Monday, June 10, 2013

JUST TRYING TO LIVE & LOVE HERE!

I’ll bet you didn’t think that working hard at your job was destroying society, ruining marriage, and hurting children did you.

Well, if you’re body parts are “innies” and not “outies,” that’s just what FOX News has accused you of. And evidently Lou Dobbs and his fellow FOX commentators have a source of wisdom that most of us living in the real world don’t. Because they say that all the scientific studies about women who hold jobs outside the home aren’t right.

Once again, you have a complex subject involving many types of social and economic pressures reduced to the age-old blame game – it’s women’s fault. Whether it’s the changing face of the average family, the shift in household earnings, the exodus of manufacturing jobs from America, or (I guess) the melting of the polar ice caps – it’s women’s fault.

It can’t be growing out of the fact that ALL workers in America, regardless of their sex, can’t survive on what they’re paid even for full time work. And it couldn’t be tied to the fact that there is still NO child care system in this country that offers women a safe, affordable, high quality environment for their children if they must or choose to work at a job. And it must have nothing to do with the fact that the types of jobs that are growing – service, technological, flexible – are many times done just as well by women if not better.

Changing social institutions and norms will always create uncertainty, but couldn’t we work together to make the evolving institutions and norms more positive and productive? Just once, rather than saying, “In my grandfather’s day women didn’t ………..” couldn’t we react to women having more influence and more options as a positive thing and create a society that helps ALL workers and ALL children?

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