Women's lib was supposed to be about choices. Women were supposed to gain the choice to stay home and take of their children or abandon them and work full-time. Or perhaps cut the difference by working part-time outside the home. This assumes, of course, that they did not exercise the choice to kill their children in the womb first.
But today, feminists and their Democratic Party representatives are not interested in women who make the wrong choice. Surveys consistently show that 70% of working mothers would rather stay home, but economic circumstances have forced them out of it. Feminists and female Democratic politicians never talk about satisfying the desires of these women-most of whom, after all, don't have a career as a politician or a lawyer but rather less glamorous jobs, such as secretary or cashier, taken to pay the bills.
In her speech representing the nine Democratic women in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (Md.) told the Democratic convention on July 26, "We believe that the best social program is a job with good pay and health insurance. . . . We, the women of the Senate, owe a debt of gratitude to the women who came before us, those who supported freedom and change, like Abigail Adams and Harriet Tubman; those who fought for social justice, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Barbara Jordan, and those who are fighting today, like Dolores Huerta."
Mikulski did not mention the women whose primary contribution to society has been the rearing of happy, moral men and women. Even social scientists have discovered that such men and women are most likely to be produced by the traditional family structure. Perhaps she shares the contempt of Sen. Hillary Clinton (of dismissive "I could have stayed home and baked cookies" infamy) for such women.
Where is the celebration of those who choose to be traditional wives and mothers? Where is the effort to make it easier for women who want to be traditional wives and mothers fulfill that dream? Or is feminism not about facilitating women's choices but about something else?
