I periodically write, and regularly broadcast, about male–female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, to get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the Left thinks. For example, one of the biggest left-wing websites (Daily Kos) wrote that “Dennis Prager advocates marital rape.” Why? Because I wrote a column in which I suggested that if a woman loves her husband, and if he is a loving and good man, she might not want to be guided solely by “mood” in deciding whether and when to have sex with him.
And just a few weeks ago, the same website declared me a misogynist for my column on what I believe to have been four negative legacies of feminism for women. I actually wrote the column on behalf of women, yet I was labeled a misogynist. Why? Because I suggested that feminist pressure on women to emphasize career over finding a husband, career over marriage, and career over child rearing has not been good for most women, or for society. That means, according to the Daily Kos writer, that “basically Prager is upset with contemporary women because they seek a life beyond being confined to domestic space and swapping their brains for a mop.”
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To suggest that children benefit from having a full-time parent — which will usually be the mother — is, in the eyes of the dominant intellectual culture, equivalent to advocating suppression of women and “swapping their brains for a mop.” The Left views full-time homemakers as individuals who, because of patriarchy and other nefarious forces, have abandoned their minds to the lowest intellectual activity the human being can engage in — homemaking. Being a full-time homemaker, mother, and wife is the Left’s vision of hell.
Why that is so is not my subject here. Rather, I seek to refute the idea that full-time home making is intellectually vapid and a waste of a college education.
Let me first state that I have no argument with those mothers who need or even just wish to work outside the home. My argument is with those who believe that staying at home is necessarily mind-numbing.
Nor do I wish to romanticize child rearing. As a rule, little children don’t contribute much to the intellectual life of a parent (although older children who are intellectually curious can spur a parent to seek answers to challenging questions they may not have considered before). Any intellectually alive woman who is a full-time mother must therefore find intellectual stimulation elsewhere.
The point is that she can find such stimulation without leaving her house. Furthermore, the intellectual input she can find is likely to be greater than most women (or men) find working outside the home. There is a reason that about half the audience ofmy national radio show is female — they listen totalk radio for hours a day and broaden their knowledge considerably. To the Left, the notion that talk radio enhances intellectual development is akin to fish needing bicycles. But that is because the Left’s greatest achievement is demonizing the Right, and because they never actually listento the best of us.
While I'm not a mom, (I am a dad) the first time I got that question about why is the sky blue and the grass green from a little one, I was stumped for a while! So much for no stimulating conversations with small children.
Mr. Prager, I sometimes violently disagree with you, but not this time.
Making a *home*--a refuge from the daily grind, a place of harmony, joy, and quiet warmth, and the setting for many of the most cherished memories of a lifetime--making a *home* is one of the greatest goals for which anyone could strive.
As a homemaker with an Industrial Engineering degree, I agree, for the most part. When I married, I left a top consulting firm to start a family. There are days when I miss the instant gratification of a successful meeting or going to lunch with my colleagues. And, with my youngest still home during the day, finding time to read or even listen to something new can be a challenge. However, I did not trade my mind for a mop when I took this work-at-home job and I am not a slave to my husband for it. The initial feminist movement allowed me to get my degree, and for that, I'm thankful. However, if NOW and their supporters would concede that this smart and empowered woman (still) is making my own choices, their movement would prove moot; something they obviously cannot accept.
The subtitle on this page is not a sentence that makes any sense: "Family life can just as intellectually unrewarding than work." I think it should say "Family life can be just as intellectually rewarding as work." Another example of poor headline writing/editing.
I couldn't agree more, as should be evident by my choice of username : )
I would like to write a long supporting comment about how intellectually stimulating my life has been over nine years of staying at home, as opposed to the lives of my friends, who work all week as property managers and elementary teachers and paralegals and who have little to no interest or time/flexibility to indulge in learning about history, current affairs, theology, law, science, the arts, or language, all subjects that I read/listen about regularly.
But I need to tidy the kitchen from breakfast now that the three eldest and my husband have left for school/work, and my toddler is making noise in his crib so he needs to be fetched, so I will offer but one example: I play stirring marches on the kitchen laptop in the morning to help the kids shake off the sleepies, and we've always been intrigued by a recording that comes on Pandora regularly of the Radetzky March performed by the Vienna Philharmonic. It's very rousing, and the audience claps along enthusiastically, which always strikes me as unusual for a classical(ish) concert. So this morning I looked up that performance; I learned all about the venerable Vienna New Year's Day concert at which they play mainly Strauss pieces and other Viennese music (polkas, marches, waltzes, mazurkas) and since the end of WWII have almost always performed that march and the Blue Danube waltz as encores. I was really interested to read about it, and I'll teach my kids about it later, and I would not have had the time to pick up that little bit of cultural knowledge had I been, say, sitting in a real estate office reading emails about showing a house.
Adding to my knowledge of the world in casual, flexible ways--as well as reading incessantly and learning new skills/challenging myself through volunteer positions--is part of my daily life, and frankly I'm more intellectually curious and well-read than the majority of adults I know, working or not. To conclude, as so many do, that I must never think about anything besides the next diaper change or pot roast is simply intellectually lazy.
When children began to talk, there is no greater stimulation of the intellect. Everything spoken is questioned, and forces you to revisit the roots of all thought and language.
Anyone who has been a parent and raised children knows that there is NO job more important than raising children. It takes not only hard work and perseverance but a brain. You are taking blank slates and writing on them until these children are grown. What greater contribution can any human make than that?
Unfortunately the propaganda machine in this country has worked overtime to destroy the family. It has just about succeeded. And as that family goes so goes this nation. Its relentless attack on women to get them out of the home and to work has worked. We now warehouse our kids to strangers to be raised while rationalizing this infamnia with euphemisms such as 'liberation'. God help us! We will reap what we sow.
Anybody who's had to find creative ways to entertain children (aside from plopping them in front of a video screen), or who's had to help children with homework (aside from hiring a tutor), or lead children in doing chores (instead hiring help while you go play golf), or get children up - out - and motivated for church (instead of sleeping in), or who's planned meals that kids will eat (instead of driving to McD's) -- those folks know EXACTLY what Mr. Prager is saying. It's a challenge and it's immensely rewarding, far more rewarding than working for a company that is happy to can you after 29 years of service, far more rewarding than the ongoing office sturm and drang. The "keeping home is boring" refrain is an excuse for staying selfish - it's that cut and dry.
I often see parents of large families who have a handle on everything - they run a tight ship. Then I observe new parents with 1 kid to whom everything is a struggle. Aside from unusual circumstances you'll often find that that young couple still puts their OWN pleasure ahead of their responsibilities, instead of embracing the challenge. Funny how the same people will often dive right into a work challenge where compensation and personal accolades can be had.
I love what Mr. Prager said about eliciting left-wing reaction. CAN'T WAIT!
"I often see parents of large families who have a handle on everything - they run a tight ship. Then I observe new parents with 1 kid to whom everything is a struggle. Aside from unusual circumstances you'll often find that that young couple still puts their OWN pleasure ahead of their responsibilities, instead of embracing the challenge. Funny how the same people will often dive right into a work challenge where compensation and personal accolades can be had."
I suppose it's too much to ask for professional writers to use the language correctly and without errors. The "poor journalists; they took away their proofreaders" excuse is a sorry one.
