While browsing recently, I ran across this great blog post. With her permission I am reproducing part of it here.
Stay, Stay at Home and Rest
I am quite the old fashioned spirit stuck in a modern day body. Feminism doesn’t appeal to me one bit. It tried to capture me, and at times it still reaches it’s claws out, but I just lift my eye brow.
Growing up I was indoctrinated into the American feminist ideal that one should “go to school, go to college, get a career, make money”. Having been born in the 1980’s, after the women-go-to-work movement had firmly taken hold, I can honestly say that my generation of women seems to have missed out on the fact that opening career fields in the job market for women was done under the guise of “having a choice”. What choices were there supposed to be? The choice to either stay home OR get a job.
But I tell you, there is absolutely no “choice” left in it in mainstream American culture today. Girls are told from early on that they must go to school…go to college…and get a career. House-keeping, motherhood, and wifery are a “second thought” if anything. Skills needed to run and maintain a well-functioning family home are rarely taught, because most girls (those under 30) nowadays were the latchkey kids of the ’80s and ’90s and come from moms who never practiced it themselves.
If a woman nowadays chooses willfully to “stay home” they are considered lazy, unproductive, boring, abnormal, unintelligent, and moochers. She is no longer considered to be “contributing” to her family, and thus little value is placed on her work. If she is educated she is even told it’s a waste of intellect to “do nothing”. Debt, rising gas / food prices, housing costs, and the increasing consumerism of our society…even the opinions of young husbands who were trained in the socialistic mindset that women now must work…also hinder today’s young woman from being free to make the “choice” to stay at home if she wants to.
Thought provoking to be sure!!
You can find the rest of this piece by Lisa at Little Jack’s Corner.