Slow food, "organic" gardens and chickens scratching about in peoples’ city backyards made me think that we were becoming a bit more enlightened and moving past the days of processed factory food being the greatest invention since the cotton gin.  I hoped we could also move a bit past Betty Friedan and her cause.

B and the bottle Dana at Principled Discovery found an April Atlantic Monthly article and duly noted it and her reservations about The Case Against Breast-Feeding, as written by Hanna Rosin.  Hanna Rosin has a lot of media mileage from writing the book about Patrick Henry College and her observations. 

God’s Harvard

Looking back on the gain she’s had from her most recent book about a lifestyle that seems foreign to her makes me think she’s not into the homeschooled, stay at home spending ‘quantity and quality time with the kids’ sort of life.  She seems to have some pre-conceptions, about what a family life could be that raises strong women, even if they stay home with the kids.  I’m wondering if it’s ok to raise strong men in her world, but I’ll assume that’s not a problem.

Like Dana, I’m not a breast feeding fanatic.  We had twins with the last batch.  Between their tandem naps and 2 hour sleeping periods most nights, along with most interesting feedings; I didn’t nurse them as long as I would have liked.  But they did ok, even though their recent revealed food allergies made me do the mommy guilt thing that I did not nurse them long enough.  (No logic or research there, just mommy guilt for the 15 year olds.)

The two before that were 14 months apart and I felt like a milk cow sometimes.  But they sure were sweet and cuddly and I treasured those times, even if I don’t remember them so well in my past seemingly half asleep state. I even miss nursing those babes.  (Isn’t that scandalous in a Rosin sort of world!)

I’m right there with Dana:

Yes, I believe breast-feeding is better.  I believe staying home with your children is better.  I believe homeschooling is better.  If I didn’t believe these things, I wouldn’t do them.  They aren’t always the easiest choices . . . and I haven’t even always believed they were better.  But believing they are better does not have to translate into looking down on those who make different choices, either because of their particular situations or simply because of their desires and goals.

I am one of those "happy housewives" that are so very offensive to some.  The problem is that it’s not just writers like Rosin, but powerful groups and leaders with immense power are also pushing a particular and rather impersonal (zero to five) agenda.  Private and public entities and governments say that no one should be home with the kids as that’s not politically correct.  (Politically correct being the most literal sense of the word now.) 

Decisions are being made and funded with our monies that promote and incorporate institutional (and universal) day cares, while mommy and daddy are at work.  Who needs a mama’s breast when we have experts who ensure (in a neutral and bureaucratic sort of way) that infants are mentally and physically healthy .

Friedan said this in her 1963 book: The Feminine Mystique:

On the contrary, new neuroses are being seen among women–and problems as yet unnamed as neuroses–which Freud and his followers did not predict, with physical symptoms, anxieties, and defense mechanisms equal to those caused by sexual repression. And strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework–an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life. Educators are increasingly uneasy about the dependence, the lack of self-reliance, of the boys and girls who are entering college today. "We fight a continual battle to make our students assume manhood," said a Columbia dean.

A White House conference was held on the physical and muscular deterioration of American children: were they being over-nurtured? Sociologists noted the astounding organization of suburban children’s lives: the lessons, parties, entertainments, play and study groups organized for them. A suburban housewife in Portland, Oregon, wondered why the children "need" Brownies and Boy Scouts out here. "This is not the slums. The kids out here have the great outdoors. I think people are so bored. they organize the children, and then try to hook ever’ one else on it. And the poor kids have no time left just to lie on their beds and daydream."

Over 40 years later, do our current ‘expert’ concerns revolve around American children being "over-nurtured"?  I don’t think so.  Parents are lazy sops who don’t read to their kids, pay attention to their kids and dump their family discipline problems on the teachers and staff in the schools.  Should we thank the feminist movement for our society’s children being under-nurtured?  That blame would likely be a little over the top.  Notwithstanding the tendencies to pound down parents’ natural instincts.

What is the expert solution now in 2009? Preschool to keep kids out of jail, if following the latest UP proponents’ media blitz.   Mental health screening for all, often followed by legal drugging to rid our children of "dependence, the lack of self-reliance, of the boys and girls who are entering college today…..who often can’t assume manhood".

Mother’s little helper has definitely taken on new meaning. 

Ms. Rosin can and should do what she likes with her family and best wishes to her.  I really enjoyed a recent NPR interview of a working (as in paid and working) homeschooling mom.  Seems like the mainstream of our society is only moving about in a rather vicious cycle. 

Who Knows Best?