Working women

[nclib]

Strongly disagree.

A good question to see where people are on the social/moral spectrum...

[Nym90]

They certainly should have the freedom to have careers, but children are best off when they have a parent to take care of them rather than a day care worker. One of the two parents should be willing to put a career on hold for the sake of the child when they are very young. It doesn't matter which.

[Brambila]

They certainly should have the freedom to have careers, but children are best off when they have a parent to take care of them rather than a day care worker. One of the two parents should be willing to put a career on hold for the sake of the child when they are very young. It doesn't matter which.

I agree with that.

[John Dibble]

I would agree that there needs to be one stay at home parent at least in the early part of a child's life, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the mother.

[Gabu]

I really don't have that much to add to the posts already made.  A child obviously immensely benefits from having a parent around whenever he or she needs one but it's a very sexist thing to say that it should be the mother.  Women do not have a "duty" to stay at home; the father is just as perfectly capable of being a warm, loving parent.  My father was the stay-at-home parent as I grew up and I turned out fine.

[12th Doctor]

They certainly should have the freedom to have careers, but children are best off when they have a parent to take care of them rather than a day care worker. One of the two parents should be willing to put a career on hold for the sake of the child when they are very young. It doesn't matter which.

I agree with Eric.  I need say no more.

[The Duke]

I basically agree with Nym and Soulty.

When you decide to have kids, that is your life.  They come first.

[migrendel]

I strongly disagree. It shames the nation that some still believe that women have a duty to fill the offices of wife and mother. I also disagree with this talk about day care. If a child is not put in it too young, day care can have a positive effect of socializing children. Should I ever adopt, I will put my children in day care after their very early youth so that they can have interpersonal exposure to other children and adults.

[KEmperor]

Disagree.  Athough it depends on the personal choices of the woman.  A woman must choose one or the other.  If a person brings a child into the world, that person is responsible for that child, for the simple reason that the child did not ask to be created.  It was through the actions of its parents that it exists.  Conversely, this situation could be reversed for a father staying home and the mother supporting the family, but it is more appropriate for the mother to do so.

[lidaker]

Strongly disagree. Neither sex has a 'duty' to do something.

[dazzleman]

They certainly should have the freedom to have careers, but children are best off when they have a parent to take care of them rather than a day care worker. One of the two parents should be willing to put a career on hold for the sake of the child when they are very young. It doesn't matter which.

I agree for the most part.  I was raised by a stay-at-home mother, and looking back I think there were certain adavantages to it, as well as certain disadvantages, but overall I think it is better than having kids raised in day care.

Many childless people don't understand that children can't be worked into a schedule in the same way that business meeting can be set up, and the job of raising your kids can't really be delegated, the way many career people do with their chores at work.

Day care workers, even expensive nannies, will never care about kids the ways their parents will, or should.  Many women are also discovering that demanding careers place an intolerable burden on their marriages and mothering capabilities.

Fathers can do more with their kids, but in most cases, the mother working doesn't really mean that the father is working any less, and now once again men are being asked to pay the full burden of "choices" made by women, choices in which men are not supposed to have any say or input, despite the fact that they involve their children.

The reality is that the mother's job and the father's job are too very different things, and the mother's job is more time-intensive than the father's job.  Feminists hate to face these facts, but we have paid a very high price for ignoring them.

I think that every family should do what works for them, whether it be the mother staying home, the father staying home, one or both working less demanding jobs, or whatever in-between works for them.  But these choices should not be made based upon the unrealistic and foolish beliefs that the feminists have foisted upon us.

[PBrunsel]

A child needs to be raised by a mother not a day care.

[Giant Saguaro]

I think it's someone's duty to stay home and raise the kids, so I'll agree with that camp. Everything Dazzleman has persuasively said I agree with, so I just won't even say anymore!

[muon2]

In our house we did a mix. Both my wife and I have careers. During the first five years (2 and a half for our second child) I was the primary caregiver since my wife's clients required long commutes for her. I took advantage of the top-notch day care at the laboratory where I did my research and still had a lot of time for the children.

As my oldest entered elemenatry school, my wife oriented her client schedule to allow her to primarily work at home. This lined up with my move into a heavier teaching schedule and increased political activity. Both of us also recognize that a flexible work schedule has allowed us to do our work around the kids schedule, including a lot of late nights at the computer.

Without a career outlet my wife would be less happy. Without time for our children she would be much less happy. Our family works best when we work together to accomodate as many needs for each member as we can. That includes time together.

[Tory]

I agree with what most of you have already written. Women may have careers but obviously the women(and thier husbands) have a duty to make sure thier children grow up in a stable home. The children should ALWAYS come before your career.

[Beet]

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Well, when a man goes to work, the woman is being asked to "pay the full burden of the 'choices' made by men", so the other partner will have to "pay the full burden" of the one partner working, if either partner decides to work. Of course, both partners could be spared the agony of having to "pay the full burden" of being married to a working spouse through McGovern's welfare program So I think you are being unfair to say that in a case where both the man and the woman have the same rights and are treated equally, that the man is somehow at a disadvantage. But this is exactly what anti-feminists try to say.

As to the man not having any say or input, this is as valid as saying a woman does not have any say or input in whether her husbands chooses to work. First of all, she chose to marry him, and vice versa. Second, I am sure they could talk it out amongst themselves. So the idea of the man not having any say or input just doesn't work.

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Dazzleman, you say this as if it were a law of physics. Why? It is true that many working women work harder than their husbands, but society places very high demands on them compared to fathers. Perhaps its too disproportionate.

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Once again... its not a law of physics that a woman's job has to be more time-intensive. What if a politician tried to justify forcing blacks to work longer hours for the same pay, but saying "The reality is that a black man's job and a white man's job are two very different things, and the black man's job is more time intensive..." This is one of the areas where womens' rights has far more to go than civil rights, even.

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Your conclusions here don't contradict feminism at all however. Feminism only says that men and women should begin the conversation on family planning at an equal level, and discuss their options without preconcieved notions of one gender's greater or lesser responsibilities, superiority or inferiority, rights or lack thereof. It is a doctrine of equality of the sexes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misrepresenting it, whether they claim to be feminists themselves or not. The many successful families that have existed with both partners respecting equality of the genders indicates that this notion is not unrealistic at all.

[nclib]

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Well, when a man goes to work, the woman is being asked to "pay the full burden of the 'choices' made by men", so the other partner will have to "pay the full burden" of the one partner working, if either partner decides to work. Of course, both partners could be spared the agony of having to "pay the full burden" of being married to a working spouse through McGovern's welfare program So I think you are being unfair to say that in a case where both the man and the woman have the same rights and are treated equally, that the man is somehow at a disadvantage. But this is exactly what anti-feminists try to say.

As to the man not having any say or input, this is as valid as saying a woman does not have any say or input in whether her husbands chooses to work. First of all, she chose to marry him, and vice versa. Second, I am sure they could talk it out amongst themselves. So the idea of the man not having any say or input just doesn't work.

Exactly. If anything, women are at a disadvantage here, since husbands' careers are assumed, and wives' careers are not.

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Once again... its not a law of physics that a woman's job has to be more time-intensive. What if a politician tried to justify forcing blacks to work longer hours for the same pay, but saying "The reality is that a black man's job and a white man's job are two very different things, and the black man's job is more time intensive..." This is one of the areas where womens' rights has far more to go than civil rights, even.

Definitely. It amazes me that many conservatives will defend explicit sexist remarks, yet frown upon racist parallels.

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Your conclusions here don't contradict feminism at all however. Feminism only says that men and women should begin the conversation on family planning at an equal level, and discuss their options without preconcieved notions of one gender's greater or lesser responsibilities, superiority or inferiority, rights or lack thereof. It is a doctrine of equality of the sexes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misrepresenting it, whether they claim to be feminists themselves or not. The many successful families that have existed with both partners respecting equality of the genders indicates that this notion is not unrealistic at all.

I would certainly agree with dazzleman's first sentence here. But it's a sad reflection in our society that when two parents decide to have careers, only the mother is blamed.

[raggage]

Well, heres somewhere I can put in my two cents.  My job, is and has been ever since I got married, highly stressful, and it has hours that are not always standard. Thus, my wife has stayed at home. However, it matters not who stays at home and raises the children as long as one parent is there. If it had been the other way round and she was a career woman, I would have gladly stayed at home.

[dazzleman]

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Well, when a man goes to work, the woman is being asked to "pay the full burden of the 'choices' made by men", so the other partner will have to "pay the full burden" of the one partner working, if either partner decides to work. Of course, both partners could be spared the agony of having to "pay the full burden" of being married to a working spouse through McGovern's welfare program So I think you are being unfair to say that in a case where both the man and the woman have the same rights and are treated equally, that the man is somehow at a disadvantage. But this is exactly what anti-feminists try to say.

As to the man not having any say or input, this is as valid as saying a woman does not have any say or input in whether her husbands chooses to work. First of all, she chose to marry him, and vice versa. Second, I am sure they could talk it out amongst themselves. So the idea of the man not having any say or input just doesn't work.

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Dazzleman, you say this as if it were a law of physics. Why? It is true that many working women work harder than their husbands, but society places very high demands on them compared to fathers. Perhaps its too disproportionate.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Once again... its not a law of physics that a woman's job has to be more time-intensive. What if a politician tried to justify forcing blacks to work longer hours for the same pay, but saying "The reality is that a black man's job and a white man's job are two very different things, and the black man's job is more time intensive..." This is one of the areas where womens' rights has far more to go than civil rights, even.

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Your conclusions here don't contradict feminism at all however. Feminism only says that men and women should begin the conversation on family planning at an equal level, and discuss their options without preconcieved notions of one gender's greater or lesser responsibilities, superiority or inferiority, rights or lack thereof. It is a doctrine of equality of the sexes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misrepresenting it, whether they claim to be feminists themselves or not. The many successful families that have existed with both partners respecting equality of the genders indicates that this notion is not unrealistic at all.

The problem I have with feminism on this issue is two-fold.  One, it places no value on the work involved in raising children, basically saying that stay-at-home mothers were doing nothing anyway, so nothing is being lost by taking them out of the home for a career.  Second, it says that women should have "choices" about whether they want to work or stay at home, while men have never had a choice and should not have a choice.

The reality is that when nobody is home looking after kids, something is lost.  When the job is delegated to minimum wage workers who are not really interested in the results, something is lost.  It is ludicrous not to acknowledge this, as feminists do.  Feminists have devalued parenthood, encouraged the notion that one person can do the job alone, while working a demanding job outside the home, and now the people who bought into this drivel are overstressed and miserable, and failing at their parenting job.

I also think it's ludicrous not to acknowledge the differences between men and women when it comes to bearing and raising children.  The feminist dogma is that it is sexist to acknowledge these differences, and I have seen that view expressed here.

According to feminist ideology, a father should really just be a second mother.  This view is absolutely wrong.  While there can be some flexibility with respect to the boundaries between the two jobs, the reality is that the father and the mother have two very different jobs.  The typical man cannot be a good mother, and the typical woman cannot be a good father.  A child needs both.  And most kids look to their mothers for day-to-day nurturing, and to their fathers for affirmation of their accomplishments and development.  Men and women are not equally good at filling these roles, and that's just the reality.  Men are better at one, and women at the other, in most cases.  And it's ludicrous to compare the acknowledgement of immutable biological differences (gender is not a "social construct" whatever the looney feminists may say) to blatant racial discrimination.

Feminism is an elitist movement.  We hear so much about how women have had to sacrifice great careers for the drudgery of raising kids.  The reality is that most jobs outside the home are not wonderful stimulating ways to bring excitement to your life, but another form of drudgery, that is done of necessity to pay the bills.  A very small percentage of people have jobs that are truly wonderful and exciting.  For most women, working outside the home has brought another layer of stress and drudgery on top of what they already had.

Men have always worked, so unless a man's wife makes enough money to allow him to quit working or reduce his schedule, he can only suffer a decline in quality of life when his wife works.  In reality, this rarely happens.  A man must continue to work his full schedule, plus do more around the house, when his wife works.  Of course, while we hear so much about the sacrifices of poor victimized women for centuries, we hear nothing about the men who worked difficult, boring and backbreaking jobs to support their families.  How fulfilled were these men?

More people working longer hours has made us a richer society.  But we have paid a big price for this wealth.  We are an overstressed society and our lives are programmed to the point where many people have lost all spontaneity, and where kids have no time just to be kids, since they are just shuffled off from one programmed activity to another.  

The interesting thing about this whole issue is that in many ways, it has now come full circle.  Whereas in the past, many women wanted out the house, and the men wanted them to stay home, today many women, having tried the "career thing" want to stay home, but their husbands want them to work because they want the income.  Now many women complain about being forced to work.

And at this point, for most women working is not a choice.  There is a very good book out called (I think) "The Two Income Trap" which talks about the economic effects of mothers entering the work force in large numbers.  Demographically, the emergence of the two-income couple caused a large increase in housing costs (due to supply and demand - greater ability to pay led to the bidding up of home prices, particularly as the baby boomers in large numbers led this trend), essentially leaving two-income families of this generation no better off financially than were the one-income families of the previous generation.  Having nobody at home also dictates a more expensive lifestyle - expensive take-out dinners on many nights, kids having to be in paid activities rather than just playing under a parent's supervision.  In addition, having both partners working means there is no excess earning capacity that can be brought into play when there are financial difficulties, so there is no reserve to fall back upon.

So the average middle class family, which now has a working mother is really no better off financially than that family would have been a generation earlier with a stay-at-home mother.  All this extra work has led mainly to more stress.  

The greatest beneficiaries of this trend are those with high-paying jobs.  In the past, the wife of a man with high earning potential stayed home, while often the wife of a man with a modest income worked.  This allowed the economic gap between the two groups to be narrower.  Today, with many wives of high-earning men also working at high-paying jobs, the economic gap between the haves and the have-nots has grown exponentially.  Ironically, it is a liberal philosophy and initiative that has contributed greatly to this trend.

It's wonderful for people to have choices, but let's not pretend that they don't have consequences.

[migrendel]

You attribute far too much of this to feminism, dazzleman. There are some roles that are predetermined for mothers and fathers. Women cannot contribute sperm, and men cannot suckle the young. But in most cases, it's not a question of what men and women can and cannot do, it's a question of what they won't do, or feel uncomfortable doing. I don't see why men are constitutionally incapable of cooking and cleaning, but many are unwilling to get off their lazy asses and do something that they perceive as emasculating.

Your arguments about unnecessary spending are fallacious. The economist Elizabeth Warren recently wrote an excellent book in which she explained that, to her surprise, families are spending a smaller percentage of their income on luxury items, but are entering into greater debt because of massive increases in the cost of housing, childcare (which is needed because of the inability to survive on one income), and profligate and obscene increases in credit card interest rates.

I will agree with you that life is losing its spontaneity. But this began long before feminism. It began with the Industrial Revolution, where capital-intensive production required an overworked and underpaid labor force. The most vulnerable groups, and the cheapest labor, were women and children. I agree that it is a threat to the quality of life. But the remedy lies not in one of your screeds against feminism, but in the simple riposte of fair practices with regard to working people.

[ilikeverin]

What gabu and raggage has have said (though I was not raised by a stay at home dad )

[Beet]

Well Dazzleman, regarding your first concern (and corollaries).... the feminists' original idea in social history was to break down inequities for women in various workplace settings as well as other settings in the out-of-home environment, as well as in the home environment. The discrimination that many women faced (and still face), whether they have children or not, when these women want to earn some independence through a job, or the other benefits of working, was the target of feminism. At the core it is not a movement around changing the family but changing the role of women, whether they have families or not.

Regarding the role of homemaker, the feminists merely acknowledged that, in some two parent homes, both the man and the woman wanted to have a career. In such a case, it is unfair to the woman to ask that she must be the one to sacrifice just because she is a woman. Acknowledging this fact does not inherently hinder the family. The priority of raising children has the highest role in most American families, whether the partners accepted gender equality or not; and the determining factor of how well children are raised is usually the income level and emotional stability of the parents, not whether the woman works.  Under your view, any family in which the mother works automatically will create bad children! Obviously this is not the case.

On the other hand, poverty level and the competency of parents (do they care? are they abusive? do they abuse substances?) is a huge factor in kids who get into trouble today. In a healthy family, one where both the mother and father may work or only one of them works, you will find that both the mother and father, put a higher emphasis on the proper rearing of their children than their career.

Sure, there are families where mothers spend too much time on their careers and neglectful of their children consequently, but society portrays this picture far disproportionately to the case where the father is the one who works too much and thus neglects his fathering role. The latter case is almost certainly far more prevalent in society. The feminist case has argued, if anything, not that the parenting role is unimportant, but that it has been disproportionately thrusted upon one of the two parents, resulting in unfair expectations of "supermoms" while the fathering role is neglected. There is a good book out called "The Mommy Myth" which shows the way in which society places huge burdens on women due to their gender, but comparatively far fewer on fathers.

It should also be noted that, the idea of women working "outside" the home is the older of the two ideas, contrary to myth. In agricultural times it was common for women to be working in the fields, and later working in factories. What roles they did have in the home were not related around child rearing, but things like washing clothes and sewing, which were less labor-intensive. A modern woman staying at home without performing these chores is a rather new concept. In history, why did women not have leadership roles? Obviously they had physical disadvantages, and this spread to a generalized inferiority of their gender that prevented them from regaining a more equal place in society during and after the industrial revolution, until the advent feminism.

Regarding your second concern... feminism says women should have real choices, not "choices" in quotation marks. I don't see why you felt you needed to put it like that. And there is nothing in feminism that says men shouldn't have choices? A major thrust of feminism is that it will give men more choices by letting them take roles outside of their socially constructed roles as the "distant father" who is preoccupied with his career. And what's wrong with this? Its an advantage for both men and women.

Regarding gender differences... One of the things most often stated by anti-feminists is that feminists dont acknolwedge the differences between men and women. Yet what they really must be saying is that feminists don't acknowledge the prescribed roles determined by the anti-feminists themselves, because they certainly can't be saying that feminists don't acknolwedge any differences, right? Of course there are obvious differences, otherwise we wouldn't have two different genders. Feminists point out that some prescribed roles based on gender are discriminatory- some against women, some against men, that they limit individual freedom, and that they are irrational.

Regarding immutable biological differences... race is also an immutable biological difference. Yet we don't say that society looks toward blacks to play sports and be entertainers, so that any movement or group that says its wrong to pressure blacks towards these roles is wrong; or that society looks toward whites to be bankers and lawyers, so that any movement that says this isn't necessarily so is a threat. Nor is it true that fathers cannot provide day to day nurturing; that fathers cannot feed young children or tell kids which television shows they can watch and which they can't, or read a bedtime story, or even do the diapers. Nor is it true that mothers cannot provide affirmation, that successful women cannot be admired by their own children, or cannot be looked up to with sufficient pride that a mother's affirmation is important. This is not to say that traditional, society-imposed gender roles must be reversed, only that they should not be rules contrary to the natural ordering of a family.

Regarding the drudgery of work... again, this is a personal decision. Some feel that it is not worthwhile to go to work every day in order to make a salary and attain whatever fulfillment they recieve, some feel it is worth it. Feminists feel that both women and men should have the right to make either decision without facing discrimination from society.

You said both that men "must suffer a decline" in the quality of life when his wife works, and also that "husbands want them to work" while wives don't. So by this logic, husbands want to lower their own standard of living against the will of their wives? I think this is hardly the case. I think most of the time, the woman makes a decision as to whether or not she wants to work, and if she does, this usually contributes to the quality of life in the family.

You overall paint a very bleak picture of society blaming it all on feminism. This is unfair and untrue, though this story has been accepted by many people. In reality, social ills are caused by either poverty, leading to desperation, or human nature, leading to obseity, short attention span, lack of intellectual curiosity, etc. Second, the number of people who are satisfied or very satisfied with their lives (something like 80%) get a far disproportionate (lower) attention in the newsmedia. Anti-feminists just try to use any problems to attack feminism, masking substantive problems.

Finally, your summary of the Two Income Trap makes no sense. You claim that cost of living increases have offset all income gains in the past generation. But this is untrue except for the bottom 20% of income earners; the mean real income has grown substantially. And yes, Americans are spending more today because they have more to spend. Is that a bad thing? Should we aim for a drop in GDP next year? Besides real income growing, so has the homeownership rate. More families own their own homes today than ever before. Housing starts are near a record, and there is no shortage of land. So why are home prices rising? Besides the natural boom, one reason is lack of zoning for residential areas in some states. For example in California, the passage of proposition 13 means that local government officials have no incentive to zone a piece of land for housing starts due to the housing tax cap. They can make a lot more in tax money simply by zoning commercial property, where they benefit through sales taxes. In the past 10 years, California has had 11 million migrants but only constructed 1 million new homes. As a result, housing prices there are over 50% above the national average. Certainly that is a much more plausible explanation than feminism.

What will feminism be blamed for next? Terrorism? Oh yeah, I forgot Jerry Falwell already did...

[Josh/Devilman88]

i put disagree, women should go to work and the man should stay home  

[dazzleman]

You attribute far too much of this to feminism, dazzleman. There are some roles that are predetermined for mothers and fathers. Women cannot contribute sperm, and men cannot suckle the young. But in most cases, it's not a question of what men and women can and cannot do, it's a question of what they won't do, or feel uncomfortable doing. I don't see why men are constitutionally incapable of cooking and cleaning, but many are unwilling to get off their lazy asses and do something that they perceive as emasculating.

Your arguments about unnecessary spending are fallacious. The economist Elizabeth Warren recently wrote an excellent book in which she explained that, to her surprise, families are spending a smaller percentage of their income on luxury items, but are entering into greater debt because of massive increases in the cost of housing, childcare (which is needed because of the inability to survive on one income), and profligate and obscene increases in credit card interest rates.

I will agree with you that life is losing its spontaneity. But this began long before feminism. It began with the Industrial Revolution, where capital-intensive production required an overworked and underpaid labor force. The most vulnerable groups, and the cheapest labor, were women and children. I agree that it is a threat to the quality of life. But the remedy lies not in one of your screeds against feminism, but in the simple riposte of fair practices with regard to working people.

I find your attitude to be very anti-male.  A man who works 50 hours a week and doesn't wish to spend his free time cooking and cleaning is not being lazy.  I know plenty of men who are carrying a much heavier load, between working and raising their kids, than their wives are, and I'm sick and tired of hearing this feminist jargon that men are to blame for everything that is wrong in people's marriages and in society in general.  I also know cases where men are bummers, and the women do everything.  I just don't think those case represent 90% of the male-female relationships out there, as the feminists seem to suggest.

How couples split up their housework is not the business of outsiders.  But it stands to reason that if the two parents used to work a combined total of 50 hours per week, and now they are working a combined total of 90 hours per week, something has to give.

Couples should work these issue out among themselves, but my original point stands, and you unwittingly backed me up when you mentioned high housing prices.  One reason for the inability to get by on one income for many couples is high housing prices, that were in part brought on by demographic changes such as greater numbers of two-income families.  My point is that families have not had a financial gain commensurate with the additional effort that they are expending to get by day to day.

You seem to acknowledge this, and yet you can't accept it because it would imply something negative about feminism.

[dazzleman]

Regarding your second concern... feminism says women should have real choices, not "choices" in quotation marks. I don't see why you felt you needed to put it like that. And there is nothing in feminism that says men shouldn't have choices? A major thrust of feminism is that it will give men more choices by letting them take roles outside of their socially constructed roles as the "distant father" who is preoccupied with his career. And what's wrong with this? Its an advantage for both men and women.

There are a couple of reasons I put the word "choices" in quotation marks.

First, it is one of the most annoying overused word in the feminist lexicon, right up there with "juggling."  They talk as if men have the choice to do whatever they want, while women don't.  I have to get up and go to work every day; I don't see that I have so many choices.  My father and the other men in the family had no choices; they went to work every day out of necessity, often to jobs they didn't particularly like.  I resent the idea propounded by the feminists that only women should have choices.

The other reason is that while feminists prattle on about choices, they harshly criticize women who don't make the choices the feminists think they should make.  The reality is that we make make choices in life within a relatively narrow range, but many of our so-called choices are made for us.  That goes for men and women, and feminism cannot really change it.

I have been strongly critical of the direction of feminism, but that doesn't mean I think everything they've done is bad.  I was once a supporter of the women's movement, until about 10 years ago, but I turned against feminism as it became more radical and anti-male.  I don't think any man should be a feminist at this juncture.

I think any social system, whether it be the pre-feminist system, in which women were mostly shut out of the job market, and the post-feminist system, where most women must work whether they like it or not, has certain advantages and disadvantages.  My mother never worked, and in many ways had an easier life than my father, who was out working every day and responsible for all the bills.  But if she had ever lost access to that income, she would have been up a creek.  It can be a dangerous thing today for anybody to be used to a good lifestyle, but not to have developed marketable job skills.  I think we should be able to have an honest discussion about the best potential social system to meet a range of needs (child-rearing, education, social stability, family income, economic needs, etc.) free of the oppressive political correctness that has been imposed by feminist dogma.