And that would be not considering raising children a "real job." If it's not a real job, why do all these working mothers have to PAY someone else to take care of their kids? Someone has to do it, and if it isn't done well that will be very bad on both the individual and societal level.

Your elitism is also truly disgusting to behold. Did it ever occur to you that most people (both men and women) have jobs that are boring and not intellectually stimulating? Not everyone gets paid to spout off about other people's life choices. Making work the center of your life because you're so passionate about it is something that only a tiny percentage of the population is willing or able to do.

What if your job was cleaning rich women's houses all day (like my mother did before I was born)? Can you see how ridiculous your "advice" sounds when someone has a normal blue-collar job? My father was a garbage man who worked two other (menial) jobs so that my mother could raise and school us, and believe me, he did not consider his job to be the most important part of his life.

Just because a woman stays home with children does not mean she isn't having an intellectual life. Have you ever heard of books? Lowly common people like my family now have access to them, and if you have a public library within 50 miles it is your own fault that you are not using your mind. My mother home schooled us using books from the library, and my household was always filled with rigorous intellectual debate, learning, and laughter. I'd say her life would have been considerably poorer if she had dumped me and my siblings in daycare and continued to scrub shit out of toilets to prove that her identity was "not just being a mother."

Your historical knowledge is quite poor, since you can't seem to grasp that throughout our stay on this planet people have worked *in order to provide for and raise their children*. If we weren't continuing our species, there would be no driving force to work. To elevate the means (the job that pays you money) rather than the end (a rich and happy family life with your offspring) is clearly the product of a rigid mind that cares more about ideology than anything resembling reality for billions of women.

I'm surprised I don't see more mention in any sphere of the having-it-all option -- creating a home business and working at it while you're home with your kids.

This is not wholly optimal either for business or for kids -- my business would be much more productive without a toddler to manage, and the toddler would probably have more fun if I took him out to the playground instead of sitting at a computer most of the day and playing with cars with him when he brings them to me -- but given that there isn't time in a life to literally have it all, I've found it to be an excellent option. I make less money than I did when I was working for Da Man, but I also put in a hell of a lot fewer hours. I get to spend the entire day with my son. Now that my daughter has been born, I am typing this with her breastfeeding on my lap, two weeks after her birth, with no strain on me except the need to put a pillow on my desk chair. I may choose to put my son in a good preschool-style day care because he strongly desires to socialize and play with other children, but I don't *have* to -- I can make the decision based on what's best for him rather than what's best for my work. When people ask what I do for a living I can say "Database administration and web consulting" rather than "I'm a stay-at-home mom", the magic words that turn women invisible, and if and when I go back to working for Da Man, I'll have years of an IT consulting position on my resume, rather than a big baby gap. I get to make money, keep my skills sharp, keep my husband from *entirely* acting like an ass about how all the money that comes in comes from him, since it doesn't, stay visible in the public sphere, and at the same time I also get to save money on child care, breastfeed freely, and spend time with my smallest children.

Obviously this is not an option for everybody, but I don't think it's a largely unused option, either. I have heard that most self-employed women make less money than they would have gotten from working for The Corporation, and I suspect it's because they're all doing what I'm doing -- they're splitting their time between family and business so they can keep a hand in both worlds, and it's not about the money so much as it is about maintaining public credibility in a world that denigrates stay-at-home mothers.

Hirshman wants to take away people's control over their own lives in favor of her own vision of what the world should be like. She is as scary as anything on the far right.

Ummm. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see Hirshman advocating any sort of legislation to require that women work. I see her expressing a viewpoint, putting out an opinion. That isn't an attempt to take away anyone's choices. What makes the far right so scary is that they *do* try to legislate their opinions.

As to Hirshman's points? I both understand where she's coming from, think that, at this point in time, she is correct, and disagree with some of her valuations.

Look, there are two seperate realms here: the realm of how we'd like things to be, and the realm of what actually is. Making feminist choices in the realm of what actually is often necessitates that we make the personal into the political, that we deal with the fact that we live in a capitalist society, and that we restrain our personal desires in order to make advances.

Sorry, folks, but in this world, not every choice is a feminist choice. It might be, at some juncture, when the world has changed sufficiently. However, you can't choose to be a madam, to traffic in women's bodies, in this political structure and whine about how it's your choice, and that makes it feminist. You can't take your husband's name for tradition's sake only and call that a feminist choice. You can't pay 10K for the "perfect" set of titties and call that a feminist choice. Yes, these are all choices, but they aren't feminist choices. And this, I think, is one of the reasons that feminism is currently losing such ground. We've become far too complacent, and far too timid.

We can certainly discuss if SAHMs are making feminist choices or not. I think it's up for debate, but the debate seems a bit weighted on the side of it not being a feminist choice.

However, let's not pillory someone for making a brave and radical argument. That's exactly the kind of discussion we need as a movement, the kind of discussion we've been letting fall through the cracks.