A Hard Cold Look At How We Disrespect Motherhood In America

As I was cruising around my diminishing facebook feed, I noticed a heated thread about motherhood and child support. The remarks were vitriolic and vile as they related to the question, “should women receive child support”. There was absolutely no support for the idea that women should receive any support, financial or otherwise, after a divorce or a relationship gone bad. As I have found, on this and other related topics, motherhood has taken a drastic turn for the worse in general public opinion.

As a conservative woman, of a certain age, of course, I am appalled at the hypocrisy with which we treat the institution of motherhood. I’m also a mother and have had my own unique experience in fighting to be valued for my contributions in raising my children. But I have found, unless you work, “outside of the home” you are pretty much looked at as a freeloading gold-digger.

In fact, I’ll go as far as saying the failed “women’s movement” of the 60’s and 70’s has put women back in the dark ages as far as their status and value measures up in American culture.

I think it’s very important to note the hypocrisy in our attitudes toward mothers is truly monumental. We, as an American culture, pay a lot of lip service to mothers, but when it comes to really offering support, as in family court, child support, stay at home mothers, working mothers, we really don’t walk the walk.

The liberal Huffington Post “America’s Love Hate Relationship with Mothers,” comes surprisingly close to putting a fine point on the issues that most conservative outlets miss. And while this article is a plea for an infusion liberal paternity leave policy, the fine points lie between the lines.

Yes, Dear Mothers, get used to it. America has a love-hate relationship with all 85 millionof you. You are lionized through conservative family values rhetoric. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty of actually having to deal with you, well, you’re a burden, to say the least. And nothing epitomizes this contradiction more than the fact that the United States is the only high-income nation in the world that does not have a federally-mandated program for paid maternity leave.

They’re right. The message here is, American women are a burden unless the are pulling in a pay check. Since the women of the 60s and 70s burned their bras, women not only bear the children, they are responsible for bringing home the bacon, too. So, instead encouraging stay-at-home-moms, we must have government sponsored, and temporary parenting vacations. Right?

The message is clear. Parenting is secondary to pulling in a paycheck or having a “real” job. In this HuffPo article, there isn’t even an option for moms to stay at home with their children.

And they go so far as to state, that a short, paid maternity leave is the physically and emotionally healthy  way to start a child’s life. Oh, and  it also benefits the mother’s too.

Offering maternity leave provides a woman with the time she needs to adjust to motherhood so she can return to work well-positioned to perform professionally. It enhances employee retention, so organizations wind up spending fewer resources on recruitment. And importantly, it provides a baby with the structure and consistency it needs to start a healthy life.

In another HuffPo article, “Child Support: Why He Can’t Stand Giving You That Check Every Month,” again, the liberal agenda oozes out from between the lines, not only devaluing women and their contribution as moms, but inadvertently makes men obsolete. Because really, think about it. What do we need men for? They really aren’t necessary in holding a place in a “traditional family” because their contribution in supporting the children they sire has now been solely mandated to mothers.

The author opines, it’s hard for women to renter the workforce after a long stint as a stay-at-home-mom, but it’s worth it because it’s so much more fulfilling. And child support, under it’s current structure is “mentally unhealthy” because the father has no control over how the money is spent.

Can you imagine how “mentally unhealthy” it might be for women to remain under the thumb of disgruntled and bitter divorced exes, because he doesn’t want her (or his children) to live in anything other than a cardboard box or eat anything other than peanut butter sandwiches? She’s nuts.

I also want to bring up something else. I think that the way child support is structured is really bad. The psychological aspect of a man having to hand his ex a check every month is just plain old mentally unhealthy. Why not set up an account that is for the use of kids only? A guy can put the child support check into that account and the woman can write checks against it for rent/mortgage, food, utilities and kids expenses? This way, the guy who is writing the checks can see firsthand where the money is going.

Oh, John Wayne! Where are you? There used to be a day, in this country, where providing for your children was considered honorable. Of course, we did appreciate the things that went in to the partnership of marriage, and the contributions of both parties, including the wife/mother to keep the ship afloat.

There’s a lot to be discussed on this topic. And not all circumstances will favor women who are dysfunctional in their behavior, but clearly many, many women are caught up in a women’s movement, gone bad.

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