You know, women still worked..they just weren't getting paid for it. Raising children, keeping house, and cooking is work, plain and simple. Now women have a choice as to whether that's what they want to do, and that's a good thing. This may come as a shock to you, Rick, but not all women want to give birth and raise kids and flutter about like little domestic butterflies. There's nothing wrong with being a homemaker; I am one,until the youngest begins attending school. Then I'll get a job during the day so I can be home with them at night. But this is MY choice,because I don't trust day cares or babysitters with my kids. If I could get paid to work from home, I would, just because I don't like supervisors breathing down my neck,and I'm not a huge people person. Before the war, women were raised to be housewives, period. The man was "the boss" and women were in submission to their husbands. Women were unable to obtain reliable birth control or legal abortions,so they had a new baby on their hip every year or turned a blind eye while their husbands cheated on them with "loose women" (note the quotes,this is not my opinion of these women) in order to relieve them of the burden of their "wifely duties". Having a lot of children can take a real toll on your health,hence these women had shorter lifespans then they have today. Many died in childbirth.
( In pre-industrial societies without birth control, infanticide was common population control-and I think we can all agree that nobody here is down with that.)
After WWI, the condom came into favor as a means to prevent venereal disease,and since it was also a contraceptive, it lead to more acceptance of contraceptive use and pregnancy prevention. You can see here that women's life expectancy has steadily risen, as have men's.
TABLE 12A: LIFE EXPECTANCY BY AGE GROUP AND SEX, IN YEARS, 1900 TO 1997
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1997 LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH
TOTAL 49.2 51.5 56.4 59.2 63.6 68.1 69.9 70.8 73.9 75.4 76.5
MEN 47.9 49.9 55.5 57.7 61.6 65.5 66.8 67.0 70.1 71.8 73.6
WOMEN 50.7 53.2 57.4 60.9 65.9 71.0 73.2 74.6 77.6 78.8 79.4
Now, this is due to a number of factors, including better medical technology,sanitation,vaccinations-but more relaxed attitudes towards birth control and the "role" of women and men in society also plays a part. As attitudes changed and relaxed,less pressure was placed on the individual to conform to a recognized "standard" of what they were to behave like.This lessened stress quite a bit,and we all know stress can be detrimental to health. Women could work without being expected to marry and raise a family. Men could stay home and do the domestic work around the house without fear of being "emasculated".
As we become more tolerant of different familial configurations,we realize that children can be successfully and lovingly raised by any adult who is nurturing, loving, and supportive. "Family" has different meanings for different people,but one thing holds steady across the board-a loving, nurturing family is the best environment to raise children. And it doesn't matter if mom works and dad stays home.
We need to stop using a person's sex to set expectations. Aside from physical differences between the sexes,there is no difference, we're all human. There is no "right or wrong" way to be a girl or a boy. A woman can want power and a career,and a man can want to stay home and raise the kids-and neither way of thinking is "wrong". Boys can play with dolls.Girls can play with trucks. Doesn't matter. Sex is just a physical thing. Physically,you're either an egg carrier or an egg fertilizer. But that's not the sum total of what you are.
Just because you're a woman,it doesn't mean you have to give birth and be happy with domestic duty. Just because you're a man,it doesn't mean you have to "climb the ladder of success" and be the "breadwinner."
Oh,by the way, Rick....1842 called. They want their ideology back.
Since the late 1960s, feminists have very successfully waged war against the traditional family, in which husbands are the principal breadwinners and wives are primarily homemakers. This war's immediate purpose has been to undermine the homemaker's position within both her family and society in order to drive her into the work force. Its long-term goal is to create a society in which women behave as much like men as possible, devoting as much time and energy to the pursuit of a career as men do, so that women will eventually hold equal political and economic power with men. This book examines feminism's successful onslaught against the traditional family, considers the possible ramifications of that success, and defends a woman's choice to be a homemaker (p. 1).
If there is a book that our culture has been needing for the last thirty years, Domestic Tranquility is it. With library shelves sagging under the weight of tiresome feminist tirades 1 and traditional college courses morphing into Oppression Studies 101, the culture debate has been sorely needing exactly what Carolyn Graglia has given us: A Brief Against Feminism, complete with copious endnotes and a bibliography as delicious as the text itself.
Mrs. Graglia has saved us from the boredom of having to read the tedious tomes and pitiful polemics taught in "women's studies" courses, which ought rightly to be called feminist indoctrination sessions. She has woven these feminist diatribes into a coherent exposition of their ideology, totally demolishing their pretenses in ...
