Women, what do you think of this article?

Question

"Moms should stay home"
By MICHAEL COREN

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Coren_Michael/2006/02/25/pf-1461517.html

Please, read the article fully. Do not answer based on assumption.

Answer 1

If you choose to be a Mother than damn sure be one. Why would you shuffle your baby off to uncaring strangers at a day care center? Where is the bonding and nurturing and love in that! Blame women's lib for this crap. They degraded Motherhood and made women out to be less than than they were because they did not "work" and stayed home to run the house, and raise their children and actually be a wife to their husband. What a concept? lol. They were told to go "find" themselves. What crap. Being a Mom is plenty of work and has a much better reward than any paycheck.. If you want a career, don't have children. Have the decency to wait to work til the child is at least in school and make sure you are home when they get home. You only have a few short years to bond with, give attention and love to, experience with and teach your child. Why blow this? Ask the kids who Mom's stay home and are there to play with them, hug them, hold them when they fall, have fun with and teach them. Motherhood is the greatest and hardest job on earth. Children are a full time 24/7 commitment. And well worth it. Mom's in the fifties stayed home and the generation was better off by far for it.

Answer 2

Here's what I think:
Mr Coren makes an argument that women should stay home because people's lives have become unstable, and families have become unstable, because women are out working when they should be taking care of their children.

I agree that family stability is important, and that if financially feasible, someone should stay home and care for children until they are off to grade school at least, but where is the suggestion that to increase the stability of the home, a MAN should stay home and take care of children? Why does it have to be the woman?

For instance, if I work at a job with great benefits and great pay, and I love my job, and it will be difficult to get back into my field after leaving for five years or so, but my husband has a job he doesn't like, or that he makes less money at, or that doesn't have benefits, why should I leave my great job and take care of the children? Why shouldn't my husband stay home instead? It amazes me that this battle about women being at home or in the work force rages on, and very few people look at the possibility of stay-at-home dads.

After all, if women and men are equal (and I believe we are), we should all have the same options, and that includes being able to make a decision to stay home and care for children or continue to work. It is a fallacy that men won't be able to care for the children, women and men are equally clueless about raising children, especially for their first kid, and men love their children just as much as women do. There are stay-at-home dads in the US today who are proof that men can do it. I think this is a valid option that should be considered before we go back to the days of all women leaving work when they get married!

Answer 3

I agree.

I consider myself a feminist and yet this is all I want to do. I believe in the core responsibility of family. The mother to stay home look after the home and family while the father takes care of the bills and the house. Granted, this is not always a viable option and becomes less and less so as prices increase while wages do not. But this is what I want.

My fiancee and I have discussed it and we agree on it. It make me feel good being able to take care of my man. Cook for him, clean the house, make sure he has a nice place to come home to after he works his *** off to pay the bills.

But this is not all I do. I too have a full time job while doing all this. I think it's a woman's choice and right. Isn't that the basis of Feminism? The power of choice?

Answer 4

If youre going to be a mother, than BE one. Don't just reproduce and be done with it. Motherhood is not a task on a to-do list. It is a life long commitment.
If the family income allows, then I think women should stay at home with the children they chose to have. Thank Heaven for fathers, who also need to be a real presence in childrens lives, but while guys are supposedly better at maths and sciences (my report cards agreed with this!) women are generally better at multitasking, which is crucial to any well-run home.
When I have children, I want to be there for them, but I also want to stay up to pace with the workforce so I can return to it part time when the kids are in school. And my husband supports me in this.
But I refuse to be a mother who, after giving birth, goes back to the office six hours later. at least use the maternity leave!

Answer 5

I completely agree with this article. For too long the housewife has been regarded as a "parasite."

Children are much better off when at home with Mom than in some daycare, and much better off when Dad is around.

I say that if a woman doesn't have to work outside the home, she shouldn't. Mom, your children NEED you!

I'm a stay-at-home wife and mother.

Answer 6

It depends on the way the parents see it. I think that a women could work too. A man isnt the only person who can work and do things. But if the parents see that a woman should stay at home and take care of the kid then that is the way it should be.

Answer 7

Short and Sweet, it's now a matter of choice, with things being as they are in society,,,,Who's to say what is right for any group of folks

Answer 8

A woman's place is in the house AND THE SENATE!
Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Answer 9

First, I would liike to mention that Cohen's point of view is not a mainstream point of view and the majority of people think that women are perfectly capable to work and be mothers.

Secondly, there are really two issues on the table here. What the president of Harvard said was just plain sexist He said that women score poorly in comparison to men on math and science tests because there is a fundamental difference bewteen men and women, biologically speaking. The other argument is that it is socially advantageous for women to stay at home and raise children.

The first argument: just plain sexism

The thought that women are not capable of acting rationally is an old and stereotyical view of women. As far back as the Greeks, women's intelligence was shrugged off as inferior BY NATURE to that of men. Of course, women were not allowed to be educated, and then they were blamed for being less educated. It is still the same problem, and we still appeal to nature to explain the fact that women are simply raised differently than men are. Stereotypes still exist. If you have a female child, you are going to worry more about her feelings and emotions, but limit her exposure to "hard" science and math problems. If you have a male child, you will stifle his emotional maturity and encurage only intellectual or physical pursuits. To say that women and men score differently on math and science tests is merely to reflect on the fact that women and men are treated differently at home and in the classroom. To say that women are therefore "naturally" inferior than men is sexist.

If you wonder what biological differences actually exist between men and women, there have been plenty of studies reflecting on this. I heard a wonderful review on NPR's Science Friday segment. If you are so encouraged, you can look for a link, but it's at least a few months old now, so I'm not sure how many old shows they keep. In any case, studies so far have shown that, outside of sexually linked traits, the biological differences between men and women are very small. Of those, the ones that Summers was responding to were the fact that men and women deal differently with spatial manipulation of objects. In some studies, men did better, but in some studies, women did better. Spatial manipulation is an early indicator of aptitude for the physical sciences, but it is by no means the only one. To conclude that the fact that men can rotate abstract objects in their heads more effectively than women do therefore means that men are "better" at science than women are, is a sexist conclusion. As I mentioned,, there are some tests that women excel at in comparison to men. Given the lack of data and repeatability of these experiments, it is far safer to conclude that men and women's biology is different.

Even if there existed a significant difference between the abstract thinking of men and women, there is still not enough evidence to suggest that women are worse at science than men are because they have different plumbing. In many cases, social influences are stronger than biological ones. It is likely that education is one of these cases.

The second argument, that women belong at home:
Summers' conclusion that women are inferior at the physical sciences because they cannot rotate objects as effectively in their heads is a sexist argument, but still has no bearing on what Cohen concludes: that women belong at home. Even if it were true that women are unsuited to the physical sciences, there remain a variety of employment opportunities outside of this. I think it is fair to say that the majority of jobs are outside of the academic physical sciences. If women were not suited to the physical sciences, that would not in any way imply that they are not suited for work outside the home in any case. Therefore, I consider the second part of Cohen's argument to be a completely separate issue.

I think it is fairly clear that this is also a sexist argument. The assumption that women belong at home is a recent one anthropologically speaking. It wasn't until the "Enlightened" age that men began to conclude that women "belonged" at home. Even then, it was only the very affluent who could afford to keep 50% of their adult household inert. Most women worked, throughout most of history, with the exception of about a century or so. The success of a nation's economy relies on women working outside the home. To do otherwise would be to immobilize 50% of a nation's work force, something the United States frequently criticizes about predominantly Islamic nations that refuse to allow their women to work. Imagine if you could take all of the US's workforce and cut it in half, and say only half of those people are allowed to participate in the economy. The result would be crippling.

There is a lot to say for the fact that the double burden of women is unfair -- that women must put it 40 hours/week at work and 40 hours/week at home, and still be expected to be sane, rational, and emotionally whole people. Studies show that men may work more at the workplace than women do, but women are almost the only ones that also spend time working at home. I'm sure it's exhausting, and I'm sure there are women out there who would wish they could afford to stay at home and just raise their children (my sister is one of them). Unfortunately, most people can no longer survive on one income -- two are necessary to maintain a good standard of living.

Now, let's consider the idea that women's jobs are to create and raise children. Obviously, women are the only ones that can bear children, so if children are going to be made, women play a necessary part.. But it is simply unfair to men to say that if someone needs to stay at home and riase children, it should be the women to do so. I know many smart, intelligent, successful men that love their children and would also like to give up their jobs to raise them. Yes, as strange as it may sound, men are people too and are also effective at raising children. It is not inconceivable that a woman could go to work and a man could stay at home to raise the children -- here, gender does not matter, as long as children get the care and attention they deserve.

Lastly, I must also note that the world is overpopulated as it is. There is no need for women to be having lots and lots of children. There is also no reason to stop them, if they wanted it, but I would just like to point out that it should be up to women whether or not they pursue a career or stay at home and raise children. A woman can be whole, and possibly happier, without the extra burden.

Answer 10

What a great read...cough....chauvenist.....cough.....