Women and men both should strive to do in life the thing that they enjoy the most and that interests them the most and that they are good at doing once they have figured out what that is and however long it takes to figure that out. Society as a whole should work to subsidize schools and whatever else it takes to make that possible for mostly everyone. It would help that process a lot if we put all the warmongers like the Bushies in jail so that society could afford to constantly improve itself.

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Very powerful and articulate. I already feel better knowing that someone is opening a dialogue about this.

Sadly we live in a world where in spite of the achievements of feminism, there is still a significant wage gap between men and women.

The major problem I see today is that although women have advanced themselves in the workplace, in the salary scales, as contributing human beings, there seems to be an urge on behalf on major media players in downplaying women's achievements. Recent stories on how successful women make terrible wives/mothers; women struggling to have it all (job/husband/baby) have marginalised women further and limited the scope for ambition. Why is it these articles exist? There is not one article expressing how successful men make terrible husbands/fathers etc because it's assumed that a man is man through the job that he does and the money he earns. A man's success is not measured through his "success" within the family sphere, so why should a woman's? Why are women encouraged to "have it all"? Why not simply encourage women to succeed in areas outside of their assumed biological imperative?

This kind of thinking objectifies women further into yet again being a vessel for men, rather than an independent, successful and ambitious individual.

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One quote from the article if most revealing; "wishing for an ideal world is just an excuse for not engaging the world as it exists." It seems that the content of the article was about wishing and hoping along with blaming and resentment. As for the world as it exists I read little that would give me only a limited view of that world. And this view is basically us against them. That is not the world that I know exists.

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by continually talking about WOMEN (and never about men, unless it is in a bad way) you are doing your part to show Americans that Liberalism is for women, and therefore that conservatism is for men.

THAT'S the way to help the upper class divide and rule!

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I really appreciate this article. I have seen too many bright and creative women lose all confidence in their "public" selves after a few years in the home with the kids. These women's lives are run by toddlers, and they mildly complain, but don't go out and make a public life for themselves. If they are doing "the most important job in the world" why do they have a nagging sensation of being unfulfilled? And what message is being conveyed to the kids?

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I agree with Hirshman that work in the public sphere ought to be every woman's experience, but it seems a little premature to talk about changing the fundamental order of things until we can take ourselves seriously. If I read one more story praising some Ivy-educated woman who has decided to stay home and tend the kiddies, I think I'll puke. What a waste! Schools ought to be looking for more young women who will use the education they receive, even if they can't pay full tuition. If your daddy pays all your school bills and your husband can pay the rest, why bother?

Just recently a therapist friend said she realized how much richer women who had experienced consciousness-raising were psychologically than her younger clients who never had that experience. Maybe we need to bring back those groups.

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The problem is the way America raises its daughters...They are taught from a very yound age to help their mothers in the kitchen, to be nurturing towards their siblings, and eventually to support male athletes on high school fields as cheer-leaders...They are taught to be in the shadows, in a supportive role...never to be in the front taking lead...

Unless American family changes the way it riases its daughters, nothng will change.

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So if Ph.D.'s don't wipe their children's butts, who will? As a Ph.D.--who not only wipes butts but also changes colostomy bags, changes cat litter, and cleans up after puppies my children adore, all in the course of being a loving parent--I find it insulting to suggest these are appropriate jobs for some and not for others. Isn't it stunningly elitist to suggest that there are jobs beneath me because I have an education? I truly believe that all work has value, and particularly when it comes to my children there is NO JOB I would not do gladly.

Oh, and my wife, who is also a Ph.D., agrees with me.

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Ms. Hirschbaum has indicated that she'd be interested in hearing an argument that proves raising children is the most important thing a person can do. I believe that the argument presents itself in the form of values passed on to the children for the continuation of the society. If no one raised the children, there would be no values-including those espoused by Ms. Hirschbaum.

Further, as a man who would rather stay home and raise his children than work in the traditional work force, I believe that the statement that: men don't do it, therefore its not important, is ludicrous.

I value each person's right to express their opinion, but to express such opinion as fact when the evidence of the world runs contrary to the opinion, is zealotry.

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Exciting ideas; I definitely want to read more of what you have to say, as I think this is just a snapshot. Critique: you see success as a bigger piece of the American apple pie, genetically modified and stuffed with trans fatty acids and high fructose corn syrup, and fail to see the wider world. A public life is very important, but raising children is the most important job there is. The problem is one of degree and you have too many of them (stupid pun).

Infants and toddlers need care, and parental care is probably the best (otherwise you end up like George Bush whose parents were too important to change his diapers and hired teenagers to nanny). Otherwise kids develop neuroses and waste much of their lives filling those bottomless holes.

Kids need attention so they are picked up when they get hurt and so they don’t get abused. Or they end up like the teen moms who have such big holes in their souls they see no hope but having kids.

Once kids are five or seven or ten, parents need to back off and let them live, or rather they need to back off and live their own lives. Get a life in the public sphere, yes. Be multidimensional, don’t let family rule everything, have friends, hobbies, practical work (cooking, house repair, decorating, music) AND a public professional life. But part of being multidimensional is changing diapers, is gardening and knowing where food comes from, is caregiving for the less fortunate and the elderly (changing diapers of elders!).

We’ve made a crystal palace out of our privileges. The world can see us but we rarely see the world. Being a PhD does not mean you get to rest on your laurels, it means you’ve taken a lot of more than your share and need to pay it back. And writing books and articles is great, but a bit overspecialized, don’t you think? I like the shock value of “PhDs shouldn’t change diapers,” and “CEOs should be forced to change diapers” has already been said. Instead of being handed a piece of pie, all need to earn it by multilayered work. Otherwise our understanding of eachother is only skin deep.

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My impression of Ms. Hirshman's position as it is represented in this article, I have not yet had an opportunity to read her book, is one that although it briefly mentions the conditions that may lead women to opt-out I still feel puts the blame on this "failure of feminism" on the women who choose to leave work for the home rather than the conditions that cause these decisions. Ms. Hirshman mentions the problem of the "second shift" the fact that women who work still end up doing 70% of the housework at home but she does not put forth any ideas or sense of conviction about addressing this issue. In fact by dismissing the idea that "raising children is the most important job in the world" by recounting all the things that historically men have, presumably rightly, preferred to do and her apparent disgust over Ph.D.s "wiping butts" certainly does nothing to encourage men to take over some of these tasks. Demeaning child-rearing and the work of maintaining a home is certainly not a way to gain equal participation. Although she does mention in her interview that because of the extra demands on women it can be hard to excel as well as men in the business world but quickly transitions to women not taking their job seriously. While women who don't take their job or preparing for graduate school seriously are mentioned several times in the piece women not being taken seriously at work is barely glanced at. Many women, particularly young women enter their first job to discover an endless stream of sexual and demeaning comments, many are vague enough or not severe enough to merit a sexual harassment suit and complaints to HR are not well received others come from a companies clients or vendors, those out of the purvue of sexual harassment suits. They are shut down at meetings, treated like children, their ideas are rejected only to be accepted moments later when parroted back by a man. This is not true in every business or every part of a company but it is true for too many women. I am not a stay at home mother nor do I intend to be for a variety of reason. I am very concerned however when I see articles like these who see women who after sometimes decades of enduring the exhausting second shift, the sexual comments, and a devaluing of their work which often leaves them stuck in "service" positions like secretaries, assistants, etc, decide to "opt-out" to work in the home as the problem without really addressing the realities of the work world many women live in or putting much of the blame on the men who do not help out at home or the corporations who could care less about their employees family responsibilities. Ms. Hirshman talks about making a place for women in the world we have and not an ideal world, but yet she does not seem to consider the realities that whether or not we spend the day doing brain surgery or painting the next Last Supper, when we come the laundry and vacuuming are not magically done. She does not consider the reality that while kids get out of school at two or three many lawfirms and businesses keep their employees in the office until seven, eight, or nine at night. Women are not going to have fully realized private and public lives because of a political philosopher scoldings or because opting out makes some people "want to puke." They will not have them until child rearing and family life is actually valued by this society in more than just rhetoric and not dismissed as less than "putting the dome on St. Peter's cathedral." When society has greater value for the wiping of bottoms by Ph.D.s or others then perhaps men will do a little more of the housework and companies will not have a "mommy track". Until then don't blame the women who had to find a place for themselves in the world we really do live in and chose the home. Imagine the uproar if we suggested it was wrong for a woman to choose not to have children because of her career. Why are we so quick to accuse when it is the other way around?

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I'm from a family of PhD's (though I didn't choose that path). We've all wiped plenty of butts.

I'm a stay at home dad, music director for a church, my wife's a teacher. I'm lucky to be able to take care of my kids, and while no one enjoys the nitty-gritty of childcare all that much, I think it's a load of crap that the working world is the repository of meaning for any of us. The author has bought the goal of our mercantilist culture: reduce everyone to their usefulness to the system.

Life is for living, not measuring, and not winning.

Quit trying to tell people what should be important to them, and go back to your office and get ready to teach your next class, if that world is the one you feel is important.

It's very easy for a college prof to tell any of us, women or men, that work is where the meaning is. Might not feel so sure about that if you were picking tomatoes for piece rate, or waiting tables for tips, or working in a factory, or sitting in a cubicle taking customer service calls.

This kind of stuff is guaranteed to drive a deeper wedge between progressives and the rest of the country. People want justice, they share our concern for the environment and for civil rights, but they don't want to be told their lives are indaequate and ignorant: who does?

Basically, I could have said this all much quicker: fuck off, and let me take care of my family.

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Even Gandhi cleaned the latrine. The type of elitism that is promoted in this interview is the very thing that creates separation and deterioration in a society. Why separate people into these categories? This spewing of, I'm too good to change diapers, is more about pampering an ego than empowering women. This type of feminism that Hirshman is spewing takes a society into a downward spiral. Inclusiveness of all professions will build a society. Exclusiveness is what dictatorships are made of.

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I still think this analysis was a little glib -- yes, it is a waste of resources when someone highly qualified does work below his or her skill level, but we do not see a real gender argument evolving here. Men can go ahead and clean up those behinds, as my husband did, and it doesn't imperil their reputation or employability nearly as much as when women do it. In fact, as a former member of academics, watching my children grow is the reverse image of watching my career -- and not because I didn't perform, but because women, on the basis of their gender, are more likely to be criticized -- for everything, and having an open path, like parental responsibility, makes a woman far too susceptible to this criticism. I was actually told by my chair, when I was relieved of one job, that I had "changed" in the two years following my stellar former evaluation -- yes, I had had a child, but I was getting published and was a prominent member of my profession. At my next job, there simply weren't any mothers getting tenure -- smart ones waited, got tenure, then had babies, a complete anomaly in the biological arena. I would have liked to have seen what a great accomplishment it is to actually have and raise children while continuing to work at full capability, but doesn't seem to happen in my field anyway. The real problem is keeping those highly qualified positions AND being supported while wiping baby butts.

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I suppose the writer is herself an "air fern" who neither eats nor drinks, nor (gasp!) defecates. (har!)

If she is ever in the hospital, incapacitated, will she think the highly educated medical personnel who tend to her (including, perhaps, wiping her butt) are doing work that is beneath them? No, I don't think so.

Other than the silly, elitist remark about butts, this was a pretty good article. It's high time we revisited the feminist debate. (I suppose a good deal more silliness will be an unavoidable concomitant of it.)

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We're not talking about MALE PhD's or stay at home white fathers!!! We're talking about WOMEN. The article was about WOMEN not men. Why is it that the white male's start whining because an article dares to confront the status quo of women in society and excludeds them? It's not about you! You're already in charge, don't you understand that? You don't have to be a PhD to be in charge and the president of the US is a prime example.

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Hirshman's comments are "meant to provoke." What if a butt-wiping PhD like me just didn't bother being provoked?

This is a dogmatic second-wave feminist argument that Kim Gandy of NOW called "a minority viewpoint." Hirshman has had about six month's of air time with this book, but the so-called Mommy Wars haven't materialized.

This is one woman trying to assert her choice as moral for other women. If we let this BE the argument, then we are letting her set the agenda. This is one voice among many. I can listen to her voice, but I might be wiping my child's butt while I do it.

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I bid you to look at the article on meat industry workers, a male-dominated field, and how they are underpaid and misused. It even mentions on of the great men of American Literature.
Obama, Feingold, Gore, Murtha, and Edwards are all men and all a frequent focus of articles and opinion pieces.
AlterNet ran a piece on the right of men to reject the responsibility of child support.
There are all kinds of articles about the troops in Iraq. While some have focussed on the experiences of women, the pieces that are not explicitly about women are nearly 100% about the experiences of men.
Hilary Clinton is criticized. Barbara Boxer is mentioned rarely, and she's one of the more reliable liberal Senators.
Today's authors are Charlie, Sheldon, Eric, Mateo and Mindy. I only see one woman on that list.

The facts speak for themselves. The men who claim AlterNet marginalizes men from the left are either liars or deluded. In any case, they want to see women marginalized further. 1 writer in 5 who is a woman is too much for them. One story in five about women is too much for them.

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"I want to have a social conversation about it."... Yes, this is refreshing to hear. An actual critique ~not just sound bites and aphorisms to coddle women and reassure men.
My son is four years old and I feel I no longer meet all his intellectual and social needs. I will be going back to work to offset the cost of private education for him. He is one year away from being accepted at a public school. Because I lack a college degree I will earn pretty much just enough to pay for his education and gymnastics and piano lessons. I could never provide these things for him if I were a single mother (at my education and income level). Raising kids is so darned important because, forgive the overused phrase, they are the future. He is tomorrow's adult. I hope I am raising him to be part of the solution to the world's problems. I realize I speak as tho I am a single mother- even tho I am not. ~ But I am the one who spends 24/7 with him. While my husband works full time and teaches at night just to make ends meet. My husband is jealous of me that I get to spend so much time with our son and sometimes he is very hard on me as a result.
What I am getting at is that Families Need this conversation to liberate both men and women. To proceed consciously to an agreeable future for (today's) boys and girls.
Thanks for a refreshing discussion of this Unresolved imperative.

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Ms. Hirschman must lead a very sad life if she gets her feeling of worth from her work. Freedom to make our own choices is true equality. This article is full of victim mentality - women "must" do this and that because men have made our society the way it is. My husband stays home with our kids and I work full time. I make more money, hence our decision. We both work hard and our feelings of worth come from many arenas of life. Why do I need to work for people to benefit from my skills? If we manage to build and maintain a happy family life, isn't that a health and intellectual benefit for all of us?

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My mother worked all her life. My father too of course.
I was raised by my grandparents.
I learned their values, morals, and tastes.
They read books to me, told me stories, we worked in the garden, went on picnics, went camping, had long talks and great adventures.
I deeply loved my grandparents.


When my mother died...I felt no deep grief.
I did not really know her. She was always at work.
And her dying words to me were about her job.

This is a complex issue of course. Economics, Sexism, Social Structure...and so on. But our most important work is our children. They are the future. That this is not practiced in our society today...does not make it less true. If they don't learn what love is...well look at the results of our world today.

What we all need is meaningful work that involves the children.
We need a new kind of society.
Women joining the old one is no solution.

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"Hirshman argues that no one can lead a full and meaningful life without staking out a position in the public sphere"

And as I disagree with this on so many levels, it follows that I will not be reading any more of her writings.

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Don't get me wrong, I am for equal rights, equal oppotunity, and equal treatment for everyone, however bad-mouthing women who choose to stay at home and raise children is doing nothing for the women's rights movement.

When I was growing up, my parents took turns working part-time so that one of them could stay home with their 4 children at a time. When you have 4 kids at home, it's pretty damn hard for both parents to work full-time, unless you're wealthy enough to afford daycare. And if one or more of those kids are still breast-feeding, it's unreasonable to say that the husband should be the one staying home.
I want to get rid of gender roles and stereotypes as much as anybody else, but if a women is choosing to stay home rather than go out and get a "real" job, I respect that.

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Hirshman: Hello
If you don't know what is meant by 'raising children is the most important job you will ever have,” then you are a certified idiot. In your words, stupid. You are an insult to the female gender. You argue to put women down, degrade and belittle. You would have women competing in corrupt, mean, rape and pillage, every man for himself world just to prove they can. First, why is intelligence and importance measured by how much education you have? Or how much money you make? What does that have to do with anything? Everything you value is manufactured by the patriarchal system. What is that all about?

Women are important in their own right. You continue to justify and make excuses for our existence. Stop it. Where did men come from? Men would not be here to make war, paint the Last Supper, put a dome on St. Peter’s Cathedral, or decode DNA if it were not for women. Men have not yet figured out how to create life. That is women’s little secret and men will never forgive us for being able to do something they will never ever be able to do. And you want to dismiss that fact and measure women’s worth by corporate dollars and sense. Whose side are you on anyway? When god was a woman the world was a much kinder, gentler, peaceful, happy, loving place. Oh yea, this place is so much better now that men are playing god. Boo on you.

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She is angered that men don't take care of their kids, and thus argues that women should not either. As a single parent father who works fulltime, cares 100% for his children, and manages to work towards improving-yes-myself- in between these duties to my children- I know which task IS the most rewarding to me. And its not work or inflating my own ego through my education and my job experience. Raising children is the hardest and most deeply rewarding task for a MAN OR A WOMAN- both emotionally AND philosophically. This manifesto, if this is the work she is so proud of, is laughably Trumpian in its absolute selfworship. These are her Grand achievements?
Raise your children well, for they are your only true immortality. Shape them, imbue them with love and empathy and an appreciation for self as well as others. That is one way to improve the world. If men do less now, Is the problem NOT That women should do less as well- But that Men should do more? The tendency for Men's interest to be completely selfish is NOT something that we should all strive for. I guess she has never taken care of a child of her own to consider such things "immoral". Hirshman, worshipping at the altar of Men's Independence, gives up what is truly good for what is good for the gander.

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Is it less immoral for an undereducated person to wipe the butts of our precious progeny? Just wondering. Enjoyed the article anyway.

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to expend that kind of effort agonizing over my choices and where they fit into some massive aparently gender-spanning context of struggle. I'm sorry, I just don't feel it.

I'm 22, I'm female, I'm about to start grad school.

When I decided that I wanted to do postgrad work, what I wanted to study, and where, it didn't come after nights spent pondering my place as a woman in the modern world.

I don't do that very often. It tends not to happen until one of two things occurs: 1) I encounter overt, personally directed sexism. 2) Someone tries to remind me that I should be thinking about my place in the feminist framework.

At this point in my life, these are little more than distractors. I would take both more seriously if they actually interefered with getting where I would like to be. As it stands, neither have. If I somehow stumble into this mysterious 'Real World' so full of evil and opposition (despite the fact that after several different job and university experiences, I have not yet found), I might revisit radical feminist argument.

But the hell if I'm going to enter into a brand new academic enviroment immediately on the defensive, assuming that I am In Adversity from day one because of my sex, and letting every Mister know that boy, am I on to them.

I've watched this happen with gender and in other contexts, and it's an utterly ridiculous way to live your life.

And when it comes time for marriage and children, I'm going to have hard desicions to make. These are things I have thought about. But funnily enough it's been very personal introspection, centered around the question 'what do I really want out of that?' instead of 'what is my obligation towards Womankind'.

I have enough to worry about, thanks.

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Yes all you women holding advanced degrees, don't waste them by raising children should you elect (and possibly enjoy) to do that. Don't actually do what you want but rather stand proud of your higher learning and enter the male-dominated workforce to affect some positive change like most working men are doing.

Maybe you can work for Arthur Anderson, Enron or Global Crossing. If you're truly fortunate you can get a high paying engineering job working on optical sensors with the good folks at Northrop Grumman which will in turn be used to "lock onto" an Afghani village and destroy most of its inhabitants. Maybe you can work on building the next generation of Playstation that will babysit and rot your own progeny's brains while you and your husband are "at the office". If marketing is more your game then myriad opportunities abound. Sell sugary snacks and sodas to pre-pubescent and pre-diabetic kids or how about an oversized SUV called the Hubbard 3000? How about entertainment? Why don't you busy yourself with promoting the next ditzy role model like Paris Hilton. And if I can say one thing it's this: there aren't nearly enough plastic surgeons in the world. You too can help young women stuff saline bags into their undersized chests in order to give them that much needed "lift" of self-esteem.

You see, men have been doing all these things and more for years and mostly F'ing them up through graft, greed and oppression. I know, I know - women will be different right? That is precisely why we need more women in positions of power - just in case they are the ones who turn out to be incorruptible. Forget that generatioins of "good" men were unable to resist the temptations of "Big Biz", women will be different right? Women don't show an equivalent appetite for nice shoes and private jets. Women are more trustworthy in positions of power - perhaps but Hillary, Condi and Janet Reno haven't shown me much thus far. In the short term I do not doubt for one minute that women would be less corrupt, but notice I said "in the short term". Given time, women would also succumb to the allures of money and power. Many already have and we all know it but because they haven't done so with the Enron pension fund dime they appear cleaner.

This article is so far off the mark it's sad. We just don't get it do we? This article of course is assuming that all women endowed with Ph.D's will be going to work for Amnesty International and the ACLU but we all know that many of them will eventually (yes I think given the preponderance of highly educated women and declining rates for men) end up behind that huge oak desk above the glass ceiling pulling the same shit men have been pulling a thousand years before. Yes we all need to be working for corporate America. We haven't enriched the IBM's and Wal-Mart's enough yet have we. Better to get more men and women alike out there and in the fray, mixing it up, fucking over those average and underwhelming stay at home moms and dads. We need more women learning the tricks of the trade - raiding corporate pensions, pump and dump, cooking the books. Let's really get America going in the right direction. I mean what could be more American than having men and women both screwing over their fellow man with equal zest . . .

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How dare this person set herself up as judge and jury? Since when do HER INTERESTS ("When women opt out...they're doing harm to two interests I have.") supersede everyone else's?! When was she elected master of my, or your, conscience? Following one's own conscience is true freedom, not marching along doing what someone else wants or thinks is best. We each have the right and the responsibility to choose what is best, based on our own particular point of view. That is NOT "opting out," it's opting IN to life!

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It is no wonder we (homo sapiens) have devolved, having become so culturally deprived/emotionally constricted. We must each, with as much conscientiousness as can possibly be mustered, ask ourselves: "What IS the purpose of human life??" Personally, I've had plenty of time to consider my worth as a human mother, as I have a Masters' Degree, but have remained chronically underemployed since Reagan et al dismantled what was left of the social infrastructure and what was becoming a wholesome transformation toward ecological sanity among baby boomers. I have concluded "the purpose" is to acknowledge and respect the mysterious miracle of interdependent existence. From this perspective of "cosmic wonder" we can become physically, intellectually and emotionally mutualistic and Healthy in the profound knowledge that nothing and no one is "more important" than anything or anyone else! Fear is therefore dispelled: greed, status-seeking, conflict, war and other forms of selfishness are precluded and compassionate co-creativity and companionship can be enjoyed during our brief lifetimes. So simple! So complex! So impossible?

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Everybody talks about the lack of respect that women get. They don't realize that is because there is such a thing as marriage.

Marriage isn't only for the rearing of families, you know. It is historically also a way for males to have household slaves that are legal and also cheap to support.

Fix marriage first and the respect will follow.

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I really appreciated this article because it is a subject about which I have been thinking a lot lately. Obviously, this does not apply to the great majority of families who cannot afford to have one parent stay home with the children. And I really believe that everyone should make the best decisions for one's own family. However, I have noticed a somewhat disheartening trend among the highly-educated women of my generation (I'm 27). I know more than one woman who attended medical or dental or law school (or another highly competitive graduate program), who graduated and practiced her vocation for a few years, who decided that, because her husband makes enough money to support a family, she would leave the work force altogether. Why is her work/vocation less important than her husband's? If I were an applicant to medical, dental or law school, and was wait-listed or rejected, only to have a woman who was accepted just decide to quit as soon as s