- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Olevant has it right. The "traditional stay-at-home mother" is as much a figment of the social right's collective delusions about the past as the days when all kids were respectful in school or the antebellum south of happy slaves working on idyllic plantations.
When confronted with these mythological figures and periods, one really ought to ask when the golden age really was for these people. I've tried that approach when the idea of how far our schools have fallen comes up. They don't know what they want, or won't speak its name. They'll often instinctively go back to the days immediately before integration; pressed about that, they recant and won't commit themselves to anything else.
That's the question Ms. Flanagan should be asked: When did mothers have the lives you imagine they should?
If we want parents to be able to spend more time with their kids, there are economics that need to get dealt with. People work two jobs because of economic pressure. The cost of college, flex time, and so on, would probably come up in any discussion about that situation. "Traditional" values are if anything dismissive of the very things that would put parents in a better position to raise their families in real life. Instead of encouraging those changes, we're meant to be pining for a past that didn't exist?
