Motherhood is close to abolition here ? but at least American women ...

By
Kathy Gyngell

PUBLISHED:

03:40 EST, 16 April 2012

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UPDATED:

03:41 EST, 16 April 2012

Hilary Rosen sparked controversy by claiming Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt, has never worked ?a day in her life?

Stay-at-home mums don?t work. Nor are they entitled to an opinion. That?s if you share American Democrat Hilary Rosen?s feminist mindset.

According to her, American Presidential candidate Mitt Romney?s wife Ann has not done a day?s work in her life. Bringing up children (five boys in Mrs Romney?s case) is not a job. It is just another luxury of being rich ? like playing bridge or tennis.

What inspired her to devalue Mrs Romney?s choice so crudely?

Nobody after all has criticised Sam Cam?s decision to give up work and stay at home.

Maybe it is because, despite giving up her job, she has not got round to advocating stay-at-home motherhood as has Mrs Romney. Maybe it is because she is not likely to.

In America the ?mummy wars? have not yet been lost. Here they have. In America the battle between stay-at-home and working mums still rages. Here (with honourable exceptions like the Mothers At Home Matter organization) mothers at home stay silent in face of their annihilation.

In America it?s still an electoral issue. That?s why in the ensuing brouhaha the Obamas launched their patronising damage limitation exercise.

Michelle Obama declared that ?All women deserve respect?. Whether she would have made such a self-evident statement about black people is another matter. I doubt it. But it meant that Rosen had to apologise. Well, token apologise.

The Romney family: Ann Romney takes to the stage with her husband Mitt and five sons (L-R) Matt, Tagg, Craig, Ben and Josh

In fact she took the opportunity to add a second line of attack on Mrs Romney?s right to speak at all. ?You do know that most young American women have to earn a living and raise their kids too??

Mrs Romney had tweeted in self defence on a stay-at-home mother?s website that hers was a conscious choice to be a mother at home.

Can you imagine Sam Cam being allowed to tweet anything so politically incorrect?

We can only hope that Mrs Romney will fight back. For she will be all too aware that many mothers do not have her choice ? such has been the relentless feminist pressure on policy by the Ms Rosens of the world. That does not make the aspiration to be a mother wrong.

More importantly the fact is that this choice, the fact that women want to make it, represents an inconvenient truth for feminist theory.

Feminists do not want to be reminded that most women still put aspirations for motherhood and family first. That is despite 30 years of non-stop indoctrination and social policies to support work and ?equality?.

Catherine Hakim, an LSE sociologist whose research demonstrated this, ended up a persona non grata, ostracized by the academic community. She found from extensive surveying that only a minority of women have aspirations to break the glass ceiling. On becoming mothers, only a small percentage of women remain centered on their careers.

Work for most women is an adjunct to family life. It is to make ends meet, to make holidays possible. They are not heading to be political strategists or prime ministers.

And maybe sense is on their side. After all, we learn now from the memoirs of Michael Spicer, former Tory Minister, of Mrs Thatcher?s confession that she would not have gone into politics if she had her time over again, because of what it had done to her family.

Mrs Thatcher, like Mrs Romney, had the privilege of being able to make a conscious choice, even if she later regretted it.

Stay-at-home mother: Samantha Cameron, pictured with her youngest daughter Florence, remains silent on her choice to raise her children at home

This is what successive politicians in the UK have deprived mothers of. Either they delay motherhood indefinitely or they climb on the treadmill of work and childcare ? a new slavery.

Sadly this is not a problem that exercises feminists. Their obsession remains with positive discrimination and extending ever more workplace rights to ?juggle family and work?.

The orthodoxy is that women must work.

Despite a potential working lifespan of 40 years, none advocate the choice of a career break of, say, 15 years. Anyone who did would be laughed out of court.

They would be treated not as intelligent women making an intelligent choice for themselves and their families, but as mothers who?ve settled for baking cookies in the kitchen; women who?d best leave discussion of the economy, and certainly gender issues, to their career-oriented sisters.

But in America, despite similar economic and social pressure to work, mothers at home are far less apologetic than they were 20 years ago.

In turn, there has been a backlash against what American feminists deride as the modern parenting movement.

They portray babies, not men, as the new masters of women, mothering as the new servitude in place of sexism and patriarchy.

Here, in the UK, from the start feminism relegated mothers at home to a second class status. A narrow feminism has prevailed. This has dominated family policy. Women who chose home over the workplace deserved neither a view nor a voice. Here nothing has changed. By and large mothers at home lie low.

Those who can afford the choice are made to feel guilty.

We have no high profile crusaders for mothers.?

The result is that mothers at home are under threat of annihilation as never before.

Have we lost the ?mummy wars?? Financial incentives aim to coax mothers back to work as soon as possible, but many are unwilling to delegate the task of raising their children

Misleadingly named ?tax? credits? ? in reality welfare incentives for mothers to return to work ? have pushed more mums back to work earlier than ever before. Now single income (dual couple) families already taxed to the hilt are about to be finished off by child benefit cuts.

The costs for children have not been discussed, let alone calculated.

Yet none of this lessens the anguish this causes mothers:

?From the day we brought our son home from hospital? one woman wrote to the feminists? standard bearer newspaper, the Guardian, ?I found myself wrestling with my desire to further my career and provide a good standard of living for our son along with the unexpected, overwhelming urge to be with my son and to raise him the way I wanted to.?

This woman?s natural desire to raise her child herself should not be a luxury. She is, after all, only providing her children with a basic commodity. Why else do mothers pay to delegate this role? So much for raising children not being a job.

A child needs motherly love like he needs food and shelter. Depriving children of this has consequences for us all. These are not arguments feminists or for that matter politicians are prepared to enter into.

But mothers at home are a constant reminder of these fundamental human needs. That is why, like Hilary Rosen, feminists demand conformity and try to silence contrary views.

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I agree that being a genuine stop at home Mum is a very important job which is shamefully undervalued. However I reject the suggestion that every woman who doesn?t work is a Saint. If you?re a stop at home Mum then your job is to care for your family, support your husband in his work, prepare home cooked meals, help with homework, clean the house, teach your children manners etc. Your job isn?t shopping, drinking with your mates, playing bingo, getting a spray tan, having your hair done, lunching and watching TV all day while your kids roam the streets and your husband orders a takeaway to eat in his dirty house. We all know women like this, what makes them better than a working mum? They are the reason that the true stop at home Mums are treated with such little respect.

- Mrs L, Huddersfield, 16/4/2012 12:19

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And well done you for speaking out against this vile propaganda against the holy and virtuous role of motherhood which so many more women would be proud of but are ridiculed by state backed quangos and made to feel otherwise..It?s called intolerance once again by people claiming to be tolerant. Hypocrites the lot of them.

- fleety, wirral,england, 16/4/2012 11:33

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