Stay-At-Home Moms Rule The World!
“Walk away from anyone who believes that ‘boys will be boys’ and that women are supposed to be mothers because we’re nothing but ambulatory incubators.”
That’s advice from Lara Witt in her article titled 10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask On a First Date. That specific counsel relates to question number 3: How do you work to dismantle sexism and misogyny in your life?
(A fascinating question I admit, but one that I feel is better fit — not for the first date — but for the form one fills out during the screening process to get a first date, with Miss Witt. )
And although I can’t know for certain what the “boys will be boys” section of her mandate refers to, I assume that Lara is advising women to not date men who behave recklessly towards women. O.K., agreed. And if that were the extent of question 3’s instruction I would find the advice as uninteresting as it is obvious. But there’s something about the second half of her edict that thinly veils a disdain I sense she feels towards motherhood. Her “tell” reveals itself when she continues by exhorting women to walk away from anyone who believes “that women are supposed to be mothers because we’re nothing but ambulatory incubators.” In that dictum I can’t help but sense a severe case of projection, because what swath of the population actually thinks women are “nothing but ambulatory incubators”? Where is this congregation of medievals who stump for rewriting the dictionary to include this following one-word definition?
Wo∙man∙hood (eng.) noun 1. babymaker
But that question is trivial compared to my follow up:
What’s wrong with making babies?
Although admittedly I have to step out on the ledge and interpret a stranger’s intent (always a dangerous proposition, sometimes fatal) here goes: Lara thinks that women who devote their lives to motherhood are selling themselves short. She uses the term “ambulatory incubators” because somewhere inside of her she considers motherhood mere incubation; a waste of 9 months that could be spent doing something much more useful… like being an intersectional feminist. That’s pure speculation though, I can’t prove it; but for the sake of investigating my theory let us concede that, if not Lara, then there are certainly others who do look down on motherhood as a trivial profession, entered into by women who don’t understand that they’re being played by the patriarchy.
To that class of jurists I would like to extend a special screw you and make the claim that, far from being passive actors in feminism’s march towards an egalitarian ideal…
STAY-AT-HOME-MOMS RULE THE WORLD!
And no I didn’t write “stay-at-home moms” because I’m blind to the necessity many very excellent mothers have or feel, to enter the labor force. I’m not denigrating mothers — especially single-mothers — who hustle heroically outside of the home to provide for their brood. I tip my hat specifically to the stay-at-home moms simply because, every now and then, someone should.
Although from what I gather by reading society’s tea leaves, I’m not supposed to do that. Rumor has it that men are no longer supposed to put women on a pedestal because it’s patronizing or… not intersectional, or whatever. And fine, I will not dispute that theory because… whatever. Just know that the only reason I have not yet placed motherhood on a pedestal is because I can’t find a 3,000 story pedestal. After doing the math it turns out that motherhood deserves no less than 3,000 stories worth of pedestal. That’s the bare minimum, anything less would be an insult.
So in lieu of a pedestal I will merely salute the troops who engage in motherhood. Women who willingly enlist in that line of work, knowing full well the war that baby is going wage on their innards as well as the infant’s exit strategy, deserve Normandy-beach-storming-level medals. No amount of inebriation would be sufficient for me to engage in any activity that could end in nine months of gestation; so on Day 1 of Motherhood I concede that moms have heroically signed up for a draft that I would dodge at all costs.
But the incubation is just the beginning, and often times the easiest part of motherhood. The real work begins when the baby draws it first breath and begins making explicit demands on its mother’s time, day after day, year after year, stopping only to sleep. The subordination of the mother’s will to attend to the needs of an infant and then a toddler, a child and then a young man or woman, constitutes the necessary labor of the noblest vocation on planet earth. So when a woman is asked what she does for a living and replies with “Oh, I just stay at home with the kids,” as if “staying home with the kids” naturally belonged alongside the word “just,” I want to stop what I’m doing and give said mother a standing ovation. I want to slip a red carpet under her feet, put a scepter in her right hand, part the clouds so a ray of sunshine can illuminate her brow, call down a host of hallelujahing angels and on bended knee, with arms outstretched, shout “What were you thinking when you used the word just?”
A mother who looks upon her life’s work of child rearing as something less important than what some employee does when he or she builds another bridge across a river or designs a new type of catheter, sings another lame song or throws a game-winning touchdown, dramatically miscalculates her own value. The act of child creation alone is a bit of biological wizardry that shames anything Gandolf ever achieved in his finest “You shall not pass!” moment. But the careful rearing of that child into productive adulthood relegates the act of child creation to “mere” status. (Lots of women have earned the title of “Procreator,” fewer deserve the title of “Mother.”) A mother who successfully navigates another human through life’s shoals but feels like she missed out on doing something really important is like the 5 star opera singer who flawlessly belts out the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman, but who then looks at some former cast member of Jersey Shore beat box and feels depressed because “It’s too bad I never learned how to do that.”
I know that vast swaths of society don’t share my view of motherhood. And I’d wager that many people see the abolition of home economics classes from High School curriculum as a sign of society’s slow march towards enlightenment. Those same people probably view the fact that I nostagically typed the words “home economics classes,” as a sign that I’m a cro-magnon. And that’s cool. I accept the fact that I may not belong here anymore. But here’s a photo of my Mom, Loraine.
That’s advice from Lara Witt in her article titled 10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask On a First Date. That specific counsel relates to question number 3: How do you work to dismantle sexism and misogyny in your life?
(A fascinating question I admit, but one that I feel is better fit — not for the first date — but for the form one fills out during the screening process to get a first date, with Miss Witt. )
And although I can’t know for certain what the “boys will be boys” section of her mandate refers to, I assume that Lara is advising women to not date men who behave recklessly towards women. O.K., agreed. And if that were the extent of question 3’s instruction I would find the advice as uninteresting as it is obvious. But there’s something about the second half of her edict that thinly veils a disdain I sense she feels towards motherhood. Her “tell” reveals itself when she continues by exhorting women to walk away from anyone who believes “that women are supposed to be mothers because we’re nothing but ambulatory incubators.” In that dictum I can’t help but sense a severe case of projection, because what swath of the population actually thinks women are “nothing but ambulatory incubators”? Where is this congregation of medievals who stump for rewriting the dictionary to include this following one-word definition?
Wo∙man∙hood (eng.) noun 1. babymaker
But that question is trivial compared to my follow up:
What’s wrong with making babies?
Although admittedly I have to step out on the ledge and interpret a stranger’s intent (always a dangerous proposition, sometimes fatal) here goes: Lara thinks that women who devote their lives to motherhood are selling themselves short. She uses the term “ambulatory incubators” because somewhere inside of her she considers motherhood mere incubation; a waste of 9 months that could be spent doing something much more useful… like being an intersectional feminist. That’s pure speculation though, I can’t prove it; but for the sake of investigating my theory let us concede that, if not Lara, then there are certainly others who do look down on motherhood as a trivial profession, entered into by women who don’t understand that they’re being played by the patriarchy.
To that class of jurists I would like to extend a special screw you and make the claim that, far from being passive actors in feminism’s march towards an egalitarian ideal…
STAY-AT-HOME-MOMS RULE THE WORLD!
And no I didn’t write “stay-at-home moms” because I’m blind to the necessity many very excellent mothers have or feel, to enter the labor force. I’m not denigrating mothers — especially single-mothers — who hustle heroically outside of the home to provide for their brood. I tip my hat specifically to the stay-at-home moms simply because, every now and then, someone should.
Although from what I gather by reading society’s tea leaves, I’m not supposed to do that. Rumor has it that men are no longer supposed to put women on a pedestal because it’s patronizing or… not intersectional, or whatever. And fine, I will not dispute that theory because… whatever. Just know that the only reason I have not yet placed motherhood on a pedestal is because I can’t find a 3,000 story pedestal. After doing the math it turns out that motherhood deserves no less than 3,000 stories worth of pedestal. That’s the bare minimum, anything less would be an insult.
So in lieu of a pedestal I will merely salute the troops who engage in motherhood. Women who willingly enlist in that line of work, knowing full well the war that baby is going wage on their innards as well as the infant’s exit strategy, deserve Normandy-beach-storming-level medals. No amount of inebriation would be sufficient for me to engage in any activity that could end in nine months of gestation; so on Day 1 of Motherhood I concede that moms have heroically signed up for a draft that I would dodge at all costs.
But the incubation is just the beginning, and often times the easiest part of motherhood. The real work begins when the baby draws it first breath and begins making explicit demands on its mother’s time, day after day, year after year, stopping only to sleep. The subordination of the mother’s will to attend to the needs of an infant and then a toddler, a child and then a young man or woman, constitutes the necessary labor of the noblest vocation on planet earth. So when a woman is asked what she does for a living and replies with “Oh, I just stay at home with the kids,” as if “staying home with the kids” naturally belonged alongside the word “just,” I want to stop what I’m doing and give said mother a standing ovation. I want to slip a red carpet under her feet, put a scepter in her right hand, part the clouds so a ray of sunshine can illuminate her brow, call down a host of hallelujahing angels and on bended knee, with arms outstretched, shout “What were you thinking when you used the word just?”
A mother who looks upon her life’s work of child rearing as something less important than what some employee does when he or she builds another bridge across a river or designs a new type of catheter, sings another lame song or throws a game-winning touchdown, dramatically miscalculates her own value. The act of child creation alone is a bit of biological wizardry that shames anything Gandolf ever achieved in his finest “You shall not pass!” moment. But the careful rearing of that child into productive adulthood relegates the act of child creation to “mere” status. (Lots of women have earned the title of “Procreator,” fewer deserve the title of “Mother.”) A mother who successfully navigates another human through life’s shoals but feels like she missed out on doing something really important is like the 5 star opera singer who flawlessly belts out the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman, but who then looks at some former cast member of Jersey Shore beat box and feels depressed because “It’s too bad I never learned how to do that.”
I know that vast swaths of society don’t share my view of motherhood. And I’d wager that many people see the abolition of home economics classes from High School curriculum as a sign of society’s slow march towards enlightenment. Those same people probably view the fact that I nostagically typed the words “home economics classes,” as a sign that I’m a cro-magnon. And that’s cool. I accept the fact that I may not belong here anymore. But here’s a photo of my Mom, Loraine.
Except for a few excursions into the workforce she stayed at home and raised my siblings and I. My own wife Cynthia is doing the same. I thank God for Loraine and I thank Him again for Cynthia.
Stay-at-home moms rule the world.
Stay-at-home moms rule the world.
