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| If this is liberation, give me bondage! |
| I was just a kid when things started coming undone. I wasn't so much a kid that I didn't know it was a bad idea though. As early as I can remember I was glad to be a girl. I saw my dad go off to work every day and come home exhausted while my mom spent the day with me, doing a bit of ironing, dusting and reading. She kept a spotless house and had dinner on the table at five and from time to time she would hire someone to come in and keep house (and me) while she went to work. She had a choice. She could be a homemaker or she could join the workforce. She exercised that choice at her convenience. |
| Then along comes "women's lib." Virtually my whole generation was brainwashed into believing that any dolt could raise a child and that "real women" needed the fulfillment of a career. I believed it for a while myself. I believed that my children would be better off with other children in daycare than alone with me and I believed that I would be more of a person if I were out in the world interacting with other adults and earning a paycheck. That would be fine if I had been the only one, or one of only a few. Throughout all of history the women who really wanted to have a career had one. They sought education, sometimes fighting hard to overcome the prejudice of their male counterparts. They did it because they wanted to and because they could. They exercised choice. These days women don't have much choice. They have to work. The only other choice is to live on one income which is usually not enough to live comfortably. One of the reasons for this is that we flooded the labor market and jobs that could be paying substantially more go for a pittance because there are so many people availabe to fill the jobs. In the meantime our children are being raised by strangers and by the school system. They have no focal point; no certain port in a storm. To add to the problem we mostly insist that the people who are in charge of our children refrain from teaching them morality, religion or cultural values lest they should teach them something that we ourselves don't believe. We don't have the time to teach them our values and we don't want others to teach them theirs. We do not allow them to discipline our children and we don't back them up when they bring problem behavior to our attention. In other words, we have unleashed a generation of undisciplined, anchorless people on the world. Then we wonder why they take guns to school, vandalize property and join gangs. We need a parent at home at all times. If not a parent, then a grandparent. We need to give our children homes, not just houses that they share with people they run across now and then and leave messages for on answering machines. It can be done. My daughters, to my everlasting pride and astonishment, both chose to stay at home with their children. It means doing without some of the things others of their generation want but they consider it well worth it. Sometimes their husbands are jealous and think that my daughters are sitting around all day doing nothing but all they have to do is spend one day with the children while mom is gone to realize that she also has a full time job -- more than full time. Her work day starts when she gets up and ends when she goes to bed at night. It is a much harder job than going out to sit at a desk all day but it has incalculable rewards. Some of the rewards? Well, good grades in school because mom is there to look over the day's work and make sure homework is done. Good manners -- and compliments from strangers for whom a little boy has courteously opened a door at the store. The ability to take children to a restaurant without drugging them. The ability to go all month without threatening a spanking. From my point of view as a grandma the most wonderful thing is that I can occasionally say "no" without having a fight on my hands. My grandkids mostly say, "Oh, OK." if I say they can't do something. They do what I ask no later than the third time I ask them, and more often the first time I ask. How many grandparents can say that? If I could have my way I would have one member of every family quit his or her job and stay home to keep house and take proper care of the kids. It would immediately make labor worth nearly twice as much and you wouldn't need a college education to shuffle papers. Most important of all, it would give kids a sense of security and stability that can't come from any other arrangement. Our children are our most precious resource and they deserve our guidence and care. If it means not having the latest gadgets then, all the better. There will be fewer things to dust and fewer things to break. |
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