JESSE POWELL writes:

I just finished watching the 1981 movie, The Incredible Shrinking Woman starring Lily Tomlin. The movie is rich in metaphor, the overarching theme being the diminishing role of the housewife, who shrinks and disappears with the introduction of all the new conveniences and household products of the modern age. 

As the movie starts out, Pat Kramer (the character played by Tomlin who becomes “The Incredible Shrinking Woman”) lives an idyllic family life as mother to several noisy rambunctious children, who are busy playing with their toys. The busy day ends in a happy scene in which Pat tucks her children in bed. 

The husband, who is the bread winner, is an advertising executive. His job is to come up with names for new products and put together the commercials peddling all sorts of wonders to the modern housewife. The fakeness of the new products and the fakeness of the ads are emphasized. (more…)

MRS. M. writes:

Thank you so much for your site. It is proving to be a great source of courage for me as I plan my transition to homemaker in the future.

Robin commented on your last post: “It would take a radical leap of faith on the part of this mother to reverse this situation.”

This struck a chord with me, as I wish it was not such a radical leap of faith. Even on your own site, I find that the situation of women like me is not often addressed. I am yearning to be a homemaker, but we cannot afford it. (more…)

  FROM British Paintings.  

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE reports:

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak on Friday backed a controversial regional bill proposed by the ruling United Russia party to issue fines for “propaganda of homosexuality.”

Speaking in Saint Petersburg, where city lawmakers have backed the bill in its first reading, Kozak said he supported the bid to introduce fines for “disgusting activity,” the Interfax news agency reported. (more…)

  FATHERHOOD was elemental to the ancient Mediterranean peoples. To the Romans, paternal piety, judgment and self-sacrifice were the ground upon which civilization was formed. This famous 16th century painting by Federico Barrocci of Virgil's Aeneas fleeing a burning Troy with his father, Anchises, on his back and his son and wife at his side depicts a mental outlook that was deeply familiar to the Roman nobility. The idea of father's being so indifferent to his lineage that he would hand over his sperm to a technician in a lab, and just walk away, would have been not just technologically foreign to Romans, but barbaric and spiritually alien. Virgil would have considered us primitives.

FATHERHOOD by anonymous sperm donors is considered so unethical in other parts of the world that many countries restrict it or ban it altogether. In 2005, Britain ended the practice of anonymous sperm donation. Yet in the United States, the market is essentially unregulated. Only in a country that sanctifies the whims of adults over the immaterial needs of children could such an inhuman practice take hold as an acceptable way for an unmarried woman or lesbian to conceive.

Here is the powerful 2006 piece in The Washington Post by Katrina Clark about her unknown sperm donor father. Clark wrote:

When she was 32, my mother — single, and worried that she might never marry and have a family — allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus so that she could have a baby. I am the result: a donor-conceived child.

And for a while, I was pretty angry about it.

I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the “parents” — the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his “donation.” As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right? (more…)

JANE writes:

Do impersonal settings prepare a child for real life? Absolutely not! The most obvious deficit I see in these children is the way they act the same no matter where they are. They can’t differentiate.

I was a substitute teacher for seven years. Without fail I could determine who was a “day care kid” within the first hour of being in the classroom. I described them as “Islands unto Themselves.” So sad. It really is. I’d say it is the number one misfortune a child could bear. (more…)

BUCK writes:

Readers who watched the Zach Wahls speech may have noticed and viewed one of the rotating videos that popped up afterwards: “The Greatest Speech Ever Given” or “The Great Dictator Speech.” Charlie Chaplin, in his 1940 Hitler-spoof, dressed as Hitler [or the “Phooey” (Fuhrer)], gives a dramatic, rousing and well-delivered speech in which he pleads for the end of conflict, the unity of all mankind, social security for the aging, world democracy, and the end of national borders. (more…)

THE REV. JAMES JACKSON writes:

I thought the following were some very good questions, from the November 1992 number of Harper’s. (more…)

FOR SOME reason, the speech by University of Iowa student Zach Wahls to the Iowa House Judiciary Committee last January is still gaining an extraordinary amount of attention. You can view it here.Wahls was raised by two lesbians and gave a speech in support of same-sex marriage, which the Iowa legislature has not approved. His performance is a real tear-jerker. Every argument he uses could be deployed in defense of polygamy or incestuous marriage. Notice how his sister in the family portrait at his website appears of ambiguous sexual identity. They share the same anonymous donor as father.  In his speech, Wahls refers to his absent father as a “monogamous” donor.

(more…)

CHRISTINE SMITH writes:

The other day, I took my young son to the pediatrician for a check-up. In the waiting room, I picked up the latest issue of Parents magazine. In the index was a picture of a small boy doll sitting all alone in a dollhouse living room. The caption read: “Why millions of kids have to go it alone.” (more…)

JEFF W. writes:

A question I have sometimes thought about is, “What is the ideal amount of time children should spend with people who don’t care about them?”

After thinking about this for some time, I have decided that spending time with those who do not care about them does not benefit children in any way, with one possible exception. It possibly prepares them for a work environment where they will have to work with people who do not care about them. (more…)

  IN A piece at The Brussels Journal, Richard Cocks, a professor at an unnamed university, describes teaching the Platonic dialogue, the Meno, to his ethics class. His course becomes an extended exploration of the central question in the Meno: How do we arrive at moral knowledge? Cocks' students are disappointed at Socrates' conclusion, which is that morality ultimately comes from a supernatural source. The professor writes: Many of my students claimed to enjoy reading the Meno, but that they were disappointed by the ending. They felt that all their hard work had gone unrewarded. Claiming that the right opinion that contributes to virtue is from the divine is a cheat and a cop out, as though Socrates is merely hoping to hide the fact that he has no real explanation. The essay would make an excellent guide for homeschooling parents introducing older students to Plato.

TODAY’S working mother model is deeply embedded in human nature. Our hunter-gatherer maternal ancestors may not have had briefcases or paychecks, but they also left their infants and young children in the care of others. Human child-rearing has always been cooperative. The woman who remains home with her children is doing something unnatural.

These are the key ideas in a new book, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, according to Melvin Konner’s recent review in The New York Review of Books. Konner, the Harvard-educated pop anthropologist, writes:

[T]he working mother has always been a central part of the human scene, and the classic stay-at-home mom of 1950s television may have been limited to Western cultures in that era. Women gathered, gardened, farmed, fished, built huts, made clothing and other necessities, even hunted in some cultures, in addition to caring for children and performing other domestic duties. Mothers often could not discharge these duties without help. Our species is not unique in caring for offspring cooperatively, but our great ape cousins don’t do it, and we take it to extraordinary levels.

Konner’s review contains other staples of feminist anthrolopology. Men weren’t necessarily the earliest inventors. Women made sticks and infant slings but they were destroyed and these tools cannot be studied. Also, men were not dominant in hunter-gatherer societies. Decisions were made by “consensus,” but it was the views of women that were the most important. (more…)