The, ahem, easier thing

I agree completely. What I'm more concerned about is the wealth gap that allows the rich the opportunity to have a stay-at-home parent. I'm guessing most parents would love that luxury in the childrens best interest.

One minor quibble: I'd be in favor of changing laws or the tax code to help working women -- many of whom have no choice but to work, given our economy - Not before the tax code is changed to make generous allowance for families with one stay-at-home parent.

Right on, Rod! My wife stayed home with our three kids full time for almost 20 years, and it was worth it. You hit the nail on the head: if one can avoid it, why would any parent leave the raising of their kids to a stranger? In keeping with the crunchy con ethos and the do-it-yourself virtues, I say "we raise free-range kids!"

Rod, please stay out of the "Mommy Wars." This is a dead-end topic. I have stayed at home with my two sons since the birth of my first, 5 1/2 years ago. Denigrating writers who remind us that women need to be responsible for their own finances, especially in the face of a 51% divorce rate, are not to be sneezed at even by those of us who trust our husbands to "provide." This is a divisive non-issue that needs no more media attention.

Marilynne Robinson examines the economics effects in her essay on family in her book The Death of Adam.

Many more people could (certainly not all) have a parent stay home with their kids if they wanted to. Yes it would take many economic sacrifices.
Our consumerism often prevents us from thinking life with less (stuff) is more(time and relationships).

My sons have it figured out. This from an e-mail I JUST got from my wife (A1 is five, C2 is three, D3 is still forming his opinions at 1): A said, "Momma, did you know girls can't pick what job they want?" I said, "Really, what jobs do girls have to do? Andrew said, "They get to cook." C2 chimed in and said, "And take care of children." I just said, "Oh." Not sure how to respond to that! Frankly I kinda like their view and don't want to change it much yet! I'd like 'em to marry one of those kind of girls, ya know?

Lillian, with all due respect, I think you're overgeneralizing when you say, "If raising children is so important why is it that hardly a man will give up anything career wise to raise them? When men become fathers they go right along with their aspirations." Not all men are selfish in their career choices, and plenty of men factor in their family duties when considering their careers. My husband has sometimes had opportunities for career advancement and a larger salary, but the jobs would have required him to travel. He is absolutely opposed to the idea of traveling away from our family, and considers the time he spends with us far more important than any 'lost' career potential. Other men make similar decisions to put family first. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, Rod recently gave up editing a section of the Dallas Morning News when this particular job opportunity started 'costing' too much in terms of time spent away from his family, something he mentioned on this blog. The truth of the matter is that there are as many traditional/countercultural men out there who are willing to put family first as there are women--and when they end up married to each other, it's a beautiful thing.

women still have a wage gap, right out of college. The last survey put it at about 80% (as I recall), and placed most of it squarely on gender discrimination. That "last survey" was conducted by the American Association of University Women, not an impartial group. And even they attributed only one quarter of the alleged gap to discrimination.

Amen to Rod on this one. I never comment, but I would note two things here: (1) Everything in our society is structured for two-income families. Even if I make six figures, I'm making less than two 50K earners. Our choice to have my wife at home with the three boys has meant living with one car and renting rather than owning a home, among other things. (2) At least some with a "crunchy-con" sensibility are probably into something like an attachment parenting style of child rearing in the early years. We don't go as far as the La Leche League folks, but suffice to say I can't physically provide all my wife does at home. That wouldn't be a problem for people with a different philosophy on this, but it is for us. Therefore, until we stop having little ones, it won't make sense for my wife to work rather than me. Also, I should note that exactly because American employers don't view child rearing as valuable, the choices are fairly stark. I have friends in Austria who say that all mothers there get a mandatory six months off with pay after the birth of child, without penalty in their career.

David J. White: In addition, whether the wife (or the husband) likes it or not, biology dictates that it's the woman who will have to miss at least *some* work due to pregancy-related issues, childbirth, etc. No amount of goodwill on the part of the husband, or willingness to share the load, is going to change that. Yep. As soon as men learn how to lactate, they can stay home more. Until then...

and I will post later as to why I think no one wins in the highly polarized, "conservative" vs. "liberal" argument about stay-at-home parenting The moment one frames it as lib vs con nobody wins.

(continued) The problem is that the career track and the mommy track are in conflict with each other. The years when employers want you to be devoting long hours to your career in order to advance and prove your value to them (or when academia expects you to be in the throes of graduate school or starting on the tenure-track ladder) are the same years when women are biologically programmed to bear and raise children.
If companies were more willing to hire entry-level employees who are 40, 45, 50 years old -- i.e., women who no longer have young children -- that might help matters. Women could thus raise a family and *then* pursue a career. But the corporate culture compels career-minded women to pursue a career *first* -- and then all too often, when they have become sufficiently established in their career that they can take the time to have a family, they discover that they have missed the biological window.

And, David J. White, I agree too about corporate America's reluctance to hire 40- plus year-olds. You must know, however, that "parents of young children" and 40+ year olds aren't exclusive groups anymore. My kids were born when I was 38 and 39 years old. They're still as small as my chances of getting a well-paying editing job when I re-enter the work force.

You "men" that keep repeating this weasely garbage about how "I'd love to have my wife stay at home, but we can't afford it" need to sack up. You CAN afford it, you just don't want to. Yes, you might have to move. Yes, you might have to do work you don't like. But what's really important to you? If it was really important you would make it work. But it's not, so you don't. Bottom line.

My husband and I have identical jobs and share an office. Since I am 2 years ahead of him in education and experience (and 4 years in age), I make proportionately more income than he does. We are expecting our firstborn in another week or so. I will go on maternity leave and then return in 2 months. Since I work 1/2 time and my husband works 3/4 time, we will arrange our schedules so that someone is always at home with the baby, and I will pump so that baby Russell can have my breast milk while I'm away.
I know plenty of folks who have a similar arrangement, needing assistance from strangers only occasionally, most of the time relying on family members. Nor would I really want to stay home all the time with the baby, even though that's a possibility. I think it's a very good thing for husbands to have a few days a week where they are exclusively responsible for child care all day long from a very early age, and it seems to me from what I've read that this pattern of extended families caring for the kids is the norm worldwide, rather than mom staying home with the kids all day, every day.

The inability to have it all is not restricted to women. When I was in private practice, all the sessions on balancing work and life for the female attorneys in the firm used to drive me crazy: I was feeling just as much guilt and angst about my long hours away from home as they were. Everything in our society is structured for two-income families. Even if I make six figures, I'm making less than two 50K earners. Bwilliams--I'm not sure this is right. I'm in the process of choosing between two jobs and am finding myself compelled to take the higher paying one (which also happens to require longer hours), in part because if I took the other job and my wife worked part-time to help make up the difference, the effective tax rate on her income would be nearly 50% higher than the tax rate on every additional dollar I'll make at the higher-paying job (largely because of social security contributions). In other words, from my experience, the tax system is designed to punish two-income families. If correct, this might encourage the behavoir that Rod likes, but it seems absurd to me that we're better off if I put in an extra 20 hours a week rather than letting her work 20 hours a week while the kids are off at school.

The problem is that Ms. Hirshman treats the subject as if there is a one size fits all solution. Some traditional families with the stay at home mom do the same. Really, it is nobody's business what any particular family does. There are good families where both parents work and there are good families where one parent stays home. There are rotten families where both parents work and rotten families where one stays home. What matters most is how you treat your children and the example you provide by being virtuous and doing whatever you do to the best of your ability.

My mother quit working in the 1950's when she began having children.
During the 1960's and early 1970's she took a few college courses, but by the time her children were grown, she had lost all the confidence needed to "get a life" and had acquired a habit of morbid dependency to rival any welfare mother.
Some minor neurological problems were misdiagnosed as MS, and she gradually adopted a "sick" role even though those who know her well believe her problems were chiefly neurotic.
She held onto my father for the five decades of their marriage (until he died) by being needy, dependendent and fragile, at the same time seething with resentment because she had given up on being her own person.
Shortly after he died, my mother began trashing him to all and sundry, and driving many of his and her old friends away. I love my mother, truly, but as far as being a role model for how to be a woman, she has been a purely negative example.
Granted that not every woman in a "traditional marriage" has as many morbid dependency issues as my mother did, but I have to affirm that the traditional arrangements were far from perfect, and have led to much unhappiness.

Life is hard enough for us all without having to deal with women haters in feminist clothing. A sentiment often expressed by my wife. Most people do not have careers. We just have jobs.

A slightly spooky bit of cross-posting there, Eileen R.

Simon, The full disclosure of the survey is behind a registration wall, and I don't have any need for yet another such thing; however, while I often think as you've written, I still attempt to withhold judgment until I see their methodology. AAUW may have a vested interest in doing such a survey, but that interest is best served by keeping it as objective as possible. That same interest applies to other groups, and I try to offer them the same benefit of proper methodology. They have no reason to skew the numbers, and that they disclose that "only" one quarter of the gap can be directly attributable to discrimination should prompt you, I would hope, to be willing to give them the benefit of your doubt. Anyway, I think one quarter is still too much to tolerate. But, you probably figured that out already. :)

Also, for the "if it's such a worthwhile thing, why don't men do it" folks - what a mysogenistic mindset! So now I need to measure what's worth doing by what men chose to do or not so? Please. You know, this is an excellent point, and I've always been amazed women don't make it more often. Raising souls is pretty much the top job out there. What job has more impact, more real life-long power than raising kids?
When I go to work at a "wonderful career", my employer don't care one wit about me or my work, which is here today, gone tommorrow. But children will be forever greatful for a great mother who invests in her kids (not that too many mothers invest like this for several generations now. I think we've reached the age when "grandmas cooking" is now worse than moms cooking.) Motherhood is the toughest, highest-skilled, longest lasting and most powerful and important career ever invented (try insulting some guy's beloved mother if you doubt this). Our jails are full of kids from mothers (and fathers) who listened to the modernist bunk about how motherhood doesn't matter. Motherhood makes any other career look like flipping burgers. And it's the most rewarding if done right. How many careers exist where your ex-bosses and ex-clients are at your deathbed as if their world has ended?
Bluntly, Moms rule the world. Why in the hell would they ever want lower themselves to men's roles? Their loss.

I believe that Mr. Dreher wasn't so much degrading working mothers as complaining about Ms. Hirshman degrading stay-at-home moms. As a stay-at-home mom, I often feel extremely discriminated against in my daily life...without the benefit of "minority group" status!

Susan, the sad truth is that we do not have any clear sense of community any more. Those who see the value of your (general) role will reward you as you deserve. Those who have little idea of what community means and less motivation to go out and see it will always be the loudest in their criticisms. Please join me in simply ignoring the loud ones.

Wendell Berry wrote a brilliant essay concerning this very topic. He says that the problem didn't start when women went to work, but when men went to work. There are many families who are returning to home-based businesses that, while they look very different from Berry's agrarian vision, serve many of the same purposes. Men and women need to work towards the same goals, each recognizing the unique gifts the other has to offer.

One reason corporate America may not be eager to hire the 40+ers probably relates to healthcare again. Premiums for health insurance get pretty touchy when we're older. You're probably right. This suggests that age discrimination in hiring might be one of the unintended consequences of our system of employer-based health insurance.
The notion that a worker hired at a later wage won't likely spend so many years working for you and thus might not be worth training and investing in might be another reason why employers are reluctant to hire older workers. In addition, older people with some life experience are more likely to think for themselves and not just swallow the company's line, or be as willing as a 25-year-old to defer to a 40-year-old manager.

Design of new citizens is not less important and interesting work than design of cars or refregirators, imho. Who doesn't understand and respect that work i think it is his big problem. No child can develop into normal personality without mother or someone who loves him as much as her. I remember children aged from 3 to 7 in soviet kindergardens where my brother and me went before school, we had toys and good food, doing morning exercises and classes, but alas no mother's care, at that time mother was sitting at her work swallowing tears and trying not to think about us. In kindergarden it always happens that children who are active by nature surround teacher and take all his attention, those children who were shy were afraid to approach teacher and other classmates, they were hiding behind the window curtains, looking at the road with sad eyes and counting time untill friday when bus will take them to mother for a weekend).not the best pastime for children about 4 or 5, imo. Result of such upbringing variety of problems,from bad developed speech(typical), to irrational fears or inability for normal communicating, psychologically damaged freaks in the worst cases, forever. So if mother has choice it is better to invest in children, i think. Working just few hours a day is a nice perspective, but which employer would like to have such worker, and besides also that worker who is always on 'holidays' for childbirth, i read blog of one young woman who has 7 children and is not going to stop on that number, most likely, what employer would tolerate such worker who gets a child every two years? It's not a work, but a constant holiday! :)

Years ago, when I was pregnant with my first and planning to stay at home, a mother of four told me what to say to the condescenders who ask, "And what do YOU do?" "I'm involved in an experimental project socializing primates," she told me to answer. "I work on language learning, socialization, survival skills -- all constantly being adjusted as needed by the subject."
"Oh, that sounds interesting! Do you have a PhD? Is this for NIH?" She told me to anticipate the blank looks when I pointed out that my job involved homo sapiens, not chimps. To do those things for humans doesn't require any brains, but for chimps you have to be another Noam Chomsky. Unfortunately I've never met with the kind of condescension she anticipated, so I've never been able to use her brilliant plan. I hope some other mother will find it useful!

And what's wrong with doing the easier thing, anyway?

If raising children is so important why is it that hardly a man will give up anything career wise to raise them? One reason not addressed: simple biology. Men can't breast feed. That's the main advantage of having a mother stay with the rugrat. The nutrients and the process of breastfeeding are important to a babies development.

Scott, I join you in automatic skepticism when statistics are involved, especially when the media gets into the filter. Editors are almost as bad as the deliberate spinners (was going to write "spinsters", but...) in their inability to keep content and context together. My comment about giving AAUW a break was simply an application of Occam's Razor. You may not have the direct info to answer this, but it is a pertinent question: in your personal experience, how many of those women got the exact same salary as a man with equivalent experience and background coming into the same positions? If you can assert that the women were getting 100% of what the men were getting, then I'd be willing to accept a correction concerning the pay gap. Hiring and compensating are two very different and separate processes, as I'm sure you know at least as well as I do. :)

In the end, salary gaps and condescending attitudes are just parts of the picture. We have very little communal cohesion across our nation (I hasten to recognize the very strong communities in some locations), where it is so easy to just pick up and relocate 1,000 or more miles away. We've encouraged, passively and unintentionally I'm sure, the notion that community must have a wall around it. That wall can be justified for some things, but in my never humble opinion it does more harm than good. So, my good fellow bloggers and commentators, what say you: can we cure the ill of a lack of community at the national level? Should we even try?

MPS, thank you for sharing your story. To encourage response to my community question, I have one comment. From my POV, there is only one difference between the woman you found to care for your son, and the extended-family member you might have had to do the same: the level of personal acquaintance you have with the person. Consider: paying the woman money is not so different from providing a place to sleep and food to a person in exchange for daytime child care and perhaps a few chores. The need, and the role that fulfills that need, has not changed. Only the mode of exchange has changed.

(continued from last post...) One thing I forgot to mention is that day care in general is MUCH cheaper down here in SC than what my wife's brother and sister-in-law pay in DC ($140 a week vs. $250 or more there), and they have clearly lower standard care than what we are getting. Getting back to my neighbors. We have one family across the street, in a nearly identical house to ours. They have 4 children, ages 1 to 10. The husband is a regional manager for a major big box department store chain. He travels a lot and seems to rarely be home. When he is, he seems to park himself in front of the TV (or even in his car listening to a game) and not really pay attention or care for the kids. The wife does nearly everything. She keeps a stiff upper lip but is clearly stressed out, and has to take antidepressent/anxiety medication. They are not very financially sound, in my opinion. They paid nearly $70,000 more for their house because they included all sorts of features, like appliances, intercom systems (but no alarm?!), high-end hardwood floors (with 4 kids & a dog?), so their mortgage is significantly higher. He definitely makes very good money, into the 6 figures, with mid-5-figure bonuses. But they are $40-50k in credit card debt. Yet they have a brand-new Nissan Armada SUV (which they admittedly need to fit all their 4 kids, oh, and #5 is on the way because the husband didn't do the required follow-up on his vasectomy) and an RV for weeknd summer trips to a nearby lake. They are spending $400/month to get the house cleaned. They spent $100 on the oldest child's Haloween costume. They spend gobs of money in monthly fees on karate classes, but can only logistically manage to take them there every week or two. But most importantly, although the kids are in a sense reasonably well-behaved, they are not well looked after. The two younger kids (1 and 4, but especially the 4-year-old) has often been seen wandering in the street, in cold weather, with just shorts & a t-shirt (no shoes or socks). He has speech problems that hopefully part-time day care in a good local Lutheran church will help. The 1-year-old managed to walk outside their fence and nearly to the nearby lake. The mom has cried to the dad that he is not doing anything and it is affecting their (especially the younger) kids. I have seen him in the car outside listening to a baseball game while his 6-month-pregnant wife is working in the yard potting flowers. During a dinner party at another neighbor's house, it is apparent that he never really wanted that many kids, and hasn't moved beyond that thought. While on the surface, materially speaking, they seem like a nice large suburban family, there is a lot of emotional and financial stress beneath all that. What happens if the husband loses his job? What savings do they have? Do they sell the house? What is this lifestyle built on - what foundation? Contrast this to our other neighbor, with whom we are pretty good friends. The husband works for another big box department store chain, but at a nearby distribution center (no travel). His schedule is unorthodox in that he works 3 13-hour days Sat-Sun-Mon, so he is home Tue-Fri all day. He makes a good high-5-figure salary. They have two kids, 5 and 2. The mom stays at home. While I obviously don't know their full financial picture, they have little to no debt - one car is paid for and the other is leased. Neither had any college debt as they went to low-cost second-tier state schools like Univ. of South Florida and Augusta State (he is also inactive Army, so his degree was paid by the GI Bill). Their splurges are limited to investing a lot in their yard & garden (noble in my opinion), and a boat (which was bought used from her parents). He is quite handy and does a lot of their home improvement projects on his own, with his wife helping out. He put wood borders between the mulch & grass on his own, they plant their own trees, and he has even built his own Adirondack chairs. By contrast, the first family mention plunked down $2000 to have someone do their planting beds. Of course she gets stressed out like any mom would, but seems good at calling and reaching out to friends, including my wife to vent. I cannot emphasize this enough - it is critical that that stay-at-home-parents have some modern version of "porchfront therapy", and behooves SAHMs/SAHDs to use their best social skills to reach our for emotional help when needed - too many think they need to be emotional super-parents and will do whatever it takes to keep the stiff-upper-lip-parent facade. This is even more critical in new exurban housing developments, where social relations are thin and narrow; deeper parental bonds between families need to be made in the absense of traditional extended family structures (I happen to believe that 1950s-style suburban family patterns aren't actually very traditional - extended/joint family structures are the norm in most of the world, and even Western nuclear families didn't always have the husband being so far from home, as Wendell Barry mentioned). My whole point in sharing stories of our families is to note that not all situtations are in black-and-white. As Rod would surely understand in his crunchy-con sensibility, there can be a lot of unhappiness and negativity in living a supposed "family life" in a context of corporate jobs, suburban living, and debt & consumption. "Be fruitful and multiply" is insufficient as an answer to how this type of lifestyle & economy is structured. That doesn't absolve us as parents from our responsibilities, but it does point to how many families, whether they have stay-at-home parents or not, are in some cases making pragmatic decisions suitable for their own situations, and in some cases making imprudent choices that lead to unhappiness.

OTOH, when discussing abortion, Hirchman would no doubt tell us that it's so difficult to give birth to and raise children that it's ok to kill them in the womb.

I'm a stay-at-home Mom. I'm, usually, the first to defend working moms. But, as Rod pointed out, this lady chose to bash the stay-at-homers. I agree with everything that Rod said about a parent staying home with their kids. MPS did a good job illustrating how every situation is different. Every child is, also, different. I think that I could have placed my son into the daycare component of any of the preschools that my son attended, and he would have been fine. He would have thrived. He's a social animal. He responds well to structure and firm limit setting. He loved going to preschool and loves school. He always complained at preschool that he had to leave and others got to stay. Once I had things to do and left him at preschool(in the daycare)until 5PM. I smugly asked him if that was long enough as we were driving home. He said, "No! There were still kids there when I left. Why do I have to leave first?" My son and I are similar in that we are unstructured and disorganized people who require structure to be productive. Thank God for my husband. I think that the lists that he's made for me have saved our marriage. My girls are another story. They thrive in my unstructured and loving environment. They are so imaginative. They play from morning until night. I'm going to have a tough time next year because school is a full day, and they like being at home.
So many factors go into these decisions that it's unfair to make generalizations.

Franklin Evans: ...what say you: can we cure the ill of a lack of community at the national level? Should we even try? Good question. Here's my view: The reason community breaks down is that the people in that community: are not unified and cannot agree on fundamental values. Unity and values are locked together - nobody wants to hang out with people they find morally offensive. My difficulty with your well-meaning position is when you write:
Those who have little idea of what community means and less motivation to go out and see it will always be the loudest in their criticisms....Please join me in simply ignoring the loud ones ...it seems to me you are thus preventing any real community from being built. Why? Because we cannot have community in a culture that is disunified on values, and thus "criticism" is actually what is needed - until we all are in agreement in basic values. I'll give you a hypothetical example; we cannot have a good community unless we stop people from stealing. Statistically we know single mothers have children far more likely to commit crimes. So one interested in unity would argue we cannot have decent community until we wipe out or seriously check single motherhood. Only way to do this, of course, is by law (outlaw sex outside of marriage - theocracy!) or by culture (shame sex outside of marriage - Scarlet Letter!). Now just imagine the howls (well, from well-meaning folk like yourself!) if someone was to broach these subject on this thread. You have already threated to "ignore the loud ones". So many folk just stay quite and snicker when they hear "community", 'cause it ain't gonna happen in the broader culture. We will see more, not less, divisiveness over time. I'm not alone here; many (even most) have thrown in the towel on any real broad community (let alone national) for this reason - we just had every Democratic candidate argue infanticide is a constitutional right for goodness sake! This is why many just create an oasis of community that hold unified values. For example, in the circles I hang with, women don't work - if they had to, sure, but otherwise they don't (even though there are more doctorates and moneymaking degrees among the women of my crowd than the men, a holdover from the last generation). But none work, and if they did by choice wouldn't fit in the community. Bluntly, that's real community: enforcing values. We all homeschool as well to further separate ourselves and our kids from the values gap. It's may sound ugly and restrictive, but it's actually a young, fun-loving people - I think the TFR of our "community" is about 6 right now. And we don't have to deal with the social ills that follow from cultural breakdown. And we are not the only ones. Thousands of others are doing this as well, of all political stripes: liberals, cons, tree-huggers - everyone is hanging out with their own kind due to the values gap. And this value gap cannot be bridged anytime soon. So, you ask, "what say me" about community? Not a snowballs chance in our value hell. Without some sort of a hot cultural war, we will just have to let the Darwinian value game play itself out until everyone who disagrees with needed core values has died off or become a small minority that can be voted off the island. And thanks for asking! You are indeed one of the few who seem to 'get it' that community is indeed at the heart of this discussion.

Two great posts. Franklin, I have little doubt that you're a good part of any community. The problem that we will eventually run into is this: 'I don't need a Commandment to agree that murder or theft is wrong.' How do you know they're wrong, then? This neither a new nor an easy question. But devoid of some fundamental transcendent beliefs, I don't think those commandments have any real meaning or society at large - they become personal preferenes.
If they're just preferences, or dictated by "good manners', how can they possibly unify us in community?

Franklin Evans: ...if you can tolerate my non-Christian manner of expressing the values, and I can tolerate your Christian manner, then why worry about words? I can indeed. However, this would assume we hold the same values, meaning no offense. The words don't matter, but the values do. We can "get along" with different values but never be part of the same community; sort of like the Amish with us English. Peace without mixing. Or, for a nicer-sounding word, multiculturalism. Re: if abortion is the only sticking point in making us allies in building community, then I must truly mourn the loss of your partnership, I think you are not respecting my position enough by trivializing what I view as a life-and-death issue. What would you say if I killed my 3 yo child to improve my quality of life, beat my wife, owned slaves, and then mourned for the loss of your partnership? You would say, man, I mourn too, but there is a moral line I cannot cross, and please respect my values enough to see that. I share Mother Teresa's view of community and abortion: "Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion". So, in my (minority) view, pro-choicers are wrecking any potential community by teaching people it's ok to hate and use violence against our weakest members. I see no middle ground. Another analogy: I can't in good conscience put my money in a declining company I believe is failing. I wish I was wrong. I don't think I am wrong. But I could be wrong. Time will tell. Long live Evanism!

MPS, now it seems i understiood, that family you described is not as much troubled about future of the children as their neighbours, i don't understand at once.

My community revolves around my children, Tovart. It is hard for me to form community with working moms because they aren't around. But I love the community of stay-at-home moms that are in my neighborhood and kid's school. We tend to stay away from hot button issues. I've never asked any of the ladies if they've had an abortion before deciding if they are or are not worthy of my friendship. Common grounds not hard to find. I'm not inviting friends to live with me or marry me, so I don't feel like I need to be all that exclusive with whom I interact. As my kids get older, I might become a little more exclusive if I can't trust that my kids would be appropriately supervised. I have that problem right now with one child. I don't exclude the child from my community, but I limit the time that the child spends with the boy to my house.

M_David, You are right. I did trivialize your position. It was not my intention, but I do owe you an apology for it. Abortion is too complex an issue to cover in a forum like this one, as a multitude of posts over multiple threads attests. I can assure you, at least for myself (and by extension, for anyone I'd care to accept with any level of respect), that a resolution to the abortion situation must be a part of any community discussion, and at any level. If a community places children at the top of the priority list (and a community that doesn't is not one I'd want to live in), then it must be described in one breath as child bearing and rearing. If I am pro-choice (and I am) it is because there is more than one life at stake. Let us skip the many thousands of words needed to distinguish between life-and-death and matters of preference (where, you would find, that you and I are closer to agreement than you might imagine), and cut to the chase: in a culture that punishes women for having children, regardless of what a moral person might say, abortion is going to be part of the reality. [Personal note: I am pushing for brevity in this thread. I am not pushing to quash or suppress anyone's expression of thought or idea. I am creating a brief statement -- our culture punishes women for having children -- in like manner to the statement that abortion is the same as infanticide. Both brief statements carry alot of passion, and leave many questions unanswered. Such is the result of brevity. If you really want to debate either one, ask the questions. In the meantime, please refrain from making assumptions about the person(s) using the statement(s).]

Starrs and David, I think a combined response will cover both of your queries. If not, just ask me to clarify. It is exceedingly difficult to put the following bluntly and politely at the same time, but here goes: The notion of crime predates Christianity, Islam and Judaism, just to name a few of the current list of organized religions. To offer a simple dichotomy of Christian morality vs. personal preference is -- the impolite part -- laughable at best and dangerously arrogant at worst. It allows, for example, a devaluing of any individual who comes to the table sharing your values, but not sharing your religious tradition, regardless of how old their tradition might be. If you want to discuss personal preference as an issue, and I recognize its importance, I'm the last person you want to ask about it. It sounds like a core statement in atheism. I am not an atheist. Harvey, would you like to take a stab at it? Crime is crime whether Jesus said it, Moses saw it written, the Buddha spoke of it, or any of several law-giving deities expressed it through their priests/esses or oracles. The nascent US took a huge leap in trying to express the definitions of crime without deferring to any single, specific source. Non-Christians flock to the US because of that leap, and not because they are eager to convert to Christianity. If you want proof of the power of secular law, there it is right there. The most accurate statement of morality I know of comes from Robert A. Heinlein, the following quoted from his address at the U.S. Naval Academy (5 April 1973), published in EXPANDED UNIVERSE (Ace Science Fiction Books, 1980). Patriotism -- Moral behavior at the national level. Non sibi sed Patria. Nathan Hale's last words: "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." Torpedo Squadron Eight making its suicidal attack. Four chaplains standing fast while the water rises around them. Thomas Jefferson saying, "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed form time to time with the blood of patriots--" A submarine skipper giving the order "Take her DOWN!" while he himself is still topside. Jonas Ingram standing on the steps of Bancroft Hall and shouting, "The Navy has no place for good losers! The Navy needs tough sons of bitches who can go out there an WIN!" Patriotism -- An abstract word used to describe a type of behavior as harshly practical as good brakes and good tires. It means that you place the welfare of your nation ahead of your own even if it costs you your life. There's alot more in that address. I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you (general) read it. It defines my approach to community, at just about every level.

What seems surprising observing Orthodox families...are like fatalists and often their families with a lot of unplanned children... I'm not aware of a single Orthodox area that is not shrinking in population rapidly. Trust me, the Orthodox have certainly discovered birth control - last stats I've heard they are down to 220 million (1/2 of Prots & 1/4 of Caths). No Christian denomination is growing by having children, but the Orthodox are in free fall. Your experience probably involves Orthodox that are "orthodox", as stats bear that any and all "people of the book" (Muslim or Christian) who take their religion seriously tend to have large families even in modern cultures.

David, you ran afoul of my attempt to combine my response. The "personal preferences" part was mentioned by Starrs. The larger point is not a straw man, though. I learned my values from my ex-Jewish mother and ex-Orthodox father, neither of whom mentioned anything about God or their former religions in conveying to me and my siblings the basic requirements of living in a civilized society. My point is that if I say murder is wrong, and my Christian neighbor says murder is wrong, what makes the Christian notion more important -- more valid -- than the secular notion I was taught? To claim that I uphold Christian values because of where I grew up offers no respect to who gave me my values. As M_David put it, you trivialize my background. :(

Franklin, I understand what you were trying to say. I would just point out that your ex-Jewish mother and ex-Orthodox grandfather were not coming out of a vacuum, that whether or not they themselves practice their ancestral religion, they and their values are the product of generations of ancestors who did.

What Heinlein never realized is that patriotism comes from a belief in the holiness of the country. He would grumble about this in his later fiction, inventing parallel timelines where things went according to his plan instead of reality's.

Gee, and some may equate that "patriotism" with territorial instincts, and "community" a byproduct of tribalism.

"Anonymous", An inherent (all puns intended) mechanism in natural selection is that a trait is not only successful, but remains successful over time, or it disappears. If patriotism is a behavioral descendent of territorial instincts, that does not change the fact that patriots are men and women who put a higher value on the lives of others than on their own. One can also draw a connection to tribalism/community, in that self-sacrifice can be expected to benefit the group. The general case is the same; only situationally will there be differences. There is nothing instinctual about patriotism. It is a direct result of the higher reasoning functions. It is a direct contradiction to the basic survival instinct of procreation, because the patriot knows that death will remove his or her genes from future generations (or, in the case of parents, prevent additional children).

There is nothing instinctual about patriotism. It is a direct result of the higher reasoning functions. It is a direct contradiction to the basic survival instinct of procreation, because the patriot knows that death will remove his or her genes from future generations (or, in the case of parents, prevent additional children). LOL. Yeah, and every general before the battle rallies his troops, crying "Forward, Forward, we have to preserve our DNA sequences!"

And without territory, what happens to any procreative attempts those already realized or those projected?

Very interesting, yet.....how is all of this relative to stay-at-home mothers?

In response to the Linda Hirshman NYT editorial regarding whether women should stay home to raise children, I have several observations. As a background, my children are currently 12 and 15. I have worked varying numbers of hours during their childhood, but economic necessity has forced me to work more recently. There are several things Ms. Hirshman left out of her debate. The first is that more fathers are making the choice to be the stay at home parent, although certainly not as many fathers as mothers. Nowhere does she mention her views on whether stay at home dads are wasting their time and talents or setting themselves up for economic disaster. The second is that not all parents can afford quality childcare, which is definitely a factor in why some parents choose to stay home with their children. With more and more families finding it necessary to move away from their extended families to find decent paying jobs, the ability to depend on this source of childcare has also been greatly diminished. I'd also like to know what Ms. Hirshman's opinion of childcare providers is. If stay at home parents are wasting their time and talents caring for their children, what does she think of the people who take care of hers so she can work? Is the fact that they get paid to do this the only thing that makes their contributions worthwhile? I perfectly understand the economic concerns involved when a parent chooses to stay at home or work minimal hours. Been there, done that, and some times have definitely been harder than others financially. But economics should not be the only criteria by which we judge someone's contributions. To paraphrase an old saying, money doesn't buy class -- or intelligence, or integrity, or many other admirable characteristics. According to the tone of Ms. Hirshman's editorial, however, it is the criteria by which many of our most highly educated and influential citizens judge others, and most likely themselves. And we wonder why the fabric of family life is coming apart at the seams.

Well, that's the whole old-school feminist thinking that women should act exactly like men, and that traditionally female roles like motherhood are obviously inferior to traditionally male roles like breadwinner. I would venture that THAT mindset is much more damaging to young girls growing up (Sweetie, you don't matter AT ALL unless you are behaving exactly like men, who by the way are all pigs!) than to daughters being raised by stay-at-home or minimally-employed mothers -- who, might I add, usually are very involved in school, church and community and thus powerfully affect society, at the grass-roots level.
That being said, six-and-half years of stay-at-home momness to three small children very nearly put me over the brink! It was a relief to find a part-time job when they were of school and preschool ages. Perhaps if I was one of the wealthy Wall Street women the author referenced, I could hire a full-time nanny for the little darlings while I played tennis and got facials; I cannot think of any other scenario in which staying home with the kids is "easier" than working!

MPS, I don't know if you're going to read this, but THANK YOU for your extended discussion of "porchfront therapy" and stay-at-home (SAH moms.) What you say has been totally true in my experience. I am personally convinced that women are not generally not "designed" to raise small children alone, in isolation. I have three grown and almost-grown children that I raised at home and (mostly) homeschooled. We live on one income. Many people move to cheaper areas, as MPS describes. This helps with the mortgage, but often takes them away from family/old friend networks. Many of us who have lived in the same community for 25 years can also find that SAH moms are essentially alone all day on a deserted street, depending on where they live. Of course they besiege their husband when he comes home (with consequent problems.) I don't have an answer. The cycle of continuity between generations has been broken by overemphasis on careers, upward mobility, and relocation at the drop of a hat. Perhaps the first step is to simply stay where one lives and treat any existing networks as more valuable than the financial rewards of relocation.
Perhaps living in the same place is the essential beginning for cultivating a "sense of place." Re: the article. The noblesse oblige argument made me laugh - You went to an Ivy? How can you WASTE it? You have a DUTY! Yadda yadda. It's also entirely untrue that one has to be "rich" to have a mom at home. However, what a family does need is medical insurance. That's the big divider. I tell young couples what a wiser, older woman told me 25 years ago - live on the larger of two incomes; save the lower. Buy a house that has a mortgage you can pay on one income. Get used to it. Ironically, her sage advice has been echoed in a book by a Harvard bankruptcy lawyer called The Two-Income Trap - very good discussion from a financial standpoint (no culture wars rhetoric.)

I deal with woman like her all the time.
Now that my children are teen people ask me even more if I will go back to work now. I just tell them no my children need my guidance now more than ever!