I have read two blog posts in the past few days. One of them was a mom who wrote a post to herself, from herself, about reminding herself to allow her husband to love her. It was a beautifully written post and really hit home for me. She wrote it from a very personal place and although it was meant to really pertain just to her the message resonated with many mothers out there, myself included. Evidently her post ruffled a few feminist feathers. She was accused of promoting the "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen" ideal of what marriage is. She was called names, and told her ideas were antiquated. This brings me to the other blog post I read. It was a shock piece written for the soul purpose of stirring up the internet. I'm not sure if the author really felt that way or if it was just a stunt to drive traffic to her blog but at any rate the opinion was put out there and unfortunately it is shared by many. Her opinion was that stay at home moms have an easy job, and should not be celebrated. Her post mentioned how having bridal showers and baby showers was ridiculous, that "anybody could get married or get knocked up." It was "easy" to her. She felt things such as a woman landing a CEO job, or backpacking across Europe should be the ones being celebrated and having parties. Since after all those things take hard work, unlike getting married or having a baby and maintaining a household. [insert HUGE eyeroll here].
The latter blogger is what most would call a feminist. Feminism is defined as the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. On the face of it, this sounds pretty good right? Men and women are both humans and should be treated equally. Great. In this definition I would consider myself a feminist. I believe women should earn the same wages as men, I believe women should be considered for jobs that are typically performed by only men (so long as they physically can do them ie. Construction, or the Army). I believe women should have the same legal rights and be considered equal to a man in the court of law. See....I'm a feminist.
Now, where these radical feminists miss the point is...they think every woman should WANT to become some powerful CEO career woman and to hold the title of mother/homemaker is shameful. Any woman who stays home with her children, cooks meals, does household chores and otherwise does "wifey" things is a failure as a woman. They call themselves feminists and hide behind the guise of standing up for women's rights. What they completely missed is it is every woman's right to choose how she wants to spend her life. They slam men, calling them lazy and declaring women don't need men to survive. True...a woman is perfectly capable of surviving on her own but if a woman chooses to spend her life with a man that is her right. No other woman has any right to tell her that her choice is wrong, she is somehow being controlled by that man and should dump him because he's just holding her back. I see SO much more husband and man bashing coming from so called feminists than any woman bashing coming from men. Yes, it exists. Yes, there are terrible misogynistic men out there that are terrible to women. There are also amazing men out there that want to love their wives, provide for a family and be loved by a wife. That doesn't make him a terrible human being.
I am antiquated, yes. I believe in marriage, I believe in a wife serving her husband. Not because she has to but because she wants to out of love. I desire to make my husband happy and he desires to make me happy, it is equal. We have different roles in our marriage for sure. He goes to work and provides for his family while I stay home and keep the kids alive, clean the house, and cook the meals. Sure maybe my job isn't nearly as stressful as the high powered career woman but it doesn't mean it isn't a job. It's tough, not as tough of a job as a female soldier's of course but IT IS A JOB. I don't compare a woman working at McDonalds to a woman managing a fortune 500 company so how is it that some women feel it's okay to slam stay at home mothers for having an easy job compared to a business minded woman? It's not. Every job is hard. Every job has easy parts. You are entitled to complain about the hard parts and praise the easy parts no matter what your job is. Whether you are a CEO or an MRS.
The fact that the first blogger I spoke about had to issue a post explaining that her words were meant to just apply to her and she by no means advocated every woman should be a stay at home mom, or that any other job was inferior to that of a stay at home mom, is absurd. She had to defend her choice in life to be a loving wife. She had to explain herself to millions of strangers when really it shouldn't have been necessary. We are all women and we should empower each other in whatever choice that is. If you want to be a high powered business woman who stays single then you go girl! If you want to get married, have babies and be a wife then I say rock on lady! We all have incredible freedom to do what we like with our careers and just because somebody picked a more "traditional" occupation doesn't mean they were forced there by the all powerful men in the world.
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