Cognitive dissonance anyone?

9 May

Working Mom writes book dissing working moms.

It’s hard out there for a working mother. She is her offspring’s designated maid, cook, chauffer, playmate, teacher, nurse, and of course, the source of absolute, unconditional love. Yet nothing she does is ever quite enough — at least not for cultural conservatives, to whom she is the very epitome of female narcissism, a selfish monster eager to sacrifice the happiness of her children to meet her personal needs.

More alarmingly, it’s not just NASCAR rednecks or James Dobson followers who subscribe to this anti-feminist cant. The breadth of its appeal can be measured by the career of someone like Caitlin Flanagan, who has been a staff writer for two of the nation’s most prestigious magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and now the New Yorker. Flanagan’s singular claim to fame: her relentless advocacy of the idea that a “good” woman sets aside her needs to serve those of others, a task best achieved by remaining within the confines of the home.

Flanagan, as it turns out, is no happy housewife quietly tending to husband and child, but a “domestic diva” who delegates the actual housework to the less fortunate, leaving her free to wax eloquent about the virtues of homemaking in lengthy essays that have now been turned into a new book, “To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife.” . . .

Now that’s just annoying. Very annoying. How many families do you know who can really afford to let the wife stay home and care for the kids these days? (In the interests of full disclosure, my fiancée does stay home. I know how lucky we are. But even for us, it can be a struggle sometimes.) Why must we constantly judge one another? Why can’t we just see that this is the way things are, and start working to make the situation better for everyone?

In that vein, I offer this link:
MomsRising.org

This is an activist site that is in direct opposition to the views of the Dobsons and Flanagans of the world. Here you can find a great deal of interesting materials regarding this particular front in the culture wars. The site also offers a book that pretty much goes head to head against the likes of Caitlin Flanagan.

Also, read velvetpage on this same issue here and here. The first of these is what prompted me to go ahead and post this, and where I found out about the disgusting Ms. Flanagan.

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