Are Stay at Home Moms "Letting Down the Team?"

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well, as cruel as this is, people like her will breed themselves out of existence after a while won’t they? Eventually there will only be mormons, muslims and catholics populating the globe and running the governments. Patience is a virtue 😉
 
While this feminist’s views are clearly on the fringe I would caution people against being too judgmental against families where both parents are working. Not everyone has the luxury of having one parent at home. It is also not the cultural norm for all Americans. Black women have almost always worked while raising children starting with the forced labor prior to the Civil War. Both of my grandmothers had to work to help make ends meet during the Jim Crow era (right into the early 1970’s) because it was extremely hard for black men to get hired even in blue collar jobs/civil service jobs. My mother returned to working during our school hours when my youngest sister started all-day school to supplement my father’s ridiculously low military pay in the 1970’s.

Most of the women of my grandmother’s generation and before had to work in some type of domestic job working for white families (whose women did not have to work) and then go home and take care of their own families. The entire black community helped each other to raise their children back then because we had to do it to survive. Extended families help to care for children including live-in grandparents and great-grandparents. My great-grandmother was my early “childcare” while my mother finished junior college and worked while my father was overseas after they first married. In the black community it is far less acceptable than in mainstream American society to put elderly parents or relatives into nursing homes instead of having them with relatives, so the nuclear family is not our only model. Occasionally, a child or two might have an extended stay with other relatives to help parents. A friend of mine lived with her aunt and uncle for a whole year so that her father could finish medical school and her mother could care for a sickly infant. She wasn’t scarred for life and she is now a successful physician also. This is the model of “it takes a village to raise a child” that some people now make fun of because Hillary Clinton used it once in a speech.

I don’t think there is only one correct way to have a good family and we should be careful not to go overboard the opposite way in reaction to the feminist model.
 
I’m delighted at this news. One thing though I wonder about, comes from the fact that research done by someone with a strong agenda might be unreliable, so stay-at-home mothers may not be as widespread as I hope.
 
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jc-servant:
While this feminist’s views are clearly on the fringe I would caution people against being too judgmental against families where both parents are working. Not everyone has the luxury of having one parent at home… .
I don’t think there is only one correct way to have a good family and we should be careful not to go overboard the opposite way in reaction to the feminist model.
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Absolutely true. I have to work, though I’d much prefer to stay home as I’m sure some of the black mothers jc=servant mentions would have.
It’s not likely that we’ll go overboard. The elitist/feminist tradition is well entrenched, and not likely to go away overnight. Unless they underbreed themselves out of existence.
 
Working mothers called by God to do just that are wonderful, it is the working mothers called by society and greed that are the issue. God may ask a lot of a woman by asking her to work as a doctor while having 7 kids. Perhaps it is an oppertunity for grace.
 
Does anyone ever read www.dooce.com ? She posted on a woman who sold this brand of Feminism the other day. She is not religious, really kind of anti-religion, but I felt she made some good points about why she chose to be a SAHM and why it was the best choice. I like to read views from all types of people whether they agree with me or not, and I continually see that God gives us enough grace to see his truth and act upon it if we choose to.
 
I don’t think the issue is women who work - it’s the fact that if a woman does not work outside the home, she is branded by extreme feminism as someone who isn’t using her brain. I’ve done it both ways. When my children were in grade school through high school, I was home with them. We gave up plenty of material things and a nicer home in order to do that, but it was a decision based on what we believed to be important. Now all 3 of my children are in college, and I am working in order to help pay tuition bills. If I could do it over again, I would make exactly the same decision. There is no job in the world more rewarding or difficult than raising children. I actually feel sorry for some of the women who have the attitude that raising children is somehow being a traitor to women. They don’t believe that women should have choices based on what is best for their families - if it doesn’t fit the extreme agenda, it isn’t valid in their eyes. They will never know what they are missing.
 
It should be remembered that the Gay rights groups are large supporters of womans feminists attitudes like this. They have their agenda to make the view that loving stay home moms are not needed (or raising children can be done by anyone) and to supress the idea that having babies is a womans only thing.
 
It has Marxist origins. In his 1884 book, The Origin of the Family, Engels elaborated on the theme of patriarchal oppression:

*“The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.” *

That’s bad enough, but look at this. . .

Feminist-socialist Simone de Beauvoir, said in her famous 1974 interview in The Saturday Review:

*“No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” *

From: life.org.nz/abortionkeyissuesfeministagenda.htm

I had the choice. . . and chose to stay home and raise my own children. The skills I learned through being a SAHM are equal to middle-management, and have greatly benefited me now I am in the workplace once more.
 
Anyone ever read the work of Jennifer Roback Morse? Anyway, she left the Church, got a Ph.D in economics and lived a quite secular life. However, her infertility drove her to her knees and back to the Church. She has written a book called Love and Economics and for the most part is a stay at home mom, although she also writes some interesting articles.
 
No, of course not, stay-at-home mom’s aren’t letting down the team.

They’re playing for the OTHER team!

Thanks gals! You’re on our side.

Signed,

“the guys”
 
“Choice feminism.” :rolleyes:

We call certain feminists “pro-abort” and they keep calling themselves “pro-choice.” They claim it’s all about freedom from oppression. They are clearly and vociferously against choice when is comes to staying at home – making a woman who chooses in this manner very oppressed. :mad:

Seems like “pro-choice” is not the right label for them to wear after all. :nope:

For that matter, I think women who don’t have abortions let the team down as well. :yup:

Alan
 
Let me just say this: I am a feminist and I plan on staying home with my children when I have them. I have a career and an advanced degree. But it doesn’t mean that my family life isn’t just as important.

Just because feminists believe that the “domestic arts” aren’t valuable doesn’t mean that I, as a feminist myself, can’t celebrate my home. I love being home–I love cleaning my house, making dinner, baking and I look forward to caring for my children. I also love my career, but I know how to balance my love for both. It’s time for women like me to stand up and tell the feminists to get off their high horses and embrace their feminity and for the non-career women with kids to likewise embrace their ability to be their own women. When will we find a balance? Feminist stay-at-homers unite!
 
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virgo:
Let me just say this: I am a feminist and I plan on staying home with my children when I have them. I have a career and an advanced degree. But it doesn’t mean that my family life isn’t just as important.

Just because feminists believe that the “domestic arts” aren’t valuable doesn’t mean that I, as a feminist myself, can’t celebrate my home. I love being home–I love cleaning my house, making dinner, baking and I look forward to caring for my children. I also love my career, but I know how to balance my love for both. It’s time for women like me to stand up and tell the feminists to get off their high horses and embrace their feminity and for the non-career women with kids to likewise embrace their ability to be their own women. When will we find a balance? Feminist stay-at-homers unite!
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Amen!
 
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virgo:
Let me just say this: I am a feminist and I plan on staying home with my children when I have them. I have a career and an advanced degree. But it doesn’t mean that my family life isn’t just as important.

Just because feminists believe that the “domestic arts” aren’t valuable doesn’t mean that I, as a feminist myself, can’t celebrate my home. I love being home–I love cleaning my house, making dinner, baking and I look forward to caring for my children. I also love my career, but I know how to balance my love for both. It’s time for women like me to stand up and tell the feminists to get off their high horses and embrace their feminity and for the non-career women with kids to likewise embrace their ability to be their own women. When will we find a balance? Feminist stay-at-homers unite!
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When it comes to raising children perhaps balance is not the goal.
 
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buffalo:
When it comes to raising children perhaps balance is not the goal.
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My mom worked but we always knew we were number 1. Seeing how she balanced everything was inspiring and essential. If you start down talking how other people raise their beautiful children to the best of their abilities, then you are no better than the author of the original article. The goal is great kids. If that is achieved through balance, then so it is.
 
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beckyann2597:
My mom worked but we always knew we were number 1. Seeing how she balanced everything was inspiring and essential. If you start down talking how other people raise their beautiful children to the best of their abilities, then you are no better than the author of the original article. The goal is great kids. If that is achieved through balance, then so it is.
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The question is - is raising kids the goal or is balance the goal?
 
Study: Wives Happiest With Breadwinner Husbands

A study of 5,000 couples found that a bread-winning husband, a stay-at-home wife and commitment to a lifelong union make for the happiest wives.

Add a sensitive man and you have marital bliss, the researchers found.

“Women seem to be looking for elements of the new and the old in their marriages,” researcher W. Bradford Wilcox said. “On the one hand, they want a husband who is emotionally engaged, but they also want a husband who is a good provider.”

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project, said the study is important because it answers the question, “What do women really want?” She views its findings as more post-Betty Friedan, the late feminist pioneer, rather than Phyllis Schlafly, the pro-family activist.

“What I see is not a return to old gender roles,” Whitehead said in an interview Friday. “This is consistent with the way marriage is changing to reflect contemporary circumstances.”

more…
 
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buffalo:
The question is - is raising kids the goal or is balance the goal?
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Nowhere in the post does Virgo say that balance is the goal at the expense of her children. Read her post again. She is saying that she is a stay at home mom with many passions. It is good for our children to see that you can have passion for things. Do you think that I should not foster my children’s love of gymnastics because that means she isn’t spending all day reading. No, I teach my children that you can have a passion for many things–music, reading, sports-- but nothing should take up all their time. Its called balance. It a good and healthy thing to learn.
 
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