Children should be made a priority in all aspects of life. The challenge of full-time parenthood and the role of teachers should be honoured in our society. That is sadly not the case, however – a stay-at-home mother is often seen as ‘unproductive’ in this society, and when she decides she would like to embark on employment later in life she often faces a reluctance by employers to take her on after ‘so many years out of the workplace’. Similarly, teachers are horrendously paid for the duty of care placed on them and their morale is low. I would suggest these aspects of society need more urgent attention than the aim of certain religious leaders and conservatives to lock women back in the home.

Insulting mothers who must, or choose to, work and bullying women back into the domestic realm will not solve our problems. Children need constant care. They also need role models. Little girls need to know they can look forward to being able to make their contribution to the world in more ways than reproduction – they need to know they can have careers in arenas other than the home. Little boys need to respect women and be able to relate to them as colleagues in the world of work – where the political, social and economic world is created and maintained.

This article is a sign of the times – conservatism returning, minorities targeted, white male hegemony reinstated. Oh yes, the reviewer announces proudly that the author of the book is a woman – unfortunately one can be a conservative, religious zealot and chauvinist regardless of one’s gender. And a small point on the consistency of the article – one moment some questionable statistics tell us that working mothers are a minority, the next we “abandon our children in droves”…in his eagerness to use the book to promote his own conservatism, the reviewer’s consistency and rationality has been lost.

These issues are not black and white. I hope the author has treated them with a little more moderation and reason than the reviewer.

Play down the reproductive & nurturing role of women as much as you like Cara, but those women (with & without IVF) who find their 'reproductive' role (I'd rather see it as relationship / family management) as a 'career/life' highlight will tell you all the other stuff is bunkum!

When motherhood (in combination with marriage) is reinstated to its former primacy, (individually & collectively) then some of the world might just come around to teachers & other roles that are more important than mere economics.

Thanks Reality Check - I don't think there's any evidence in my posting of playing down the role of reproduction or family management. I was attempting to make the point that the issues are not as simple as saying "reinstate motherhood and marriage". My view is that we can't replace feminism/democracy and all it has brought/imposed/problematised/taken away with a world where people again have no choice in the paths they wish to follow - I'm not clear about whether you are advocating this but that is what I felt Bill Muehlenberg was advocating. And 'economics' plays a greater role in all this than you may think since, despite what Bill Muehlenberg asserts, not all mums who work are doing it for a fourth television or third car. My mother worked and we had one second-hand television from her parents and one car. We couldn't have participated in school excursions at our local public school and had plentiful food if she didn't. She wrestled with guilt throughout and hated not being home with us, even despite the fact that we had grandparents care for us rather than childcare institutions. I'm sure there are examples of one income families who can survive but all I know was that we couldn't at that time. The alternative, which my parents chose for a brief time, was dad working in the public service by day and as a bartender by night. He missed his family, so they went back to sharing the breadwinning. Lots of elements to consider when talking about this topic. Do we want to 'reinstate motherhood' at the expense of fatherhood? Do we want to 'reinstate motherhood' at the expense of having women represented in our public sphere as teachers, public servants, scientists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc ?

All these experts who know "best" how to be a mother. My mother was a stay at home mother who loathed staying home, all of us would have been much happier if she had gone out to work and been a happier, more fulfilled person. If a woman drags herself to work, resenting every second, that won't make her a good mum either. There are as many different ways to be a good mum as there are individual women doing the mothering. I work part-time and always have, but sometimes I travel and my husband picks up the slack, very successfully I might add.
Able-bodied women always worked outside the home, hunting and gathering, in the fields, as domestic servants, and, as the industrial revolution started, in factories and shops. The phenomenon of the stay at home mum is relatively new. In the upper classes in previous centuries, women stayed home alright, but they didn't look after their kids, they paid nannies and governesses to do it.
Feminism simply recognises this reality and says each woman should decide what will work best for her, her husband and her kids, and that we should respect her ability to know best about her own life and family.
By the way, Bill, equality means of equal value, it does not mean the same. 8 oranges may equal 8 apples, but no-one would argue they are the same.

Family and society are constantly in a state of change and have been from day one. Nothing's ever been perfect and never will be. Family and society will adapt to accomodate any choice that parents make, whether that be mum at home, dad at home, or both working. Hopefully we can get to the stage where no one looks down on any of those scenarios.

Who knows? Maybe the extended family will make a comeback.

The reviewer hasn't taken to "bullying women". All he has done is highlight the benefits of the dedicated mothering role. Cara, it's you who's being extremely unreasonable: talking of bullying, "targeting minorities" and "white male hegemony"! That all smacks of a hysterical response to a reasoned article which had not a hint of bullying, or attacking minorities or of any sort of hegemony.

There is one other huge flaw in your argument. You equate the "domestic realm" as inferior and the "public realm" as more worthy and important. Where do you get this false dichotomy from? Where does the publice sphere end and the domestic sphere begin? If there is a sharpt distinction between the two, why is the domestic sphere worse?

Finally, before you accuse others of zealotry, look at your own attitude.