping majority of women TAKE it. Why? Because they WANT to be at home with their children.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/maternity-leave-paid-parental-leave-_n_2617284.html
I don’t actually support maternity leave as an institutional policy because all it really does is fuck with the labor market, and it has no impact on the birth rate. The countries with the most generous maternity leave policies tend to have the lowest birth rates.
So what’s the point of maternity leave? Oh, we’ll get to that.
Just keep in mind that childless Amanda thinks a potential solution is just not have babies. How clever.
So why not look to men for answers? Men have managed the sticky situation of both having a job and having a home life for decades now.
Uhm, no they haven’t. Show me the man with any kind of career, any kind of job, who was there to witness his baby’s first steps (unless PooterPie starting walking at night).
Show me the man who never missed a dance recital. Show me the man who went to every ballgame. Show me the man who never had a late night meeting or a client to deal with after hours or picked up a swing shift to pay for the ballet shoes. Show me the man who was fully and completely involved in his children’s lives AND had a career at the same time. Men have always had to make trade-offs and there has been shockingly little whining and weeping from that group of grown-ups.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/13/opinion/granderson-men-work-balance
Life is about choices.
You have them.
You make them.
You own them.
Why is it that men seem to get this while women gnash their teeth and wail at the unfairness of it all? Could it be that women are tormented by separation from their small infants in a way that men are not? Oh no! Evolutionary psychology again! And let’s be clear: I am in no way saying that men do not feel every bit as emotionally attached to their infants as women do. Nonsense. Men are just as invested and care just as deeply about their children as women do, but they express that very differently.
By providing. They work longer hours at more difficult jobs for higher pay, and that ain’t for shits and giggles, folks. Those men are working for their families. The pay gap has more to do with men’s deep instincts to provide for their families than anything else. Men WANT to work. Women don’t.
Well, not outside the home anyways. Not when they have small children.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/video/mike-buchanan-owns-two-feminists-on-glass-ceiling/
The whole idea that men have it all and women don’t is just straight up bullshit. Here’s where Amanda’s article gets interesting: her deep love and respect for both men and women just shines right through.
Their [men’s] solution is possibly even more elegant in its simplicity than the “don’t have children” one: Marry a woman.
So when men marry women who stay at home and take care of the house and the children, they are exploiting them and enslaving them, and the solution is for women is to enslave other women?
Nice.
Not far off the truth though, is it? Who picks up all the slack work when women are out working (in jobs that barely differ from the work they would be doing at home)? Oh yeah. That would be other women.
Obviously, Amanda is writing this piece as satire, but as far as biting commentary goes, it falls a little short. What it does reveal is the second big lie feminism tells both young men and women: that being dependent on a man for even a short period of time is the most frightening, terrifying thing a woman could ever do.
Why?
Well because men are evil, obviously. They might abandon you and the children to starve in the streets! Their own children! Starving like dogs in the barrio! They’ll probably abuse you and you’ll be helpless to stop them! They will trade you in for a younger wife! A man’s life is just one giant effort to make the woman he loves and the children they have together as miserable and terrible and awful as possible.
Look at the divorce rate! Oh wait. Most of those are initiated by women for spurious reasons like “I don’t feel connected anymore”.
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8111_leave.html
Okay, well think about all those deadbeat dads who don’t pay child support. Oh, oops. That’s a crock of shit, too. It’s actually women who are less likely to pay the child support they owe.
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/2012/0…d-support/
Census Bureau: Moms Less Likely Than Dads to Pay Child Support.
March 7th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data shows that non-custodial mothers are far less likely to pay the support they owe than are non-custodial fathers. So fathers pay 61.7% of what they owe while mothers pay only 54.6%. Forty-two percent of fathers pay everything they owe but only 34.1% of mothers do. But more interesting than that is the fact that so few non-custodial mothers are ordered to pay support. Some 54.9% of non-custodial fathers are the subjects of child support orders while only 30.4% of mothers are. In other words, fathers are about twice as likely as mothers to be ordered to pay support.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/fathers/black-mans-burden-myth-of-the-deadbeat/
It’s no wonder young women are so confused and unhappy and guilt-ridden about very normal, natural, instinctual desires for children and a meaningful relationship with a man.
The two big lies of feminism are in direct conflict with what nature and biology has intended them for:
- You won’t care about your babies or want to be with them
- Depending on a man is a colossal mistake
That’s really what maternity leave policies are designed to address: the enshrined belief that the worst thing a woman could ever do is depend upon a man. Paid maternity leaves allows women to be with their children without having to depend on that child’s father for financial support, and the most direct impact of those policies can be felt in the institution of marriage itself.
Marriage has turned into a means for WOMEN to have their personal, mostly irrational desires fulfilled. Her husband plays the role of the groom on the Big Princess Day, and then he exists to flatter her vanity and ego and romantic illusions, and the moment he stops doing that, out the door he goes, to be replaced by the next sucker who stands as a mirror to reflect only the reality she perceives. She has been told from birth that she is special and unique and utterly deserving of having her every whim indulged, and that she is better than any man and she must never, ever count on a man, except for all those times when she should.
Ask me out
Pay for dinner
Buy me flowers
Propose to me
By me a giant ring
Come to my rescue
But don’t expect anything in return for that.
These are all, obviously, the desires of young, immature women who have yet to face the reality of their lives. Eventually, young women grow up and then they find out what they really want:
Marriage
Family
Children
Some women don’t grow up until it’s far too late, but you know what? Boo fucking hoo. You buy the lie, you pay the price.
Everything in life comes with a price. That doesn’t mean the price isn’t worth paying. My new iPhone5 is worth every penny (my husband spent). So is my dishwasher. And my new Lululemon yoga pants. Price is a reflection of value, so what is the value of being able to raise your own children?
Incalculable.
What is the price? You depend on a man, for the short time that you are at home, and if you are smart, you make sure he knows YOUR value by showing gratitude and appreciation and by actually doing the work being at home entails – cooking, organizing, cleaning, budgeting and lots of sex won’t hurt either.
Working in the labor market for cash (generally doing some sort of housewifely job) for some other man isn’t freedom. Being chained to a cubicle while your children are cared for by other people while your heart bleeds isn’t independence. Having a client dictate how you spend your hours isn’t autonomy.
That’s enslavement.
Working for your man, your husband, taking care of your family on the schedule you decide and you control – that’s freedom.
But it’s not free. And until women understand that marriage is about two people pooling their resources for an entire lifetime, and using those resources to raise the children they have together, they will continue to yearn for a wife of their own. Know why?
Bollywood said it best: because there’s no life, without wife.
JB
judgybitch 
The tweet at the top sounds a bit like Simone de Beauvoir in “The Second Sex”.
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Men and women both used to work for their families, not some outside “man”, and some tribal/village cultures still do.
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Reminds me of some children, who are determined to get their homework in on time and be rewarded with gold stars, but refuse to lay the table for dinner. There seems to be a myth in society in general that working as a family unit is somehow degrading, even when the rewards are far greater. Maybe it’s because, just as the mother will usually still fed her lazy child, so will a husband usually stick around, even if his wife is being an independence-obsessed fool. There’s not as much incentive to be decent to family, ’cause if they love you they usually put up with it. If my children refuse to lay the table, they won’t be getting any dinner.
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I hear ya, Clover.
Refuse to lay the table? My kids wouldn’t even think “refusing”. They don’t live in a world where they have the remotest possibility of refusing.
Then again, I don’t care if my kids think I’m cool or if we’re friends. I’m not my children’s friend. I’m their mother.
“Because I said so” gets said a lot around here.
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Mm, I tutor (still a little too young for kids, my man is still in uni), and some of the families I see are truly shocking. I’m glad I’ve seen it though, it’s really helped inform my ideas on how to rear children. I agree, it’s not about friendship, it’s about doing what’s best for them.
The sad thing is, those same brats who won’t do chores (yet still demand pocket money and sleepovers and lots of cake), are one day going to be adults, trying to navigate relationships. It’s going to be a disaster. And in the end, they’ll end up fat, miserable, and un-loved. It seems to be getting wose with the generations, but hopefully one day we’ll hit rock bottom, and from then on things will improve…right? >.<
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I’ve seen kids say, “if you give me 5 dollars” when asked to lay the table.
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“Men have managed the sticky situation of both having a job and having a home life for decades now. Their solution is possibly even more elegant in its simplicity than the “don’t have children” one: Marry a woman.”
How about marry a man who wants to be a stay at home dad? Or a man who wants to work only part time outside the home so he can be in the home most of the time? Or a man who runs his own business from home enabling him to be at home? There are so many options and more and more men are regurgitating the Kool Aid they’ve been fed by Capitalism as well. No longer do most men, at least in American society, see “work” as something that “defines me”. No longer do most American men find ingratiating themselves to their “superiors” invigorating. No longer does being an office drone appeal to the masculine sensibilities of men, nor does climbing some corporate ladder.
There a plenty of out here who would LOVE IT if their wife did all of that and they could stay home with their kids.
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Feminists are perfectly happy to rely on The Man (government) for support, but can’t stomach the idea of the more personal relationship between a husband and wife that requires more of them in terms of give-and-take and *trust.* And I don’t think it’s because they don’t trust men to be reliable (not really). I think they’re more insecure in their own ability to get a man and keep him. Feminism has sour grapes written all over it…
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If I were a parent, i;d give them the five dollars then say, “alright, now I need $700 for this month’s rent; and that’s not including utilities and food; we’ll start by taking back that $5 and we’ll see how soon you come up with the rest.”
Btw, what’s with ‘laying’ the table? In my family we ‘set’ the table. Is ‘laying’ the table a Canadianism or something, or is my family’s vernacular just unusual.
I agree though about parents trying to be their kids’ friends, trying to be cool. My parents were never cool, never gave a damn (especially my father). Ironically, now that I’m an (barely) an adult (and on the cusp of financial independence), I find that I get along better with people my parents’ age than people my own age. Damned kids these days.
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When I lived in Canada, we set the table
When I lived in the UK, we laid the table
When I lived in China, we were back to setting the table
When I lived in Australia, we laid the table again.
I’ve been around
😉
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Well, in Germany, Ich steckte den Tisch… and that’s as far around as I’ve been.
I apologize ahead of time for the worst joke of the day: aren’t those British and Australian tables lucky, getting laid every night?
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Been around as in “set” or been around as in “laid”?
(We were always a set the table family. And, yes, there was no “refuse” option….)
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Indeed. Mandy mocks the very idea of being a homemaker. Feminism is all about women’s having choice. As long as you choose the “right” choice. Woe be to you if you choose the wrong choice. Mandy links to a quote–twice!–though not the article, of someone who identifies as a feminist, but has made the unfortunate choice of staying home with the kids and making a home for her family, which includes appreciating and honoring her husband and his hard work. Mandy’s quote, which she uses with scorn:
Obviously can’t be a feminist; she loves her husband. Actually, she sounds like my kind of feminist.
Here’s the article: http://nymag.com/news/features/retro-wife-2013-3/#pq=4NANsm
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Ha ha!
Set, actually.
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The things my husband has in common with a table:
Sturdy
Very useful
Collects a lot of crap over the course of the day (he’s such a pack rat!)
Gets laid every day
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This article is awesomeness, just like the previous articles.
This blogg easily gets to the top of my favorite female-written bloggs.
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I guess I never would see the point in not setting the table. I mean, I generally wanted to eat. No sense in delaying that.
But then again my brother and I were phenomenally well-behaved children, if I do say so myself.
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“Laid a table?” Damn that Adria, now I’m taking everything as a sexual metaphor!
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Judgy Bitch, I’d love to see what you have to say about this piece of work;
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/03/eye-candy-sugar-daddies-cougars-oh-my-nsfw-alyssa-royse/
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What happens if somebody lays a dongle on the table? Surely the universe implodes and somebody gets fired.
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If you want a career AND a family, you need to find a partner who will do the lion’s share of caring for your kids – preferably – but not necessarily – including the biological parts (pregnancy and breastfeeding), and accept that you don’t get to spend as much time with the kids as you’d like to.
If you can’t find that, you have to choose between career and kids. This is true no matter your gender – that’s equality for you!
Apparently this is an unfair choice, because biology dicates that women physically have children. I actually agree that biology makes it unfair – the MEN don’t actually get as wide as choice as women. We haven’t made the technological advances that allow men to bear children, while women *can* have a surrogate bear their children.
And that’s without touching on the degree of social stigma for making any of these choices as a man: wimp/pervert if you’re a SAHD, oppressive control freak if you provide for a SAHM, and loser/selfish if you choose not to/fail to have kids!
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Oh this is a gold mine!
Thank you!!!!
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You basicly just needed the title.
Funny how most peoples rationilzation works.
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Non-custodial women sometimes GET child support. I have my 7 year old son during the week. She has him on weekends. I pay for his medical insurance. I pay nearly all of his school costs.
And I PAY $250 a month, because she has no job, her husband (the guy she cheated on me with and then left me for) doesn’t make much, and the boy needs to eat on weekends.
And with this cushy support deal, she actually had the gall to call me a deadbeat and threaten to take me back to court because I refused to double that amount voluntarily.
She moved 3 hours away, has to drive all of that each way one day a week and all but an hour of it the other day (because she was “tired of doing everything for everyone else” and now she was “going to do something for me now” and that something was moving three hours away).
So, 10 hours in a car every weekend (and forcing my son to spend 12 hours there), and her claim was that the $250 wasn’t even covering the gas… Even though the gas is not supposed to be a part of the child support.
Honestly, how does this happen, I do most of the work, pay most of the bills, but SHE gets the support check.
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