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What bothers me most about Ms. Flanagan is not what she demands of modern women (although that is irritating too), but that she is seemingly making these demands in a financial vacuum. What is so glaringly ignorant about this author's opinions (which Ms. Walsh mentions in her peice) is that most women cannot afford Catherine Flannagan's flamboyant rejection of feminism. I'm sure the nanny who garners so much jealously from Ms. Flanagan would love the luxury of staying home. Ms. Flanagan clearly sees no issue with making this woman (in her opinion) a bad mother by employing her to take care of her children, thereby depriving her of time with her own.
Ms. Flanagan does nothing to deal with the real issues of feminism, the same ones missed by Ms. Freidan and her ilk: that the burdens of poor women and women of color are often afterthoughts in the discussion of what feminism is and who women should be. If Ms. Flanagan is truly saying that women who work are not as good at mothering as their stay-at-home counterparts, then she is also saying by extesion that poor women (who often simply have to work) are not as good at mothering as their richer counterparts. Ms. Flanagan comes off as living an insular and selfish existence and not being in the position to give advice to any of us on what it means to be a woman or a mother.
