Home by Choice

Brenda Hunter has a great book that goes into so many points on how devastating it is when women leave the home to work. She is a renowned psychologist who has appeared on radio, national television and before congressional staff. In Home by Choice she gives excellent scientific data and insights into the damage of day care for children, the terrible damage to women and the devastating effect on men. She writes that she appeared on "The Jenny Jones Show" with Faye Crosby, who chairs the psychology department at Smith College. Her book, Juggling, is a best seller that gives Crosby 's ideas of the advantages of women working on children, women and men. Hunter says, "whether she knows it or not, she makes a strong case against juggling by citing in her book all the losses men (and their wives) incur when women try to combine family life with paid employment... " She says, "Crosby says that men in traditional marriages can count on their wives' help as they climb the corporate ladder. Wives direct family life, care for the kids, and feed and help clothe their husbands. This leaves men free to pursue careers It is not surprising, says Crosby, that men in dual career families feel deprived when wives work outside the homes."

Men grieve

"Also, men lose their role as sole provider when wives work full-time. Men grieve, says Crosby, when this role is lost because being a good breadwinner is central to their self-concept. Men may see the entry of women into the marketplace as an indication that they have somehow failed in the provider role. Some men, as a consequence, grow to dislike their jobs. When a woman assumes or shares the provider role, Crosby says even the most liberated husband will feel a keen sense of loss."

Hunter goes on to say that when women bring home paychecks, "men lose authority." Crosby has "little sympathy" for men on this. But the result is that men increasingly get less strong and decisive. Finally, she says, "intimacy" is lost from the home. A woman, she says, is the "architect of intimacy," and when she works she is too stressed, tired and busy to really respond to her family as they need her. She says that "when emotional intimacy disappears in a marriage, it isn't long before sexual intimacy evaporates as well." She writes, "grown men, as well as little children, need someone at home to function as a 'secure base.' The wife and mother, it seems, is the architect of intimacy for her husband as well as her children. "

"The point of this brief examination of male vulnerability is to assert that sons and husbands need the women in their lives to nurture them, appreciate them, and express interest in their lives. As little boys or as high-powered executives, males suffer from neglect." TV evangelist James Robison says, AWomen have great strength, but they are strengths to help the man. A woman 's primary purpose in life and marriage is to help her husband succeed, to help him be all God wants him to be. "

Everything I write about in this book and everything the authors I like write about is challenged in other books. There is always a Cain/Abel split on issues. If you don 't like what I write you have many books to support whatever lifestyle you want. In the above we saw how Brenda Hunter differs from Faye Crosby. Crosby is a feminist liberal from Smith College. Other women from prestigious colleges write the same kind of nonsense as Crosby. For example, Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers wrote She Work/He Works: How Two-Income Families are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off. Both have long careers and written other books. Barnett is a scholar at Radcliffe College and Rivers is a professor at Boston University. Both say they have raised two children who are happy. Radcliffe mentions in her book that she is divorced. They deny everything I write in this book. To me it is like reading a criticism of the Principle saying how wrong it is that we believe Jesus is not coming back on the clouds. I find the opposition 's arguments ridiculous. They title their first chapter, "Ozzie and Harriet Are Dead. " They say, "The new American family is alive and well. Both partners are employed full time, and according to the latest research, the family they create is one in which all members are thriving: often happier, healthier, and more well-rounded than the family of the 1950s ....That 's the message of this new, myth-shattering study of such couples, funded by a 1 million-dollar grant form the National Institutes of Mental Health. Our study shows that the full-time-employed, dual-earner couple is a success .... The men and women are doing well, emotionally and physically, and the children are thriving. They go into how it is so much better than the 1950s and the Victorian era. One of the historians they love to quote is a fellow liberal feminist, Stephanie Coontz who wrote The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. Insight Magazine did a Cain/Abel type article pitting her with David Popenoe, a even more distinguished writer than she is. Coontz is divorced and has one son.

The authors say that only 3% of families fit the traditional model and we will never go back. So those (like me) who write of the "fantasy " of the past are making people unnecessarily guilty and bringing on unhealthy thoughts of inadequacy and low-self esteem. This "new nostalgia " is basically coming from the Christian right that they despise because it is a terrible backlash to feminism. They paint a picture of the 1950s as one where fathers were distant and today they are close. The Victorian man was drugged out on opium, women in corsets, and men with VD from their mistresses. They say the nineteenth-century writer Henry James was wrong to say in his famous novel, The Bostonians: "The whole generation is womanized. The masculine tone is passing out of the world. It 's a feminine, nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age.... "

"It was against this backdrop that Teddy Roosevelt 's hypermasculinity charged onto the world stage. It wasn 't secure manhood that the Rough Rider represented, but the anxiety of the time about what men were, or ought to be. "

"The Boy Scouts were founded in 1911 in large degree because of a worry about the 'feminization ' of young boys who spent their days in the female world of school. "

They quote studies showing that children do not get "maternal deprivation " when their kids are in day care. They are hurt that Hillary Clinton is "trashed " so much when she is such a wonderful role model. They say it is impossible for men to be the sole providers and even if they could it would be wrong because it would stop women from growing in the marketplace and stunt the spirit of men who need to change diapers and do dishes equal to the woman. They write, "We have to get rid of the idea that a man is what he earns, that a man who is not the sole breadwinner is somehow a failure as a man. That fiction dooms today 's and tomorrow 's men -- who will be part of the collaborative couple -- to high stress and poor emotional health. We have to allow men to get more of their self-esteem from their roles as fathers -- and also as members of the community. To tie men 's self-esteem totally to their jobs in a time of such great economic flux is dangerous. " They are scared of the traditional family and I am scared of them. They are dangerous to me. We are at war and there is no compromise. True Parents have a traditional and collaborative marriage. But it is not the kind of collaborative feminists dream of. I probably repeat myself too much, but once again I 'll say that the past was not perfect, but there are some major things we need to restore and in the restoration of the world the UC is pioneering, many of the values of the past are part of what we need in the Completed Testament Age.

Feminization of men

In a chapter titled "The Withering Away of the Family" in the Book The Recovery of Family Life, Elton and Pauline Trueblood write, "When we consider the human price of this increasingly accepted social patten of double earning, we usually stress the harmful effects upon children or the hardening of the mothers, but the effect upon the adult men may be quite as important in the long run. Once men took great pride in being able to provide for their families and resented any implication that a second pay check was needed, but now many men welcome whatever help the wife can give. What we are witnessing is a feminization of men, a psychological development independent of physical characteristics. In modern life a man often goes from dependence on one woman to dependence upon another. Thus the man is cheated of his basis of self-respect and the woman is cheated in that she never has the sense of security which a strong man gives. In this situation it is hard to know how much is cause and how much is effect; the wife has to earn because the man does not provide sufficiently, but his very failure to provide may come partly because of a social pattern which undermines his self-respect."

"We are sure of two things. First, those of us who do not face this economic and social problem must be very tender toward those who do, and, second, we must understand clearly the human harm which comes as the family withers away at important levels in our society. Only as we understand the loss will we have the incentive adequate to make us use our imagination to reverse the process of decay." He says women are trying "to perform the miracle of carrying on two full-time occupations at once."

I wish I could give all the arguments against "mixing" men and women in the marketplace. I don't have time to quote great passages from the Andelin's as they explain how dangerous it is for women to be working with high powered men and comparing them with their husbands. So much immorality happens when we put women with men. Children's personalities are hurt and sometimes they are abused in day care centers. (As well as abuse to seniors in old folk's homes). Socialists/feminists promise a utopia of equality but deliver an equality of suffering. Hollywood gives America its most vivid images. The movie 9 to 5 is a comedy about three women who kidnap their boss and run a company better than him. Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin star. Images such as this castrate men and confuse women. The personal lives of these movie stars are a disaster because they believe in feminism. None of them have been successful at marriage. Except now for Jane Fonda who is playing the traditional wife to a billionaire third husband so she won't lose him. She cannot run his company better than him. There was a ridiculous TV show years ago where a woman was a single mother who, on the sly, risks her life being a spy, and all the time being a great mother at home. America is being brainwashed and doesn't even know it.

Kirche, Kuche, und Kinder

Feminists like to say how horrible "Kirche, Kuche, und Kinder" was. They are wrong. Church, Kitchen and Children are the "rigid" and wonderful roles for women.

Korean culture honors patriarchy

Korea has a better understanding of the roles of men and women. Russell Warren Howe's book The Koreans says "Husbands of the middle or upper class feel the most diminished if their wives take jobs. Korean men probably work harder than any people on earth. They come home late and expect to find the women waiting."

In Introducing Korea, the author Peter Kyung writes, "The primary function of Korean women is to serve their men. They do so by bringing up their children properly and by preparing excellent meals for their families, especially their husbands. It is often said that the happiness of a family depends on the quality of food served in the household. Like the French, the Koreans take food very seriously. Well fed husbands are known to be more considerate and affectionate toward wives than ill-fed ones."

Hillary vs. Tipper

It was an insult to millions of women when Hillary Clinton said, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession." Perhaps if she had stayed home, her husband would have been less interested in other women. Feminists never see homemaking as a "profession." Tipper Gore, the Vice President's wife, gave up her career to help her husband. Hillary has one child; Tipper has four. Having high powered careers rule out children. Hillary could have adopted, but she focused on her career, and it has been a nightmare for her family. Mrs. Gore said in an interview, "If I had pursued a career we would have had two separate lives, and I don't even know that we would have stayed married,' she says slowly, shaking her head... She finds herself at odds with the feminist ideal, that marriage and children can and should be a strictly 50-50 undertaking. 'I used to subscribe to the feminist doctrine, but now I find it more difficult... I've dismissed a lot of it as unworkable,' she continues, referring to the myth that today's superwoman can go from a high-powered career to a PTA meeting without missing a step. 'It was making me unnecessarily miserable."

Many women have lost their husbands because they didn 't do as Tipper did and quit working and take care of their husbands. Terry Bradshaw, the great profootball quarterback, says he's proud of being what feminists call a male chauvinist. His first wife was a fanatic for her career in ice skating. His second wife stayed home and had a baby. He says his second wife is better. He says of his former wife, Jo Jo Starbuck, "My ex-wife seemed to be competing with me. All she wanted to do was just spend my money and hit the airwaves and skate in every town in the world and buy skating outfits. Hell, I never saw her. This gal, when I'm around, she makes me feel like a king."

I 'm not saying that women should never leave the home. They should not earn money but do volunteer work, preferably church work. Men should volunteer and help their community too. But we must first get our families in order. And if that means that the woman is too preoccupied with raising her children and can 't add volunteer work or if the man is scrambling to provide for his family and can 't do volunteer work then that should be respected. In this world just to keep up to the high standard of living an orderly life is difficult and to produce a good marriage and good children who are not a drain on society is a great accomplishment. God wants us to stretch and reach out to other people though. Being inspirational all day long is beyond what most of us can do. But if we see our life and this battle with Satan as a marathon run with high feelings and low feelings then we can better fight the good fight on a daily basis. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It is especially hard to live an inspirational life in a society that is upside down. The temptations are so great. Especially the temptation to just be lazy. Because we can 't see those 40,000 children who die every and nobody talks about it, it is easy to forget the pain of God who has to watch all this. But we must keep pumping ourselves to stretch and be nonconformist and fanatics for the mission to witness. Americans are obsessed with TV. Drive down a street at night and you 'll see the blue glow coming out the picture window. Unfortunately the image is Roseanne whining away. There are never shows about religious families. Or shows that teach us to forgive. It is easy to judge people instead of seeing how evil spirit world pushes people around. Years ago the TV shows were more wholesome but still they were secular and trivial.

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