Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to If parenting is a career, where's the retirement?

Good Old Days that Never Were.
Tom Brosz — (archived)

The current statistics related to families and children are, largely, going to hell, and any celebration of how women have been "freed" from the supposed Abu Ghraib of the nuclear family needs to take that into the equation, too.

You've got anecdotes. So do I. My family was the old-fashioned kind. My dad worked, and my mom raised kids, and I think my brother, sister and I were much better off for it.

You can find a lot of other people my age who would agree with me.

Ever find a kid who thinks it's just swell that mom and dad were big wheels in corporate America, and he got to be raised by the nanny? Eloise comes to mind, but not too many others.

Sure, you can find people whose dad was an axe murderer and whose mom was a drunk, too. You can find people where life in an orphanage would be better than life with the parents. You hear more about those than the other kind. But that doesn't invalidate the idea that for most people, a family with one of the parents (doesn't have to be the mom) home where the kids need him or her is better for the kids.

If a spouse dies, or leaves, you are stuck in a bad place. No argument, there. But that doesn't invalidate the ideal of the intact family either. In fact, it emphasizes it.

It's a difference in basic beliefs. Don't think we're going to get past that, really.

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