Over the past decade, I've figured out many things about the way the world works, but one thing still eludes me: in America, what caused a critical mass-- or maybe it was just a hyper-vocal minority?-- of women to suddenly develop an insatiable inferiority complex? Almost like a mass-scale, arrested development variation of Freud's "penis envy" theory?
Suddenly, it wasn't enough for women to be feminine and lovely, and to stay at home and keep the household in order, and to raise the kids; no, that made you a substandard woman! I have childhood remembrances of my mother's shameful demeanor whenever she had to "admit" to someone that she was a "stay-at-home mom".
Instead, the idea became, women should dress up like men-- dress slacks instead of dresses, collared polo shirts instead of blouses-- and act like men: masculine, take-charge, and authoritative! Meanwhile, these women's poor kids got dumped in daycare en masse, with all of the "baby formula" and maternal abandonment syndrome consequences. Which are perhaps the bowels from which today's "snowflake" generation has emerged-- but that can be for a future post.
It's a shame too, because bell curve-speaking, I think that men-- in general, more cool and logical-- are better at business, where women-- in general, more nurturing and supportive-- are better at being child caretakers. I suppose that's why when women do go into business they tend to enter people-centric fields, like marketing; if they can't or won't raise children, they'll adapt in some other way.
When I met Ellyn, one of the first conversations we had was about child-rearing. I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a father some day, and I'm not certain Ellyn and I would have gotten married in the first place had she wanted to be a "career woman".
None of this is to say I have a problem with women working, if they don't have kids, or if the father is able to stay at home. Indeed, I'm always encouraging Henrietta to pursue her dreams, whether that involves being a cashier at McDonald's, a CEO, a nuclear physicist, or a home maker. But I am equally encouraging her to, if she does want to become a mother-- and presently she emphatically says that she does-- to put her children and family first, and to select a kind, competent bread-winner as the father.
My current theory is that this trend emerged because of "cultural Marxists" in the 1960s and 1970s claiming that women who stayed home were "oppressed" by evil, domineering men. Of course, today these same people say that there are no such things as "men" or "women", so I'm a bit confused at how to reconcile those two ideas... but who ever said internal consistency was easy!
A contributing factor could also be the Fed; the ever-rising, choke-hold, house margin-squeezing impact of dollar debasement caused a necessary increase in "two-income" households. Particularly, inflation was really bad in the 1970s, due to the Fed and Nixon's Obozocare-like "wage price controls"-- which coincides with my perceived rise in this "feminism is bad" trend.