RATIONALIZE

Let's go back to the Godly writings of Mrs. Graglia who is like a breath of fresh air compared to the Morris's. She writes: "The attempt to rationalize this change -- even to make it appear for the better -- spawned that most ironic phrase 'quality time' to describe those moments a working mother spends with her child. It is as if the phrasemakers thought a mother fresh from her day in the marketplace would infuse those moments with a vim, vigor, and verve that would readily surpass the anemic exertions to be expected from the type of woman who chooses to stay at home. In child care there is no quality without quantity. Most mothers who have competently provided the full-time daily care of their children know that spokesmen for the 'helping professions' who employ the jargon of 'quality time' (now blessedly in waning use) are either blinded by their commitment to feminist ideology or have no grasp of the depth of the interactions that can occur with one's children during the course of an ordinary day at home."

Feminization of Males

"To understand how the women's movement so readily achieved its goal of vastly reducing the number of full-time homemakers, it is necessary to identify the seeds from which women's discontent grew and which blossomed into the women's movement. One factor, the increasing feminization of males, is doubly significant. It contributed to women's disenchantment with a traditional female role -- a role that most women cannot find satisfying without the support and encouragement of a masculine man -- and it helped dispose large numbers of men to endorse feminist goals. Ten percent more men than women supported the women's movement in 1972, and more men than women supported the Equal Rights Amendment in 1978. The alacrity with which so many men acceded to feminist demands, no matter how illogical or outrageous, evidenced an emasculation which itself contributed to the discontent fueling the movement.

SEA CHANGE

"A sea change had occurred in men who only two decades before had taken pride in their ability to provide for wife and children. With scarcely a whimper, many males accepted the new androgyny and capitulated to the very feminist demands which have impaired their earning ability. Then, they too encouraged their wives to leave children hostage to the vagaries of surrogate care and pursue the economic opportunities which would spare husbands from assuming the now apparently overwhelming role of breadwinner." The result has been what is now called a fatherless society. Even President Clinton has said that this is our greatest problem declaring, "The single biggest problem in our society may be the growing absence of fathers from their children's homes, because it contributes to so many other problems."

The Marketplace Culture

She ways our society values "male achievements in the marketplace more highly than female contributions as wife and mother."

DIFFERENCE FEMINISTS

"Western men's tendency to overrate their market accomplishments now prevails almost wholly unchecked by feminine counter-balance. Society has largely acquiesced in feminism's championing of this male view is overtly hostile to any defense of traditional femininity. Feminine counterbalance does not lie, as some would argue, in the efforts of 'difference' feminists (so-called Gilliganism) to reconstruct workplaces and reevaluate scholarship to reflect a distinctive female voice. The goal of difference feminists is not to affirm the worth of domesticity and child-rearing activities, but rather to domesticate, as it were, the workplace. Having relegated home and children to surrogates' care, they attempt to create a surrogate domestic haven for themselves within the marketplace -- what I call the 'feminist playpen.'"

She says some would say that "the canvases of Titian and Rembrandt" are greater than the best of women's quilts but "in the sense of what counts most in life quiltmaking can indeed trump Titian."

"It is now considered fatuous to question the view of male professionals that the ideal wife should be a clone of themselves and their workplace colleagues, clones who may also be expected to produce offspring without genuinely interfering with their market work. A woman who would assume only the roles of wife and mother is seen as inherently uninteresting and undesirable.'"

She says she and her husband knew a man who divorced his wife because she was too homey and writes, "Such a view is a dramatic change from attitudes prevailing just forty years ago when the home and its activities were at least as important as the workplace. Social conversations then were supposed to be concerned with subjects other than one's work. It was once thought the mark of a very limited intellect if one's conversation turned more than briefly to workplace affairs; even in the most intellectual milieu a wife who was fairly well-read and apprised of current events could be a completely satisfactory companion and conversationalist.

"The fact that so many in our society -- especially trend-setting intellectuals -- have narrowed their interests to the world of work seriously inhibits family formation and maintenance of a satisfying family life. For a man to tell his wife that in order to interest him she must act as he does means she must perform market, at the expense of domestic, activities. This preoccupation with the public world of the marketplace requires devoting herself to what a traditional woman views as the most peripheral and ephemeral aspects of life and shunting aside the private world of family relations once considered the stabilizing center of mankind's deepest concerns."

CENTER OF LIFE

"Although my husband and I both practiced law ( and participated in First Amendment obscenity litigation, probably as interesting as any), our dinner conversation scarcely depended on our having both devoted ourselves to that work. When a man has worked all day on any intellectual activity -- and frequently, as many lawyers do, nights and weekends as well -- does he really want to devote his leisure conversation to detailed analyses of that same topic? Even if he does, why should it be necessary that his companion also participate in such activities in order to discuss them intelligently? Only those who have for too long taken themselves and their market activities too seriously could possibly think so. We once thought -- and maintained more stable marriages when this was the case -- that current events or what the children or the dog or cat did that day were matters more at the center of life."

Men, she says, are the real reason why the feminist movement has taken over the minds of society. Men have embraced feminism and "made possible the great success of the women's movement. Men will continue to relinquish the field to feminism until they learn a response that will affirm the value of women who perform a traditional role. If men fail, they leave women no choice but to travel a feminist path to seek affirmation of their worth. This path, a man should understand, is extremely demanding and can leave very little of the woman for him or their children."

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