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.

"Another myth is that the roles of dads and mums are fully interchangeable. They are not, because men and women are not the same. There are inherent, biological differences. As Venker demonstrates, “fathers will never be parents in the same way mothers are”. Thus the androgyny ideal is a furphy."

One needs to be careful to substantiate what they state with common and reasonable fact and which is mostly lacking in this article with the author hoping we accept their 'facts' and proceed from there.

Dads can and increasingly are fulfilling the maternal roles, one just needs to look on the street and you see fathers with a certain gentleness while they care for their children and a certain aggressiveness if some threatens his child, and other men who fathers and to be fathers recognize this vulnerability of a man who is caring for his young child, understand this nature in men and will protect this father.

If this article is for women then this opinion is out of place but if author expects men to toe the line then you will find that women whom by nature collectively follow a changeable 'notion' men make up their our own minds which are firm and long term foundation and one of which is their children are a part of them and belong with them.

Welcome to the new world where the lines between women and men are being drawn more clearly but the roles are dimimishing.

Sam

Strangely, I would find myself in agreement with much of what Muehlenberg's review of Venker's book has to say here - if only it wasn't predicated on notions of motherhood rather than notions of work. I've thought for some time now that women who seek self-actualisation and fulfilment through paid work, either instead of or simultaneously with motherhood, have been sold a pup by second-wave feminism. But I also think that men who seek self-actualisation and fulfilment through paid work, either instead of or simultaneously with fatherhood have been sold a pup - by neoliberal capitalism in its current incarnation.

I think if people of both genders worked less ridiculous hours in their more or less alienating jobs and spent and spent more time with their families, then everybody'd be better off. But that has nothing to do with "motherhood" per se, and everything to do with contemporary industrial and social praxis.

The privileging of the public over the domestic spheres is part of this praxis, but these domains are becoming increasingly blurred. Personally, I "work" far less now than I have done for most of my 30-odd years in paid employment - but I have a much better life, and I think I am a much better parent for it.

The same would be true if I was a mother instead of a father :)

garra, very nicely said.

There is some good stuff in the article but other bits which smell a bit off.

"fathers will never be parents in the same way mothers are" can be read in a few different ways. If it means that generally men and women parent differently then fine. If it means that fathers parenting is inferior to a mothers parenting then I don't like the smell. If it assumes that the lines are really clear cut between mothers and fathers in their parenting then again I don't like the smell.

I do agree with the idea that parents who end up losing out on time with their kids because of careers are getting the poor end of the deal. Often a practical necessity but not something which should be seen as an advantage for the parent in full time employment.

I don't know that mothers working outside the home is a myth in Australia. An OECD study has reported that 62 per cent of families with children have both parents in the paid workforce...Given that 49 per cent of children under 12 are also in some form of childcare, this also suggests women's participation in the workforce.

It's all very well to make mothers feel guilty about the nature of their role - but the reality is that many women have no choice but to return to work: their financial situation does not allow them to choose to stay home, regardless of what they would prefer to do.

I endorse the view that equity does not mean sameness. In my family, myself and my partner make an active choice to spend an EQUAL amount of time outside the workforce in order to care for our son. Let me stress, I am one of the lucky ones: I get to choose the circumstances in which I return to work in a flexible, accommodating environment which values the contribution I make to my family. Many women are not so lucky.

In addition to this, my son also attends childcare: a great opportunity for him to spend time with other kids, which he loves. I don't consider the childcare workers he spends time with to be "mothering" him but I do think their role in his life is an important and caring one.

I think it's time that we considered what it means to denigrate the contribution that people make to the raising of their children and accept the broad spectrum of childhood and parenthood experiences that create happy children and happy parents and minimises resentment from all parties.

There is no one-size-fits-all, and some people aren't even allowed in the dressing room to decide what fits best, so let's avoid the temptation to get stuck into a guilt-ridden middle class (because they're an easy target) and think about the ramifications of lack of real choice for working class women.

I feel that one of the great injustices of this age is that since so many mums went out to work, and initially enjoyed some benefit from this added income, the price of homes has now reached a point where mrs average to middle income HAS to keep working just to make ends meet. Most house prices are based on 2 income economic assumptions.

Bill captures the essense or the book well I feel, and while the direction may indeed fit Bills conservatism (and mine), this does not change the validity or the truthfulness of what the book is saying.

The idea that you can do a demanding job AND raise young human beings well, seems to stretch the credibility a tad. To be honest, who would WANT such a stressful time bomb ? Those who do may not have contemplated the extreme difficulty of coping with both roles in the context of some family tragedy or personal crisis. Seems so to me anyway.

CARA.. I have no idea where you got your little 'feminist' attack on Bill from, its about time we all realized that we are male and female, part of the ONE equation and its actually not about 'us/them' but 'we together' complementary, not competitive.

The extended family is a GREAT concept, and I recently heard of one in a Vietnamese village consisting of 600 people where the village only had about 1000 total population. My wife comes from such a situation and I've lived among it, and the sense of security and belonging which it produces is something we in the West could do well to re-discover.

Trying to convince the average woman to allow her man to take care of the kids is about as likely as convincing male dominated board rooms that women can make rational and un-emotinal decisions when they have power.

The average guy has to overcome the basic sexist stereotype that he is useless around kids and around the house. He has to overcome the female cheavenistic assertions as to her inherent prowess as the primary care-giver. We all know that 'Mother knows best'.

And the ever increasing suspicion that society has about men (including fathers) around young children. Hell, a female friend of mine was interviewing at a local council for child carers. She told me that they would automatically exclude male applicants (altough they would go thru the interview facade) on the basis that men around kids are 'dodgy' and cant be trusted.

Men seem ready enough to challenge there own gender role stereotypes. We have been brought up to question this stuff over the last 40 years. Most guys l know are pretty open about it. Not so the women. They actually present the biggest challenge in overcoming expectations of male behaviour regarding gender stereotypes. They claim to want sensitive, new age, metrosexuals in touch with their 'feminine side' (whatever that means) but that is not who they tend to pair off with. These sort of guys make the average woman cringe.

That wasn't a book review, it was an essay in complete favour of an Author's premise - if it's actually a 'good read', we'll never know. The book itself was not given a proper critique

I agree, Rose. Muehlenberg doesn't seem to know what a book review entails, as his various contributions to these forums demonstrate.

The agenda behind the myth is to homosexualise the planet. It has been proven that the exclusive cause of homosexuality is stress on pregnant women and the "super mum" myth is contrived to stress out women so all their boys will be homosexual. For the same reason women are encouraged to engage in binge drinking. Alcohol is known to suppress the hormones so producing more Gay babies. Women are just being exploited for the Gay agenda. Keith

Great book Bill M. I began to think there was a conspiracy to stop people from buying this book. Luckily I have discovered that it is available in Melbourne from Connor Court Publishing www.connorcourt.com.au. I am wondering if a similar study is required in Australia.