Woman who Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

Hey Guys

Here is my Essay On Feminism and Families. I meant to edit it a little more befor I posted it, but I will never post it if I wait until I do that!

WOMAN WHO THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER


“What are you doing when you finish school?”
“I don't really know. I would like to stay home and have a family.”
“Really? Don't you have any dreams and ambitions?!”
Without even realising it, my friend had bought into a feminist mindset: that woman without careers are purposeless . Feminist ideas have become so mainstream that most people, like my friend, don't question their validity. They are not wise to let such a powerful influence go unchallenged. Feminism has a lot to say, especially about marriage and motherhood, and it is time we checked it's theories against the facts.

Modern Feminism2 is a social movement based on the premise that females are oppressed by males (The Patriarchy) and which seeks to liberate women from this oppression. Thus movement is also known “Woman's Liberation”. Feminists believe that men and woman should be equal, but men and woman are not treated as equal at the present time because men are are physically stronger, and are the authority figures in control of government, religion, academia and the family. Thus men have power over women. Because of this power, feminists say, all women are controlled either directly by men in the form of husbands or fathers or indirectly by male-dominated systems. Feminists think that the method the patriarchy uses to carry out this control is by forcing woman into restrictive, stereotypical gender roles. In order to emancipate woman from what they see as men's control, feminists have made it their task to destroy these gender roles and make men and woman not only equal, but functionally identical.

So what is the link between feminism and family? Family is an institution which depends on the same gender-specific roles and relationships which feminists believe are responsible for all of women's problems. So it makes perfect sense that feminists would see the destruction of families as necessary to their agenda3. In order to achieve this, feminists have re-defined our culture's perspectives on men, women and the relationships between them according to their own dubious perceptions. Specifically, feminists have targeted the roles of wife-hood and motherhood, both of which are indispensable to the traditional family.

The feminist book Sisterhood is Powerful declares: “We can't destroy the inequity between men and woman until we destroy marriage” 4 From a feminist perspective, marriage particularly is the embodiment of all the gender inequalities that oppress woman. Feminists actually believe that primordial men invented the concept of matrimony so that they could subjugate woman into miserable lives of sex-slavery and mindless household labour! Furthermore, they claim, the same chattel/master relationship still exists between spouses today. But what if a woman protests that she is valued and happy in her marriage? Answer: the feminist view will invalidate her argument by concluding that she has been culturally brainwashed to merely think she is happy. To the feminist mind, a sane woman could not possibly enjoy being married. Given the fact that so many woman do yet prefer a husband to autonomy, this view of marriage defies common sense.

The charge that wives are unhappy and abused does not stand up to scrutiny. Australian research has shown that married woman have a greater sense of well-being than unmarried, divorced or single woman5, and likewise, married woman have a much lower suicide rate than their divorced, widowed and single counterparts6. Married mothers are also less likely to become depressed than single or cohabiting mothers7. Most violent crime against woman happens to single and divorced woman; they are four to five times more likely to be the victims of violent crime, and ten times more likely to be raped than wives8. Research also suggests that dating and co-habiting woman are more likely to suffer domestic violence that married woman9. All these statistics collude to suggest that married woman are in general happier and more safe than their unmarried counterparts.

Another reason to adopt a positive view of marriage is that -despite feminism's best efforts- no better alternative has yet been proposed. Cohabitation is to marriage as margarine is to butter; it's a second-rate replacement for the real thing. The National Marriage Coalition states that “worldwide evidence demonstrates that existing cohabitations with children tend to break up at four- to five-fold the rate of marriages.”10 and that “Couples who live together...on average, report relationships of lower quality than do married couples — with cohabitors reporting more conflict, more violence and lower levels of satisfaction and commitment.”11 Multiple, no-strings-attached relationships are a very poor exchange for marriage, since there can be no real love and security without commitment between partners. Marriage is the toughest knot that there is to tie a relationship together, and our society would suffer greatly from the loss of it.

When Feminist ideas surrounding marriage are looked at critically, it is easy to discover that these ideas about a chattel/master relationship in marriage are not true, and the actions resulting from them have neither helped woman nor made them happier. Is marriage the only area where feminism's theories are questionable, or are their other propositions just as shaky? The family is another important social institution where feminism's claims should be investigated.

Feminists detest family because they again see a traditional role of woman, that of motherhood, as oppressive. Feminist Linda Gordon wrote that “...No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children.”12. She means that a woman's career and personal goals should take priority over her children. A mother's commitment to care for her children and to do unpaid housework appears to feminists as mind-dulling oppression13 since they believe that only in the workforce can a woman reach her full potential and be useful to society. Her children are an inconvenient distraction from a woman's career, and the expectation that she will care for them is a tool of the patriarchy to keep her enslaved at home. Feminism has demeaned woman who are stay-at-home mothers, stereotyping them either as doormats without self-identity,14 or as parasites who are too lazy to survive independently of their exploiters.15 As well as being obviously false – what proportion of those home-makers whom you know are unhappy, unfulfilled and useless women? - these views devalue motherhood and undermine the women who choose that option.

Logically, a woman who does not “deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children” is a terribly selfish mother. Such a woman would be justified in walking out on her children just because she had the opportunity. In fact, she would be justified in doing whatever she liked, regardless of the effect it had on her children. So far most mothers are too responsible to follow through on this principle, however there are areas where it is becoming more common for them to do so. Abortion-on-demand is a good example of this: woman killing their unborn babies because they will not take responsibility for the lives they and their partners have brought into being. The idea that a woman has no duty to care for her children, when followed to it's logical endpoint, has tragic outcomes for children and society. Part of the reason feminists advocate such a foolish concept is because it is the unavoidable outcome of another of their claims: that having a career is more important for a woman than having a family.

Is it true that the only successful woman is a woman with a career? The criterion of success are not the same for everybody. Feminists have a definition of success judged on a woman's independent career, status, power and wealth. With that criteria, it is little wonder that feminists see home-makers as failures! But why should home-makers share feminism's standard for success? To a home-maker, success could be running a happy home to share with a loving husband and secure, well-brought-up children. From the home-maker's perspective, a woman is an integral part of her family, and so what is successful for the woman is also good for her family. Conversely, the feminist view polarizes what is best for a woman against what is preferable for her family16. This begs the question “can a woman truly be successful if that success comes at the expense of those who are dependant on her?”

One other aspect on a feminist view of families should be mentioned. Feminists believe that the parents' relationship reinforces cultural gender roles in a child's psyche, thus continuing a cycle of inequality between women and men. It should be noted that this is only a problem where one assumes that gender roles are a problem. Different gender roles do not necessarily mean one sex is worth more than the other; only that each of the genders is, in general, better physically, mentally and emotionally equipped to do particular tasks17 and that this has been recognised culturally and historically by assigning to men and woman the jobs each do best.

Feminism is an extremely powerful and popular social movement that is premised on many false ideas. These false ideas have led to mistaken and often harmful results. Just as astronomy could not advance until the theory that sun travelled around the earth was discarded, a true understanding of what benefits a woman and her family cannot advance until feminism's many foolish theories about woman, men, and gender roles are dismissed. We need to stop and think about our feminist preconceptions, and disregard any that do not measure up to reality.