Does feminism leave women alone and lonely? Are stay-at-home mothers victims of gender inequality? Will listening to the “experts” and following the herd lead to extreme unhappiness? Is the answer in your own heart and head? Have people tried doing what’s right for their own life? Who are these sad and lonely people? At some point, all of us are sad and lonely. It’s called life. We, each and every one of us, make life choices and must live thereafter with those choices. Are we victims of feminism or gender inequality. “Shit happens” is such a perfect phrase of existential philosophy that Jean-Paul Sartre would be jelly if he still existed.
Many, many moons ago, I considered myself a feminist. I didn’t need a man. I could take care of myself. And, IF I married and had a child, I certainly wasn’t going to sit at home and stare at some little crumb cruncher. Then, shit happened. I got married and had a son. My husband was flying up the corporate ladder. We got transferred cross-country four times in six years. By the time the dust settled, I was a stay-at-home Mom taking our son to Compo Beach in Westport, Connecticut in the late afternoons. I found out I loved it. My son was endlessly fascinating. Watching him think and learn was exhilarating. I read to my hearts content and took totally random courses when I could.
The day came when our son was in second grade that I got an offer from the tabletop division of a paper towel company. Cups, plates, the like. Low six figure salary. Husband and I figured out by the time we got a nanny, another car, and a part-time housekeeper, with taxes, the job wouldn’t pay out for us. So, should I satisfy my vanity and ego or… . I chose or. I became a stay-at-home mother for real. I volunteered at school. I volunteered at community events and took even more classes. I love my life. It is not without its sad moments. Our son has gone “no contact” with us. Still, it has been a satisfying life.
I tell you these things because of an article by Petronella White in The Guardian “Feminism has left middle-aged women like me single, childless and depressed”. Petronella wrote:
Historically, of course, the feminist argument had valid points. In the old days, when members of my sex were bound first to their fathers and then to their husbands, they undoubtedly led disagreeable lives. If a woman had a good education, however, she could make a comfortable living and remain independent of male approval. When the desire for marriage and children overwhelmed her, she would almost certainly lose her job, and in consequence become tied to her house, compelled to perform a thousand trivial and demeaning tasks unworthy of her ability.
But the world has changed in a way the early feminist would find incomprehensible and grotesque – indeed, she would view today’s flag bearers as hollow and preposterous nothings. I sometimes think the West has outgrown the feminist philosophy entirely and should cast it off.
I know feminists like Petronella would never believe it, but men’s lives sucked back then, too. They had no education, very few possessions, and mostly rented their 12×8 cottage. They likely died young from illness or accidents. Very few of the men were discussing the hunt over Port. More from Petronella:
Where, for instance, does it leave women like me, when we have reached the age of 54, as I have, and find ourselves both single and childless? Hugging the collected works of Proust, or engaging in furtive sojourns to the pub that bring remembrances of things pissed? One in 10 British women in their 50s have never married and live alone, which is neither pleasant nor healthy.
I am truly sorry. There have always been women who remained “on the shelf”. Times of war killed off the menfolk, leaving women to live in sad poverty, alone with no one. There’s more to it. Life circumstances. I am now of an age when several of my friends have lost their husbands to illness or accident. Are they less lonely for once having known marital love? Our children are off making their lives. That is the natural way.
None of us get through life unscathed. You could go through life “comfortably numb”. That’s an equally sad life. No highs, no lows. No joy, no sadness.
Another enlightened point of view is that Stay-at-Home Moms are victims of “gender inequality”. Oh, spare me:
The UN Commission on the Status of Women recently denigrated stay-at-home motherhood calling a woman’s devotion to her family ‘unpaid care work’ adding that mothers in general are victims of “gender inequality.”
They then followed with a call for Marxist state-funded daycare.
Kimberly Ells at Mercator, who attended the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, said it was heavily focused on “unpaid care work.”
Ells wrote, “I spent a week listening to an endless parade of events focused almost exclusively on ending poverty by eliminating ‘unpaid care work.”
“What is ‘unpaid care work,’ you might ask? It is work done in the home without specific monetary payment. Most people would call that kind of work simply being alive,” she continued. “It could also be called running your own castle. But the forces that converged at the United Nations this spring called it an atrocity.”
Ellis writes:
To be an “unpaid care worker”—especially if you’re a woman—was seen as an afront to human decency. And because on average women worldwide do more labour in the home than men, people in UN circles call this “gender inequality,” “gender injustice,” and even “gender-based violence.” I’m not kidding. I heard these phrases repeated time after time in events sponsored by countries and organizations the world over. While there is such a thing as genuine gender-based violence, vacuuming the floor for free isn’t it.
Will freeing women from children will make everyone rich and happy?
Petronella called home-making tasks demeaning and trivial. Kimberly Ells called it “simply being alive”. If you never marry or have children, you still have to scrub the toilet.
Plus, the world has changed again post-Covid:
Aw, heck. Now they have to redo all that data to make people question their life choices. I have a suggestion for free: Do what makes YOU happy.
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Author: Toni Williams
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