Posted by
Jan@Oasis on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:40:41 PM
I'm about to leave the civilized world (the internet) for four days to go to my cabin in the White Mountains of Arizona. I am frankly looking forward to getting away from the discouraging news that assaults me each day when I turn on the radio. I cannot watch news on TV anymore--too aggravating. You remember my exploding head and all.
Before I go I would like to express my extreme disdain for feminists and what they have done to my country in the past 40+ years. Because they are jaded, unloved, neurotic and decidedly NOT feminine, they have convinced both men and women that they are pretty much the same and that any differences should be soundly thrashed right out of the offender. In other words, any boy/man who is masculine and any girl/woman who is feminine.
They would have you believe that children (those that are actually allowed to be born--no one should have to have a baby if she doesn't feel like it, even if she had unprotected sex with some guy she doesn't know) do not need a married mother and father. Oh no! Two women or two men are just as good, and anyway the children should be farmed out to day care ASAP, so what difference does it make what gender the two adults are who live in the same house? None, they would have you believe.
It doesn't matter because according to these ridiculous caricatures of women, mothers and fathers bring nothing of particular significance to children. Women should be just like men, and go to work, and compete in the corporate world, and if they MUST have a child, they should either hire a nanny to live in or put their babies in day care as soon as they are home from the hospital. They look at women who stay home as pathetic, downtrodden frumps.
Because of these strident harpies, my daughter is feeling a bit GUILTY because she has decided to postpone finishing her college degree in order to stay home with her baby boy. She is not, after all, DOING anything. I know she has absorbed this screwy attitude from the culture in general, and it makes me furious. Here is what I told her. And it worked.
Sweetie (I said), you only have ONE first baby. He only has ONE infancy. Do you see the way he looks at you? He is three months old, but he already gazes at you with adoration and coos at you and smiles at you. He kicks his fat little legs and waves his fat little arms for YOU. Not for some underpaid day care worker with 10 other babies to "watch." When was motherhood about "watching" a baby? It is connecting, adoring, cuddling, talking to, soothing, nurturing a little human being that YOU produced. It is Heaven.
Except when it is hell! That would be when he only slept three hours and fussed all night and only wants to nurse on the left side and pooped through his third outfit in three hours. Wait, no. That is Heaven too. Because he's yours, you're his, and the sleepless nights and leaky diapers go away, but those moments of bliss never do. I don't remember any of those diaper leaks now, but I remember my babies gazing into my eyes and knowing I was seeing eternity. Don 't miss a moment! A baby learns to trust because of YOU. He cries, you come, he is soothed, and he eventually figures it out: Oh, yes. Mama will come. It's okay. For babies who miss out on that cycle, repeated many times over many months, trust just doesn't come. There are many, many disconnected children out there. They do not develop trust, the ability to love, a conscience, a soul. Those are things which come from parents being THERE, day in and day out. Down in the trenches. Tired, exhausted even at times, frustrated sometimes, clueless often--but THERE. Heaven.
There is nothing to feel guilty about Sweetie! Guilt implies you have knowingly done something wrong. You have done something very, very right, by postponing your own plans to give your baby boy the greatest gift a human being can give. You are there, to be his world, his everything, until he can venture out on his own, his trust well established, his ability to love and be loved intact, his soul off to a beautiful start. YOU are doing that for him. No one else.
You have a husband to bring home the bacon. Sure, not as much bacon as if you went to work! But your value is in your real job, which is to be the mother to this precious gift you've been blessed with. He is something else, and you are too. When he is older, you will finish school, work--or not--whatever you want to do. But you can't have this time back. It is fleeting, and it is a treasure to hold onto. Heaven.
I'm so glad I was with you and your sisters. I never doubted for a moment, in spite of the feminist bleating that was going on when I was a young mother. I am an RN, my mom was a teacher, you will be what you will be, but we are ALL, first and foremost, MOTHERS. Thank God for it.
I have no respect for feminism. It has caused our children and babies such pain and loss. Moms, be strong. If you are going to have babies, be there for them. No one can take your place. Certainly not some man. Dads, same with you. No one can replace a dad. Certainly not some woman.
Love my girls, my lovely daughters who are now lovely mothers. All accomplished, all smart, all taking care of their kids. Feminists: eat dirt.