Disclaimer:  The title is not my opinion, but that of the object of the linked article.

As some of you know, I have been on vacation.  A sort of working vacation, but one where I basically treated the computer as a plague.  However since I was 3 hours away from home, I often woke up early (like at 4am), and did catch Good Morning America.  This article is based upon one such morning that I decided had to be responded to.

Back in the early 60s, Betty Friedan gave us the Feminine Mystique and supposedly freed women from the shackles of being a stay at home mother and becoming a career woman.  Women were told that they could have it all, a Career, and a family.  This gave rise to the term super mom, the one glamorized in the 70s commercials of "Bringing home the bacon, frying it up in the pan.".  Some women managed to do both, but many burned out, and even others found that a career outside of the house was not what they wanted.

And so in the 80s and then into the 90s, there was a snap back.  Where women yelled "enough", and demanded that a stay at home mother had as much dignity, if not more so, than a career woman.  Motherhood was again looked at as a noble and very demanding job.  This was epitomized by the backlash against Hillary Clinton in the 92 campaign when she trashed the stay at home moms (which she then reversed herself and did her Betty Crocker imitation to placate that constituency).

But now comes a point hat that not only says you can have it both, but you are wrong if you dont!  Linda Hirshman, herself a Career woman/mom does not pussy foot around as she says that stay at home moms are just plain wrong.

While I will be the first to defend any woman who wants both, and jump to their defense in times of attack, I am also going to be one of the first to say that Linda Hirshman is full of number 2!  For those like her that want it, go for it!  But do not say that those who dont want it are wrong!  No, those who do not want it, and can afford it, they are 100% right!  For while Hirshman may be a good mother, it is doubtful she saw her babies first steps, first tooth first, or heard their first words. 

The thing about children is that they are not little adults.  Every day to them is a new experience for both parents and the child.  And those first will never come again.  If you have not seen your sister in a year, when you do see her again, she will probably look the same and sound the same.  Not so a child.  Every year they change so much that without a score card, you would not know they were the same person.

And women, and men, that want to be there for the firsts.  To kiss the boo boos, to comfort the frightened child, to watch a new person taking shape.  There is nothing greater in life than that, to know you are shaping a new generation (and nothing more frightening either I might add).  And for those that chose to do it first hand, there is nothing more noble or hard.They sacrifice financially.  But that is their choice, and one I fully support and admire.

To say they are wrong and dismiss them out of hand is a blindness and arrogance that defies description.  And one that I have nothing but contempt for the utterer for.  Ms. Hirshman, enjoy your dual careers, but try looking at the 3 fingers pointing at you when you go pointing fingers.  You will find the source of your problems where the 3 point, not where the one is pointing.