On March 21 hard-core feminist Sarrah Le Marquand wrote a shocker of a newspaper opinion piece entitled “It should be illegal to be a stay-at-home mum”. Yes you read that right. In this uber-feminist rant she said this: “Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed.”
I read it at the time, and shook my head in disbelief. Actually, it was all rather believable as this is standard feminist fare. But I let it go, hoping to later get back to it. Well it is later, so I have. You can read the piece for yourself (see link below). It is mind-boggling.
But as appalling as this is, it is nothing new, as mentioned. Marquand stands in a long line of radical feminists who have made clear their hatred of marriage and family, motherhood and childrearing. Indeed, the feminist movement has long warred against mothers, against homemaking, and against childrearing.
I have been collecting some of their more juicy and jaundiced quotes for quite some time now. Let me present just some of them for your enjoyment and edification:
“The heart of woman’s oppression is her childbearing and childrearing roles.” Shulamith Firestone
“The family has become a catch-all phrase for everything that we, as feminists, condemn in our society. Family equals oppression, patriarchy, psychosis, neurosis, domestic labour, role stereotyping, gender-specific definitions, stifling relationships, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, financial dependence, marriage, sexual repression, sexual activity, heterosexuality, growing up, living, dying, tradition, delinquency, love, hate, incest, violence, battering and bad eating habits.” Wendy Clark
The family is an “obscene bourgeois institution”. Simone de Beauvoir
“Even if a woman wants to have children, she must think very hard about the conditions in which she will have to bring them up, because child-rearing, at the moment, is real slavery.” Simone de Beauvoir
“No woman should be authorised to stay at home and raise her children . . . Women should not have the choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” Simone de Beauvior
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.” Mary Jo Bane
Homemaking women are prisoners in “comfortable concentration camps”. Betty Friedan
“Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.” Sheila Cronan
“The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.” Linda Gordon
Nice of them to spill the beans. It sure ain’t pretty. So Marquand has simply soaked up all this poison and hate and now regurgitates it as she rages against stay-at-home mums. What a pity people can become so frenzied in their animus against motherhood.
This story is so shocking that it even resulted in US commentator Al Mohler spending some time yesterday discussing the story: http://www.albertmohler.com/2017/03/27/briefing-03-27-17/
Other overseas writers have spoken out about this, including Suzanne Venker. I have previously reviewed one of her important books: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2004/08/30/a-review-of-seven-myths-of-working-mothers-by-suzanne-venker/
She says this about Marquand and her toxic ideas:
In her new book, “Free Women, Free Men,” Paglia explains that feminists have zero regard for procreation. “Feminist ideology has never dealt honestly with the role of the mother in human life,” she writes.
Indeed it hasn’t. The truth is, women change when they have children. They care less about what they do for a living and more about how their children are faring. They also realize they’re needed at home in a visceral and primal way.
Fathers care just as much about their children, of course, and they too are needed at home. But men and women are different. Men have a visceral need to provide for and protect their families, whereas women are more invested in the home. Naturally, this is a major roadblock for so-called gender equality. Feminists need women to care less about the home and their kids than they do.
And women aren’t listening.
According to Pew Research Center, approximately 30 percent of married mothers with children at home are not employed. Of the remaining 70 percent who are employed, at least half of those mothers work part-time or far less than their husbands do. Even mothers who do work full-time do not put in the kind of overtime men typically do.
Asked what they value most in a job, working mothers say they’re more concerned with having a flexible schedule than they are with more pay or prestige.
Even the ‘breadwinner moms’ we heard so much about in 2013 don’t represent what feminists wish they did. Single mothers represent 63 percent of this group, which makes the share of married breadwinner moms considerably smaller than people were led to believe. It has jumped considerably—from 4 percent in 1960 to 15 percent in 2011—but it hardly represents the norm.
That’s why feminists are so frustrated. They can’t get women to do what they want.
The stubborn fact is that a woman’s desire to work for pay, once she has children, is not synonymous with a man’s. Even today, parents “split up paid and domestic work along gendered lines because that’s what most of them want to do,” writes Ashley McGuire of Institute for Family Studies.
If feminists like Le Marquand don’t like this fact, that’s too bad—but they’ll have to take it up with Mother Nature. A quick note of warning, though.
She always wins.
Yes quite so. It is good to see that these concerned commentators are speaking out about this shocking piece. And they have good reason to be concerned. As Mohler says at the end of his commentary:
When an argument is made in public that it should be illegal for women to choose to be stay-at-home moms, we have transcended a cultural boundary that should have our attention and in a hurry. The greater likelihood is not that there will be a law making such a choice illegal, the fact is that other forms of coercion are probably even more powerful, including what we now see as the looming moral argument that women who stay at home with their children are a drain on the economy, because they are absent from the paid workforce. Expect that now to become rather standard cultural fare.
16 Replies to “The Feminist War Against Motherhood”
It’s a pity she’s not gainfully employed!
I understand in poorer countries like India and in Africa, the ratio of female engineers is the highest of anywhere in the world. When you look at Scandinavian countries, for instance, the proportion of female engineers goes way down. The fact is when women actually have a choice as to what lifestyle they want, being an engineer is not usually top of their list. The absurd thing in some of the quotes above is that these very silly women can see that many women thoroughly enjoy being full time Mums and why wouldn’t you if you love your kids, yet they can’t see that equal numbers of the sexes in every profession is nothing like an optimal situation, especially for women. They are certainly earning their reputation as the fascist left.
Fortunately for the stay-at-home moms, there are not enough jobs in the U.S. to keep everyone employed. The radical feminists need to keep their opinions to themselves and simply keep quiet!
In economic terms, it’s quite possible that feminism has made women’s lot worse by reducing the rate of men’s pay (the potential workforce doubled whereas previously a single income had to support a whole family).
Trying to force your opinion or will on others who don’t share it, is the definition of fascism. Nature intended women to be nurturers, get over it! The last thing our world need is a bunch of rabid feminazis telling families what to do! Bugger off and mind your own damn business.
Sad that some love money more than their child`s wellbeing, and want to force others to outsource their parenting responsibilities to strangers in long day care centres. Full-time mothers are usually the ones left with all the volunteer work at schools and elsewhere, and are the ones determined to bring up healthy well mannered children into society.
This vitriolic hatred against motherhood, is not actually against motherhood itself, but God’s order for the family, and the God-given roles for male and female. That is what makes feminism evil: its rebellion against God. Not only is it full of rebellion, but it it not satisfied until it causes others to rebel against God. This is why feminists are so nasty, hostile, and pedantic in attacking anything that goes against their agenda. They are trying to really pressure people into rebelling against God. Feminism is of the spirit of Jezebel. It is the most evil ideology the world has ever seen. It is worse than isis, as far more people have been killed throughout history by child sacrifice, than war.
Soon after my eldest child turned one, I had an opportunity to increase my workload, with my husband taking more of a house dad role. I have to agree with Suzanne Venker. I discovered that I couldn’t fully let go of my need to be with my kids. I discovered I was “needed at home in a visceral and primal way.” Although my husband is a very competent, caring and committed man, he just lacked the capacity to “mother” as I could.
What’s interesting is Mohler’s comment at the end – I think the battle definitely is to recognise stay at home motherhood as just as important as any paid employment.
Thanks for that Andrea.
The only ones who ever have problems (jealousy?) with stay at home moms, are other women. I was actually thinking that it should be illegal for moms with school age kids to work full time. I strongly believe that absent moms is part of the social pathology of low moral values as well as the obesity crisis. I would get takeaways too most of the week if I got home late every day.
Dear Bill,
Thank you for compiling some of the stupid statements of these women. Put altogether like this shows just how silly and selfish they really are. To further their own prestige and careers, born out of a lust for power and a hatred and jealousy of men they have economically driven ALL women into the workforce whether they wanted to go or not. Their poor little children and babies have been herded into centres to be looked after by strangers like so many lost sheep. It makes my blood boil when I think about it. Every child NEEDS and DESERVES the love of his/her mother and plenty of time with her especially in infancy and early childhood.
These childcare centres have been proven to be not always up to scratch either.100 West Australian babies and toddlers are taken to hospital each year from injuries suffered in daycare centres according to “shocking new data” so the Sunday times revealed in February. Not on its front page of course. Understandably the MSM didn’t want to cause panic considering they helped to cause the problem in the first place. Also included in the report was the fact that 278 childcare services were not meeting the NQF [National Quality Standards]. It also said that a typical working family spends 10% of its income on childcare fees even after pocketing government subsidies.
There was more to the report but in short childcare services so grandly promoted by these selfish “sisters in suits” since the sixties is in a MESS and is not working but it takes TWO incomes now to maintain a household so women no longer have a choice.
The folly of all sides of government in pandering to rabid feminists for decades and ignoring the fact that stay at home motherhood IS just as important as paid employment for women has made sure the chickens have finally come home to roost. Meanwhile families and most of all children continue to suffer.
Oddly the few men who get to be stay at home dads love it. The only problem for them is fear that their wife will lose respect for them and divorce them.
Feminism (brand name for gender Marxism) redefined a privilege as oppression for their own purposes, which is to realize the revolution.
The only conceivable beneficiary of this hateful conspiracy (Patriarchy Theory) cult is lesbians (and other women incapable of using men) to level the playing field with women who can make use of men.
Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history, it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, [The reference here is to the German Ideology, published after Engels’ death – Ed.] I find the words: “The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.”
– Frederick Engels, “Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State”, Ch 2, Part 4, 1884. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm
“The radical outcome of Engels’ analysis is that the family, as that term is presently understood, must go. In view of the institution’s history, this is a kind fate. Engels was heresy in his age. These many decades after, he is heresy still. But revolution is always heresy, perhaps sexual revolution most of all.” – Kate Millett, “Sexual Politics”, 1969.
Totally not surprising as feminists are ‘Pro Choice’ in killing babies because they hate children. I am a stay at home Mum. I CHOSE to have my children I CHOOSE to raise them and not ship them around from pillar to post like I was as a child. If you don’t want to raise children DON’T HAVE THEM! How DARE someone tell me that they think it should be illegal for me to raise my own children, yet legal for some stranger too! As far as being “gainfully employed” there is no job in this little country town that would even begin to cover the cost of childcare fees 5 days a week even if I was so inclined. I’m blessed that my husband earns enough that I CAN stay at home with my children and not work. For those not so fortunate, the stress they go thru, sometimes working three jobs so they can put food on the table AND pay childcare fees is ridiculous. Sometimes this means both day and nightshift jobs meaning they barely get to see their children at all – and I’m yet to find a nurturing mother who is happy with that arrangement! When my kids are all older and that bit more independent – then I will return to paid employment – on my terms.
Thank you Bill for highlighting this, this has been one of our ministry’s focuses, restoring Biblical roles in the family and showing the wisdom of God through His design.
I agree with Jannie Tooh, Anthea Smith, and Patricia Halligan in their view of the importance of the mother in the home. I too chose to be a stay-at-home mom rather than a teacher because my own four children were a full-time job, and I could use everything I learned from college and my teaching career to enrich their lives. Some aspects of the feminist movement (such as the right to acquire credit and to own property) do help women who are single, especially through no fault of their own, and who must make a life for themselves and support themselves. I can remember growing up in the 1950s in the U.S. when single women were considered freaks and were ridiculed because they were not “wives and mothers like everyone else.” I still remember the cruel remarks and treatment my own family members would direct toward these individuals. For all anyone knew, these women once had been engaged to young men who were killed in World War II or the Korean War and had received little sympathy for their plight. The married women of the 1950s were the blessed or fortunate ones who had not suffered such a loss, disruption in their lives, and the death of their dreams. I do credit the women’s movement with making society aware of the misfortunes many women have had. However, I certainly cannot agree with the militant and hostile aspects of the movement, which you have exposed in this article. I thank you for presenting this ugly side of the women’s movement.
It’s a pity she’s not gainfully employed!
I understand in poorer countries like India and in Africa, the ratio of female engineers is the highest of anywhere in the world. When you look at Scandinavian countries, for instance, the proportion of female engineers goes way down. The fact is when women actually have a choice as to what lifestyle they want, being an engineer is not usually top of their list. The absurd thing in some of the quotes above is that these very silly women can see that many women thoroughly enjoy being full time Mums and why wouldn’t you if you love your kids, yet they can’t see that equal numbers of the sexes in every profession is nothing like an optimal situation, especially for women. They are certainly earning their reputation as the fascist left.
Fortunately for the stay-at-home moms, there are not enough jobs in the U.S. to keep everyone employed. The radical feminists need to keep their opinions to themselves and simply keep quiet!
In economic terms, it’s quite possible that feminism has made women’s lot worse by reducing the rate of men’s pay (the potential workforce doubled whereas previously a single income had to support a whole family).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4349910/Feminism-BAD-two-thirds-woman-says-FAY-WELDON.html
Trying to force your opinion or will on others who don’t share it, is the definition of fascism. Nature intended women to be nurturers, get over it! The last thing our world need is a bunch of rabid feminazis telling families what to do! Bugger off and mind your own damn business.
Sad that some love money more than their child`s wellbeing, and want to force others to outsource their parenting responsibilities to strangers in long day care centres. Full-time mothers are usually the ones left with all the volunteer work at schools and elsewhere, and are the ones determined to bring up healthy well mannered children into society.
This vitriolic hatred against motherhood, is not actually against motherhood itself, but God’s order for the family, and the God-given roles for male and female. That is what makes feminism evil: its rebellion against God. Not only is it full of rebellion, but it it not satisfied until it causes others to rebel against God. This is why feminists are so nasty, hostile, and pedantic in attacking anything that goes against their agenda. They are trying to really pressure people into rebelling against God. Feminism is of the spirit of Jezebel. It is the most evil ideology the world has ever seen. It is worse than isis, as far more people have been killed throughout history by child sacrifice, than war.
Soon after my eldest child turned one, I had an opportunity to increase my workload, with my husband taking more of a house dad role. I have to agree with Suzanne Venker. I discovered that I couldn’t fully let go of my need to be with my kids. I discovered I was “needed at home in a visceral and primal way.” Although my husband is a very competent, caring and committed man, he just lacked the capacity to “mother” as I could.
What’s interesting is Mohler’s comment at the end – I think the battle definitely is to recognise stay at home motherhood as just as important as any paid employment.
Thanks for that Andrea.
The only ones who ever have problems (jealousy?) with stay at home moms, are other women. I was actually thinking that it should be illegal for moms with school age kids to work full time. I strongly believe that absent moms is part of the social pathology of low moral values as well as the obesity crisis. I would get takeaways too most of the week if I got home late every day.
Dear Bill,
Thank you for compiling some of the stupid statements of these women. Put altogether like this shows just how silly and selfish they really are. To further their own prestige and careers, born out of a lust for power and a hatred and jealousy of men they have economically driven ALL women into the workforce whether they wanted to go or not. Their poor little children and babies have been herded into centres to be looked after by strangers like so many lost sheep. It makes my blood boil when I think about it. Every child NEEDS and DESERVES the love of his/her mother and plenty of time with her especially in infancy and early childhood.
These childcare centres have been proven to be not always up to scratch either.100 West Australian babies and toddlers are taken to hospital each year from injuries suffered in daycare centres according to “shocking new data” so the Sunday times revealed in February. Not on its front page of course. Understandably the MSM didn’t want to cause panic considering they helped to cause the problem in the first place. Also included in the report was the fact that 278 childcare services were not meeting the NQF [National Quality Standards]. It also said that a typical working family spends 10% of its income on childcare fees even after pocketing government subsidies.
There was more to the report but in short childcare services so grandly promoted by these selfish “sisters in suits” since the sixties is in a MESS and is not working but it takes TWO incomes now to maintain a household so women no longer have a choice.
The folly of all sides of government in pandering to rabid feminists for decades and ignoring the fact that stay at home motherhood IS just as important as paid employment for women has made sure the chickens have finally come home to roost. Meanwhile families and most of all children continue to suffer.
Oddly the few men who get to be stay at home dads love it. The only problem for them is fear that their wife will lose respect for them and divorce them.
Feminism (brand name for gender Marxism) redefined a privilege as oppression for their own purposes, which is to realize the revolution.
The only conceivable beneficiary of this hateful conspiracy (Patriarchy Theory) cult is lesbians (and other women incapable of using men) to level the playing field with women who can make use of men.
Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history, it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846, [The reference here is to the German Ideology, published after Engels’ death – Ed.] I find the words: “The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.” And today I can add: The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.”
– Frederick Engels, “Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State”, Ch 2, Part 4, 1884. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm
“The radical outcome of Engels’ analysis is that the family, as that term is presently understood, must go. In view of the institution’s history, this is a kind fate. Engels was heresy in his age. These many decades after, he is heresy still. But revolution is always heresy, perhaps sexual revolution most of all.” – Kate Millett, “Sexual Politics”, 1969.
Totally not surprising as feminists are ‘Pro Choice’ in killing babies because they hate children. I am a stay at home Mum. I CHOSE to have my children I CHOOSE to raise them and not ship them around from pillar to post like I was as a child. If you don’t want to raise children DON’T HAVE THEM! How DARE someone tell me that they think it should be illegal for me to raise my own children, yet legal for some stranger too! As far as being “gainfully employed” there is no job in this little country town that would even begin to cover the cost of childcare fees 5 days a week even if I was so inclined. I’m blessed that my husband earns enough that I CAN stay at home with my children and not work. For those not so fortunate, the stress they go thru, sometimes working three jobs so they can put food on the table AND pay childcare fees is ridiculous. Sometimes this means both day and nightshift jobs meaning they barely get to see their children at all – and I’m yet to find a nurturing mother who is happy with that arrangement! When my kids are all older and that bit more independent – then I will return to paid employment – on my terms.
Thank you Bill for highlighting this, this has been one of our ministry’s focuses, restoring Biblical roles in the family and showing the wisdom of God through His design.
I agree with Jannie Tooh, Anthea Smith, and Patricia Halligan in their view of the importance of the mother in the home. I too chose to be a stay-at-home mom rather than a teacher because my own four children were a full-time job, and I could use everything I learned from college and my teaching career to enrich their lives. Some aspects of the feminist movement (such as the right to acquire credit and to own property) do help women who are single, especially through no fault of their own, and who must make a life for themselves and support themselves. I can remember growing up in the 1950s in the U.S. when single women were considered freaks and were ridiculed because they were not “wives and mothers like everyone else.” I still remember the cruel remarks and treatment my own family members would direct toward these individuals. For all anyone knew, these women once had been engaged to young men who were killed in World War II or the Korean War and had received little sympathy for their plight. The married women of the 1950s were the blessed or fortunate ones who had not suffered such a loss, disruption in their lives, and the death of their dreams. I do credit the women’s movement with making society aware of the misfortunes many women have had. However, I certainly cannot agree with the militant and hostile aspects of the movement, which you have exposed in this article. I thank you for presenting this ugly side of the women’s movement.