Linda Hirschman starts the wingnuts whining

Hat tip to Chelsea Morning.

Back in November, Linda Hirschman wrote an article in the American Prospect about how self-destructive that being a stay-at-home mother with a graduate degree was. What she didn't expect was the wrath of the wingnuts. Yes, we are beginning to see a theme here. Do not suggest that there is an alternative to their morals (which they want to impose on everyone) or they will bring the Wrath of God upon you. I know the wingnuts think that God speaks to them, I really think they should see a psychiatrist about those voices in their heads. Apparently, God is telling everyone except me that women should be married, subservient, pregnant and in the home. He tells Osama bin Ladin and Pat Robertson this, God forgot to give me the memo.

I learned something people really need to know. The aggressive domesticity is not coming only from a bunch of women who can't manage all the demands on their time. Time and again, when I could identify the sources of the most rabid criticism and Google them, male and female, they had fundamentalist religious stuff on their Web sites or in the involuntary biographies that Google makes possible. A lot of the fundamentalism behind the stay-at-home mom movement is overt, such as the letters worrying about my soul that appeared after the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary suggested his followers chat me up. But a lot of it is covert, such as the identity of the authors of manuals disguised as tips on frugal housekeeping, but actually proselytizing women to stay home, as the Bible suggests.

Yes, because working mothers were an issue so important to Jesus that he mentioned it zero times just like abortion and homosexuality. And don't hand me that crap that women didn't work 2,000 years ago. Women were the main herders in the Bedouin culture until very recently. Priscilla from the New Testament was a tentmaker. Deborah was a judge. It's amazing that religious leaders interpret their religion to work out to their advantage so they can get a free domestic slave. Let's see if your wife doesn't work, you don't have to pay for daycare and you don't have to help out around the house because that's her full time job.

What happens to the smug stay at home mom when her husband divorces her or dies? Divorce is particularly devasting to a stay at home mom. It's tough to get a job when you have been out of the workplace for years. Unless she has a solid pre-nupital agreement, there is no divorce insurance. She is cut off from her husband's pension and life insurance. Alimony is now a relic of the past. What's the best way to protect yourself from this problem? Don't quit your job when you have kids.