Society Collapses and Feminists Rush to Take Credit
October 21, 2009
I don’t know anyone clinically sane who thinks life in America is actually better today, when nearly one fourth of college-educated women don’t have children at all, than it was in the 1960s. By every gauge of social welfare, things are dramatically worse. The percentage of babies born to unwed mothers has increased sevenfold. The proportion of children living in single-parent households has tripled. The divorce rate has doubled. More than a million new children every year are affected by parental divorce. The number of children who live apart from the biological fathers has doubled, increasing fom 17 percent to 34 percent.
Children who grow up in single-parent households or with divorced parents have significantly worse outcomes in life in every area. In fact, they have negative outcomes at two to three times the rate of children from two-parent married households. But, even though at least half of these children are females, Collins actually thinks things have gotten better. According to this reviewer, things were “positively medieval” for women back in the 1960s. So medieval that women were barred from jury duty in some states so they could see to their domestic duties. Oh happy, happy day!
Collins must narrow her gaze on the few seize-the-day female careerists in her midst, women who are perfectly happy to not see or raise their children, if they indeed have any, and to divorce their husbands. She basks in ludicrous examples of female oppression. Reviewer Francine Prose states:
The early pages of Ms. Collins’s book are peppered with accounts of incidents so outrageous they almost seem like jokes. A draft of a Congressional bill to insure equal pay for women was discovered to have been filed “under B — for ‘broads.’ ” At a pregraduation party at Barnard, one woman remembers, students who were engaged to be married were handed corsages, while their classmates without engagement rings were presented with lemons.
Imagine that. Corsages for women. If that’s medieval, this must be the Stone Age.
Brenda H. writes:
Oh yes…..Gail Collins. I saw this woman in an interview on MSNBC the other day, as NBC is having their series “A Woman’s Nation”. And I’m sorry to say I couldn’t stand to watch very much of her. There she sat, with the Morning Joe crew, & everyone is so cozy & comfortable-looking, as they pick apart everything wrong with the past as it pertains to women (and of course, EVERYthing was wrong back then, wasn’t it?), & praise to the highest heaven the gals who have clawed & climbed their way to the top of their field. But now, before we breathe any sigh of relief, let us not forget that the New York Stock Exchange is still largely a man’s world, as the female stockbroker at the table was quick to point out. So, alas, Gail’s work is not done.
I probably should have stayed tuned to watch the entire piece….perhaps there actually was someone present that morning who was brave enough to mention some of the statistics you mentioned. I find myself hoping that women like Ms. Collins are becoming fewer & fewer, & that the women who want to make a pleasant home for their families will become the norm. I pray quite often that I live to see this wonderful change!
Laura writes:
There is some consolation in the fact that aging feminist warriors such as Collins haven’t had many children. By the way, Ms. Collins is 63 years old and I am sure she is making a pretty penny off her latest book, as she probably did off her former book, America’s Women: 400 years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines. [I believe I fit within the “drudges” category.] I often have difficulty finding books through my local library system, but my county owns seven copies of Collins’ latest.
