Who Wears the Pants? "Incomes give women power in their marriages," says Leslie Bennetts, a Vanity Fair writer and frequent "Today Show" guest. She has called the recent increase in mothers choosing to stay home a national tragedy. Linda Hirshman, the author of "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World," has made her own rounds of female-targeted programming, appearing on "The View" and "Good Morning America" to recommend that young women "marry down." Why? Because money "usually accompanies power," she says, "and it enables the bearer to wield power, including within the family." But as it turns out, wives don't need income to wield power in their marriages. And mothers don't have much reason to fear losing power if they're not bringing home an equal share of the bacon. A Pew Research Center study released a couple of weeks ago found that when it comes to decision making in the home, wives in a majority of cases either rule the roost or share power equally with their husbands, regardless of how much money the women earn. She complained to WNYC radio of the “angry comments” left on the Today Show’s website after her interview with Ann Curry failed to create a stampede of homemakers returning to the 8-to-5 grind. She objected on the Huffington Post to the “blistering attacks” of the mommy bloggers and their “highly combative sense of indignation,” never noting that some of that indignation may stem from her likening them to “cranky children.” And she grumbled to the Associated Press about e-mailers assuming she was divorced, lonely, and bitter. In fact, many of my acquaintances who saw a segment of the Today Show I taped with Bennetts last week assumed the same..." Only 21 percent of working mothers report a preference for a 40+-hour work week, while only 16 percent of at-home moms say the same. Half of all mothers favor dropping out of the labor market altogether. These numbers pose a problem for feminists who spent the last few years arguing that the opt-out revolution is nothing more than a figment of the media’s imagination..." For the most part, the stay-at-home crowd yawned, flipped the channels and cheerfully returned to the debasing business of shuttling the kids from school to soccer practice. However, while the latest feminist general to take the field in the Mommy Wars has the same end in mind—the return of all women to fulltime work—her battle plan seems far more likely to yield results. Rather than shaming women back into the office, she attempts to scare them into it..." Mirroring the results of more scientific studies, Oprah Winfrey’s recent online poll found that 66 percent of working mothers wish they were stay-at-home moms. Careerbuilder.com’s 2006 survey revealed that fifty-two percent would take a pay cut to spend more time with their children, suggesting women aren’t interested in logging more hours at the office no matter who’s footing the babysitting bill. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that a forthcoming Bureau of Labor Statistics report is expected to confirm that not only is the opt-out phenomenon occurring, it is wider and more pronounced than previously guessed..."
Wall Street Journal, 10/10/08
In the past few years, stay-at-home moms have come under fire from some of feminism's most hard-line mouthpieces. These mothers have been told that they're letting down the sisterhood, endangering the economy and -- most important -- undermining their own position. By failing to bring in at least half the family income, it is claimed, they have rendered themselves powerless in their own homes.
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Young Women's Choices and Old Feminists' Rage
Townhall, 10/4/08
"Not long ago, Leslie Bennetts, author of an infamous tome warning mothers that failing to work fulltime for the entirety of their lives is sure to leave them eating dog food out of tin cans, feigned shock when at-home moms everywhere took issue with her collection of sad tales.
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Common Ground in the Mommy Wars
Townhall, 7/20/07
"Some good news was released from the mommy war front last week. Though The Today Show and Good Morning America frequently fill time by throwing stay-at-home mothers and working moms into the ring to duke it out for their respective sides, a new Pew poll shows that they have more in common than television producers give them credit for. Namely, that neither group wants to work full-time.
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Stay at Home Economics
Townhall, 5/25/07
"Last year, in response to the increasing numbers of women opting out of the workforce, author Linda Hirshman took to the morning shows proclaiming women demean themselves by becoming fulltime mothers. No matter how much love goes into the labor of cleaning the dishes and changing the diapers, it is beneath their dignity, she insisted.
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Feminism's Extreme Solution to the Opt-Out Revolution
Townhall, 4/18/2007
"Since the New York Times lit the fuse on the opt-out debate in 2003—reporting that a growing number of married, professional women are permanently or temporarily opting out of full-time jobs—feminist reaction has ranged from denial to condemnation to the predictable call for more government-funded daycare. None of this has done anything to curb the trend of mothers taking the exit ramp off the career track.
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