LEAVE it to The New York Times, the newspaper that checks the pulse of today’s narcissistic female every 30 seconds, to invite women who are noticeably lacking in maternal qualities to write essays in honor of Mother’s Day. In the latest entry, Varda Steinhardt describes her return to paid work after ten years at home with her twin sons as “exhilarating, exhausting and deeply satisfying.” Taking care of her children, husband and home was thus not deeply satisfying.

She writes:

It’s taken a toll. I have fed my kids way too many organic chicken nugget dinners. I have heard my son wail, “You love your computer more than you love me,” as my “just a minute more” stretched into another hour of e-mailing.

But I have now planted one foot firmly out of the mom zone, and my family has survived. And I have remembered how good work feels, with colleagues and quantifiable accomplishments.

So if you know of anyone seeking to hire a social media-savvy writer and editor with experience in film, TV, theater and event producing, send them my way. I’m back, and I’m staying.

—- Comments —–

Jane S. writes:

You might be back, Varda. But you definitely are not staying. Another ten years or so, and you’ll start finding yourself edged out of the job market—slowly, inexorably, and coldly. By then your “quantifiable accomplishments” will be yesterday’s news.

The pop culture caravan—film, TV, theater and event producing—is notoriously fickle and youth-obsessed, and women get the worst of it. Social media is a young person’s game. They like to change things faster than the old people can keep up. It’s what they do.

How many 65-year-old women do you know of who are doing what you do for a living? Let me guess—none, right? You probably forgot to notice that. Typical leftist—can’t see past the nose on your face.

Meanwhile, your kids will have forgotten about you, because they care more about their computers than they care about you. You taught them that.

Your colleagues love you for what you do, today. Your family loves you for who you are, forever. At least that’s the way it should be. Hope it isn’t too late before you figure that out.

Paul writes:

She self-determined her motherhood and now seeks to self-determine her professional life. What a crock. As Jane S notes, presumably accurately, she is in for a hard time self-determining her professional life. If she ain’t up to the standard, she can forget about self-determinism unlike she did when she neglected her children.

And what a neglectful mother she was as she tried to self-determine motherhood instead of following her instincts. Her meager goal was to help her children to survive. She forgot about love and happiness.

 Paul adds:

This reminds me of a neighbor, a state trooper and his wife and children. They had a dog that had no shelter from rain or cold and was not played with. They would just throw a bowl of food in the yard, and that was it. We thought, “Why do they have it.” We guessed it was because it barked and made them feel safe. It barked a lot, so we took to showing it affection through the fence, and he was sweet and stopped barking. I wonder how much her children are barking.

Laura writes:

Mrs. Steinhardt possibly does want to be with her children, but feels that now that they are getting older (ten!) she must prove her mettle and return to paid employment. Her comment that she stayed home earlier because one of her children had a learning disability is the typical excuse women make for staying home in a culture that disapproves of it.

Jane S. writes:

I really do not mind if women enjoy doing work outside of the home. Laura Wood has chosen to take time away from her domestic responsibilities to run this site, praise the Lord. To Laura’s family: thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing her with us.

I just think that women are making a huge mistake in thinking that a career is a substitute for family life. They aren’t even close to being the same thing.

It reminds me of the discussion from a few days ago about “Julia,”the hypothetical ward of the Obama nanny state. After some 20 years of schooling, Julia becomes a web designer. Good heavens. Is a college degree necessary to do that? Is it possible to make a lifelong career out of being a web designer? Nobody knows—it hasn’t been around long enough.

When the Internet first came out, just a short time ago, it took people fluent in coding language to build websites. Since then, web development has become democratized to the point that any techno-retard capable of logging onto WordPress can build their own website. That alone took a big chunk out of web designers’ future job security.

And where are Julia’s clients going to come from? Who is she going to be designing websites for? Traditionalist bloggers? Doubt it.

Varda expects to find deep satisfaction working in TV and film. Once everybody’s been transformed into enervated sheep under the managerially imposed atheist totalitarian state, what are they going make movies about?

Laura writes:

Thank you.

Regarding Jane’s first point, it is not wrong for married women to enjoy working outside the home, but it is wrong for them to work outside the home except in cases of serious financial hardship or infertility or when children have left home. It is also very wrong for a woman to publicly admit that she is glad to be spending less time with her children.

It can also be immoral for a woman to work for money at home if she is seriously neglecting her family. Of course, many good and loving mothers do now work in full-time jobs. But any decent mother does not celebrate this or want it or promote it for others.

By the way, it’s interesting to note that when there were bans on married women being employed in certain fields, women overwhelmingly supported these bans, as Steve Moxon writes in his book The Woman Racket. They wanted men to be able to support their families and they also were concerned that women who were not married be able to support themselves.

Mrs. Steinhardt shows not the least bit of concern about the possibility that she may be taking work from a man or from someone who does not have a husband to support her.

Joe G. writes:

I have a bit of completely speculative theory to make (If you engage in that sort of thing). Because of the description of Mrs. Steinhardt as a career woman who has twins with some developmental challenges, it got me thinking that Mrs Steinhardt probably had children late in life. I did some internet searching and came across this website where in question # 4, Mrs. Steinhardt answers “Doing this show has been a wonderful way for the 50-something year old writer-me to connect with the 20- & 30-something year old theater-me.”

Since Mrs. Steinhardt twins are ten, then she must have given birth in her 40’s. My speculation is that Mrs. Steinhardt followed the feminist plan by having a fabulous career through much of her ideal childbearing years. Then when the ticking of the clock became too loud, she decided to try having kids in her late 30’s early 40’s. Of course, by then she probably needed IVF help. As is often the case with IVF, she ended up with twins, probably creating and killing many embryos (children) in the process. And because she waited until her eggs were of poor quality to have kids, they inherited developmental challenges. Now after doing her duty by serving her time (i.e. being a mother), Mrs. Steinhardt is again ready to take up the feminist quest of “having it all.” We should all praise her for all she has accomplished.

Jane S. writes:

Once again, it goes back to the left’s relentless war on privacy. The work that you do in the home is private. You aren’t held to account by anyone but your family, which galls interfering leftist busybodies no end. The parts of your life that are off-limits are shrinking.

It just so happens, I am currently interviewing for a position. Necessary, since I am self-supporting. What an invasive, intrusive, obnoxious process job-hunting has become. Background checks and drug screening. Your entire job history goes on record. Everything you’ve done since graduating high school comes under scrutiny. Meanwhile, the electronically stored information (ESI) industry is developing the technological means to store, retrieve, and analyze massive amounts of personal data. Does anyone suppose they will use it for benign purposes?

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