RobP: << Re your earlier post, "Neanderthal" is such a lovely word dripping with connotations which I'm sure you are well aware of. On this occasion, you were a most ungracious tosser. >>

Glad you got my point, at least as far as gender is concerned.

As I said, my usage of the term was restricted to your expressed attitude to gender roles. To be even clearer - your idea of woman as 'nurturer' and man as 'pioneer' is maladaptive, archaic and doomed to the dustbin of cultural evolution.

Sorry you don't like to hear that, but it's attitudes like yours that gave rise to feminism, and their persistence in today's society is why feminism is still relevant - to both women and men.

If you're going to express such flagrantly regressive ideas perhaps you should be a little less sensitive?

With respect, CJ, I think you're being a little harsh on RobP here. You've honed in on his "natural nurturers" and "physical pioneers" statement and extracted it entirely from the paragraph in which it is framed, which in my view is a very reasonable one.

The first sentence - "that forcing women to look after the kids and home AND expecting them to do paid work is actually where the unfairness lies" is spot-on as far as I'm concerned. The last sentence - "Let them come to their equality within these natural life parameters" - places the preceding nurturers/pioneers statement in perfect context and again in my view is completely reasonable. Rob's not arguing that these "natural life parameters" are immutable, but rather that they provide the basis on which individual couples can arrive at their own arrangements regarding the mix of nurturing and providing within the partnership.

You yourself asked the question - "Have you wondered why 'stay-at-home dads' are so relatively uncommon?". I put it to you that our "natural nurturing/pioneering" preferences are very much part of the reason.

rehctub

<< .. as long as they are draining from the national purse .. >>

Stay-at-home mothers are no more "draining from the national purse" than mothers who place their children in government subsidised childcare. Raising the nation's children is an invaluable service and mothers who forego their own career advancement to provide this service should not have to put up with being branded a "drain" on society.

Bronwyn,
Yes, good point. Only thing is, mothers who work pay extra for CC than mothers who don't. Figure that one out.

A little birdie told me that CJ is Mr Unpopular on this thread and that even Bronwyn is bucketing him!! Well, I just had to drop what I was doing and race to OLO to read this wonderful stuff!

Got to agree with Bronwyn this time.

That’s all I’ve got to say. Now I’ll go back to my unpaid work around the house ( :>/

I am 2 busy to work, fishing, playing in my houseboat, touring au, chasing women, drinking beer, and of corse sorting out what i am going to invest in next.

Bronwyn,

Normally, I'd say thanks for the helping hand, but it's truer to say thanks for the helping scaffold.

CJ,

I think you've been hanging around in the same cultural crowd too long when you see a politically incorrect word that is dripping with what you see as prejudice, where it is actually the word that best describes what I was trying to say. Despite what the political trend is at the current time, men will always be more rooted in doing the heavier physical work even as times and standards change in a period of increasing enlightenment. This is so purely because physical realities demand it. OK, 'physical pioneer' is a little bit 1800s, but the underlying difference in the sexes, which was the important point I was trying to make, is eternal.

Re sensitivities, this wouldn't be a problem if people in general said exactly what they meant and didn't hijack the language and park their nasty propensities behind it. I try to say what I mean.