Boiling Point

Last week I was watching The Colbert Report and saw something that, honestly, just made my blood boil. Colbert interviewed Linda Hirshman, an author of Get to Work, a book whose purpose is to tell women who stay home with children they are failing in life, failing society, and failing fellow female intellectuals like her. Here is the short synopsis of her book:

Hirshman, retired philosophy professor, expands on an article she wrote that ignited a firestorm of criticism from the Right and the Left. She criticized the decision of many well-educated women to return to hearth and home, maintaining that the decisions these women think are entirely personal are influenced by social--and even governmental--pressures to stay home. Hirshman responds to blunt criticism that what women decide is "their own business" by suggesting they test their decisions against canons of Western philosophical ideas of the good and worthy life: Are they using their human capacities to the fullest, maximizing their independence, and doing no social harm? By leaving the workplace, these women are setting back achievements for gender equality and demonstrating indifference toward the larger society. Hirshman is critical in general of women who have settled for a "useless choice feminism," one that fails to address the issues of work and family life. This slim book is likely to continue to fan the fires of an argument that hasn't lost its incendiary potential since The Feminine Mystique.

Here is the link to the video of the interview. Click HERE

During the interview Colbert facetiously responded with “well what about the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world?” She went on to lambaste him about how she is so sick and tired of all the working men using that quote against her. Well since she didn’t say she was sick of stay-at-home moms using it against her I’ll throw in my two cents:

”The home is the first and most effective place for children to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self-control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home." David O. McKay

and:

When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing . . .

No wonder the men of God support and sustain you . . . in your unique roles, for the act of deserting home in order to shape society is like thoughtlessly removing crucial fingers from an imperiled dike in order to teach people to swim. Neal A. Maxwell

You know what really gets me about this? Not just the insult that us SAHM (stay-at-home moms) are wasting our intelligence; but the implied insult that we don’t have intelligence—that we’re just mindless juice-box toting, minivan driving, good for nothing droids. And that, my friends, is my boiling point.