Jan. 31, 2008 - feminine mistake?
My sister has been reading a book with the title The Feminine Mistake. I just read some while I was at her house and she says it changes attitudes, or becomes more hopeful as it goes on, but what I read I didn't agree with, at least not from my personal experience. She worries that women are leaving the workplace with high education degrees and returning home to raise their children because then women lose income as far as pay raises and social security, and will be devastated if their husband leaves them or dies. She makes being home seem like drudgery and not intellectually stimulating. For me, work was drudgery and I worked in various places and none were intellectually stimulating. I didnt want to raise children and continue in my dream work (which ended up still being work) because I knew the sacrifices were too big too many hours and people I saw that did have kids were treating them poorly or neglecting them. Now I love being home (and yes, I work part time at a job a few hours a week so that I can be most of the time at home). Especially with homeschooling, I meet lots of interesting parents and have lots of interesting and intellectual conversations. I love not being in an office or some bureaucratic driven school where I never did connect with people, at least not once I was a parent and wanted to spend every hour not working back at home. I think our cultural has a huge problem. We only value work which is out of the home and making money and NOT caring for others. But most of the real world is caring for other people and that should be respected more than Donald Trumps millions. Children need to be taken care of (and in this book they think that is only a worthy job if you are being paid for it but I feel the opposite, some people being paid for it may do a worse job and I know when I was a nanny I didnt have any long term goals or ideas how to raise a child, I just worked for the moment and who knows what values I passed on that were the same or different than the parents). Elders need to be taken care of and we are about to go into crisis mode as baby boomers grow older and we dont have enough people to care for them. Ill keep posting as I read more, and react more to this book.
