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Jewish World Review August 30, 2005 / 25 Av, 5765 A mother lode of facts Left out By Kathryn Lopez
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Some mothers like to care for their children.
Yeah, it's true.
Think I'm pointing out the blindingly obvious? Tell that to some
folks on the Left, specifically Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D.-Calif.,
the one woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who I think is
stark-raving mad.
In the now-much-talked-about 1985 memo written to Linda Chavez (then
Reagan White House director of public liaison), John Roberts (now
Supreme Court nominee) questioned how "encouraging homemakers to
become lawyers contributes to the common good."
The reaction from the Left has been telling — and characteristic.
For starters, Chavez is a mom. Disparaging mothers in any way to her
would have been dumb. The biting young Roberts, instead, was making
an anti-lawyer joke. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that
there was an underlying assumption there too: homemakers play a
deeply crucial role in society.
But when news broke of the memo's existence, as part of a release of
some Reagan-era documents, it was part of a "Washington Post" piece
with the ridiculous title: "Roberts Resisted Women's Rights." Kim
Gandy, the president of the National Organization for Women,
actually likened Roberts to a "Neanderthal." And days after that
initial story, preparing for her starring role as Judiciary
Committee Woman, Feinstein was far from laughing it off.
But Feinstein & Co. really couldn't ever laugh it off. For many on
the Left, there is nothing funny about homemaking. It's an
oppressive lifestyle; honestly, what kind of sad person would want
to be stuck at home with children?
Of course, many women do stay home and some even do it because they
want to. In fact, more would like to: A May poll from Greenberg
Quinlan Rosner Research, Inc. found that "only 8 percent of moms say
they would want to work (outside the home) full-time, if money were
no object."
It's a slow "come-to-baby" conversion for many on the Left. Former
"New York Times" reporter Ann Crittenden was a bit shocked by
motherhood. In her 2002 book, "The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most
Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued" (Henry Holt &
Company, Inc.), she wrote about her own experience: "I imagined that
domestic drudgery was going to be swept into the dustbin of history
as men and women linked arms and marched off to run the world in a
new egalitarian alliance. It never occurred to me that women might
be at home because there were children there."
The Roberts memo, as it happens, is far from the first time
motherhood has come up in the context of Supreme Court picks. Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, nominated to the Court in 1993 by Bill Clinton,
proposed in 1974 that: "Replacing 'Mother's Day' and 'Father's Day'
with a 'Parents' Day' should be considered, as an observance more
consistent with a policy of minimizing traditional sex-based
differences in parental roles." And, uh, John Roberts is extremist?
Problem is, some calling the shots on the Left don't have the same
instinct.
A good number of the attacks aimed at political lightning rod Sen.
Rick Santorum's, R-Pa., recent book, "It Takes a Family:
Conservatism and the Common Good" (Intercollegiate Studies
Institute) reflect this same attitude. The book has encouraged a
name-calling extravaganza. One columnist in Philadelphia called him
"wacky" because of it.
He's gotten some winning reactions (though none of them too
unexpected during the course of a heated re-election contest); one
commentator surmised he might be "on drugs." My favorite, though,
was in a mass e-mail from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee, which said that "Rick Santorum has crossed the line. His
new book 'It Takes a Family' manages to offend women on nearly every
page."
Santorum's point, in the book, as he puts it, is that "justice
demands both fair workplace rules and proper respect for work in the
home."
Oh, come on. That's not mommy warring. That's not judging any
family's personal choices. That's just good civil sense.
I find it helps to keep in mind a remark Sen. Christopher Dodd,
D-Conn., let slip back in 1998 when I want to try to understand the
Sophisticated Mind's view of motherhood. On the Senate floor, he
said women stay at home because they "want to go play golf or go to
the club and play cards." How about it takes a family to raise a
child and they'd like to be there to do that work? That's what most
moms who are there are doing at home:
Being moms.
America doesn't all live on Wisteria Lane. The Left needs a reality
check — to get out and meet some non-desperate housewives. The
country is full of them.
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