COLUMN: The definition of ‘The Difference’
I recently heard on the news that groundbreaking research has been released proving the hard-wired differences between men and women. We spend millions of dollars each year on research and literature explaining the differences between the two genders.
I don’t mean to boast, but I’m pretty sure I could’ve told them the differences between men and women as soon as I learned to speak, and I would have gladly done it for free. I could tell you that mommy stayed home to make me sack lunches and help me with reading and daddy went to work and then came home to play baseball with me in the back yard.
Today this is not the case. Too many children live in homes where the nanny makes the sack lunches and helps with reading because mommy is too busy with her own life. Women have become so self-centered that even their own children become second to their own desire for success outside the home, and that isn’t from assumption but rather from personal experience.
I remember stories my grandmother told me about women who held their role as wives and mothers in high esteem, and when it was needed, they held the factories together while the men were out at war. Then when the men returned from fighting, the women went back to the home. The women went where they were needed, when they had to work to support the war effort, they would choose one mother to watch the children while the others made the sacrifices necessary to support their families.
I fear this sort of sacrifice will never be witnessed again. The role of a wife and a mother is the most selfless career on the market, but unfortunately, too many women are not willing to take it on.
I would be willing to bet that any person in this society, when asked whether they would have success in a prestigious career or have success watching their children be successful and impacting society for good, they would choose the second. However, we now live in a world where the word housewife has been synonymous with subjectivity and powerlessness.
Encouraging women to stay home is not endorsing the idea of creating a male-dominated society. Just as the skills of a mason and a blacksmith are both different but necessary, the same is with the skills of men and women. Both are important, different, and necessary.
The feminist movement was a series of campaigns in the 1960’s on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, equal pay and sexual harassment. The movement spread across the globe. The goals of the movement varied from opposition to female gential cutting in Sudan to the glass ceiling in Western countries.
The movement took off, burst through the glass ceiling and exploded in a political campaign to change the perception of women all together. When the first birth control pill came out it was marketed as a campagin for women to have the ability to be free from the bonds of men and the burden of children so they could focus on what they saw as really important, themselves.
The demand for access to both abortion and divorce skyrocketed. In 1960 there was only .07 abortions per 1000 live births, today there are over 315 abortions per 1000 births in the country. Since 1970 the marriage rate has fallen by 30 percent and the divorce rate has risen over 40 percent. Both of these are a direct result of the feminist movement.
Since this time in our society the role of women has changed. No longer is it OK for women to stay home to fulfill their duties as a wife and mother full-time.
Mothers who unfortunately find themselves single immediately focus on finding another companion. They mask this selfish act as a façade for finding a daddy for their children when in reality, it is not the children who they are thinking of at all, it’s themselves.
Mothers who are married and have children insist on creating their own success outside the home rather than encouraging the success of their children.
I understand most of the women reading this are enrolled as full-time students gaining the education needed for a career.
This is a noble endeavor that I encourage fully. My mother majored in chemistry and nobly gave up her degree to enter into the bonds of marriage, my sister fulfilled her degree in marketing, and my fiancé will graduate with two bachelor degrees in May. I support fully the need for women to educate themselves and to find individual success, but the point is to prioritize your life enough to accept and understand that once the pregnancy test comes back positive your life is no longer yours.
Dedicating yourselves to the raising of children and allowing a man to support you is not something to be shunned or looked down upon, the selfless act of motherhood is something to be held in high esteem.
We don’t need the news to tell us the differences between men and women. We know them, we understand them and we have lived with them for thousands of years, the point is to not forget them.
Oh and another thing to all you ladies out there that think that you can do everything that a man can do I have one thing to say…can you pee standing up? I didn’t think so.
Scott Anderson is a junior majoring in aviation technology. Comments can be sent to seanderson@cc.usu.edu.