Why I regretted being a stay at home mom, but no longer do!

I want to make a post about the issues of being a stay at home mom and how I think society and stay at home mothers can address these issues. I was a geologist and I had just started my first job when I found out I was pregnant. We were not exactly planning, but I know how it happened. I was my fault lol. I did not even get to work a full year. We live in the Netherlands and maternity leave here is horrible (12 weeks). You can get it extended by 6 months but the thought of leaving a 8 month old to go to work freaked me out so I told my boss I would be quitting the day after we found out I was pregnant.

I did not even think about it really, it was like instinct, the idea of leaving my baby just freaked me out too much. Okay so I started out as a stay at home mother, and I now love cooking and cleaning and all that. But in the beginning it was like something was missing. It was like all my time was devoted to the baby and it was exhausting to focus on one thing THAT much. I think the issues with the stay at home model are that;

1)      It is isolating- humans need conversation, adult conversation, friends, colleagues etc. Staying in a house with toddlers or a baby is isolating and it is just not for the average person

2)      It can be boring- humans also need projects, yes children are a project but they are never ending projects, we need short term projects and we need to focus on other things besides our kids to give our brain a break

3)      It does not pay- humans like rewards for work, we like to be valued, we like to have a measure of how well we did something, some evidence that our work was valued

4)      Some people fear their husbands having too much control- I do not fear this at all, but some women do not want to give up their pay check because they do not trust their husbands

5)       Feeling undervalued- I think this is the biggest problem with staying at home; this coupled with isolation can lead to depression. The work a stay at home mother does is extremely undervalued by society. I see why it is, but that does not really help the situation. What people do not get is that (mentally) it is hard work, and we get that we are doing it for ourselves but that doesn’t make it any easier. So sometimes we would just like society to acknowledge that we are not sitting on the couch all day. Instead though society says you all are living a luxury life so do not complain, yet kids, housework and no money for take out etc. does not feel like a luxury.

So as a stay at home mom I found myself needing all those things. For friends I was lucky, my sister was also a housewife so I skyped with her all day and my first major project was looking for a house to buy and that was fun. To this day I still think the reason we bought a house was because I was bored. The house we ended up buying was on a shopping street though and it has a shop below. Also it needed quite a lot of renovation. So my next project was renovating and then starting a gift shop (so I could finally make money! Hehe), and I could finally answer the question ”what do you do for a living?” without guilt!

So I actually have no regrets because when I found that there were issues with the stay at home model I was able to fix the issues. So I think that stay at home moms who find themselves facing similar issues need to be encouraged to work (a little). And the thing is you CAN work while keeping your kids close, you will just work a lot slower. I still consider myself a stay at home mother by the way. I work from home, my kids are never not with me, we run the shop together and people come here more to see them than me lol. But to work only because society wants you to and not because you want to can also end badly. But I think finding a way to make money out of your passions for most people should end beautifully. The things is though sometimes you do not really have a passion. And maybe then you should work on finding some of your passions??

The thing is working is great, when it is flexible and when you can keep your kids close by. If I feel like going to a play group to see other mom, I close. When I want to go to the park with the kids or to the supermarket I can close. Luckily the street I am on is a street like this, it is a very old shopping street so many of the shop owners are old people and artist who open and close whenever they want to. I think there are a lot of jobs that mothers can do that are flexible in nature though. Many of them would require mothers to start their own business though. And I think families need to look into changing the working world to make working from home more common. It can be done. You can be a secretary from home, you can draft tenders and translate document or start a photography, graphic design or writing business from home.

The major problem I have with home businesses is that if you live in a suburb or so you will have to do a lot of advertising to make sure that people even know you exist. If you live in an area with other stay at home mothers though it could be an idea for you all to encourage each other and to start a local paper and to hold local events through which you all can advertise and get the word out about your businesses.

So I am going to make a list of things I think mothers can do from home to get the sweet parts of the working world, while holding on to the sweet parts of being near your kids. My advice though is to think of something you really enjoy doing that would make you feel fulfilled and start planning your career around that. If you like baking, try starting a baking business and a baking club. But my advice is also to always remember that you are a mom/dad first, and your career is second to your kids so that if things do not work out because your kids do not give you the time or space that is OKAY. The point of is working is to enjoy it and yes money can give us enjoyment but not at the expense of our kids. So here are some other ideas from other websites, I will keep adding to this list with time.

List of possible Jobs.

Buying and selling- You would be amazed at how cheap you can get things on sale. Often things bought on very good sales are cheaper than what regular stores pay for them wholesale. But good sales are rare. Nonetheless buy things when you see them so cheap that you are certain that you can sell at a profit and resell them.

Antiques/collectibles dealing- Turn shopping into a career, buy antiques from thrift stores, or used furniture at a very low price and repaint or refurbish the furniture to sell. A shop on my street does this and I am constantly buying there. The items are cheap and they look amazing, you need some artistic skills to do this really well though. They also sell antiques which I hardly buy but I am sure they make a profit on them.

Babysitting- Depending on the age of your kids offer babysitting services to other families.

Bed and breakfast- Got a spare room? Living in an interesting place..

Biscuit/sweet/dessert making or Cake making/decorating

Afterschool Childcare/Teaching services.

Afterschool pick-up services.- I know you usually do it for free, but consider asking for a small fee, your time is just as valuable as your working friends time is.

Cosmetics sales

Data entry Perhaps not the most thrilling of part-time pursuits, but data entry can nevertheless offer an extremely steady (not to mention flexible) source of extra income. You generally get paid for the number of entries you make rather than by the hour, which means you can go back and forth to it when you get a spare few minutes

Be a doula

Flower arranging or Gift basket making- I do this for a living and I buy most of my items on the resposten section of ebay germany. Hence I am always online waiting for something I want to bid on. It is fun, except when I lose and you can get some interesting things to put in gift baskets. I also now shop at regular wholesale shops but in the beginning when I had no money it was a lot of ebay shopping and buying things on sale when they were very, very cheap. It is lots of fun.

Garage/garden sales

Gardening services “I’ve had requests from others for people willing to do this, so the demand is out there,” says Hamm. “To put it simply, some people are willing to pay others to get a vegetable or flower garden started so that they can have access to ultra-fresh produce without doing all the legwork.”

Making greetings cards

Host and teach foreign students

Ironing/laundry services

Knitting/alteration/sewing services lteration/sewing services A big growth area, as more people come to appreciate the value in repairing and patching up clothes.

Online trading

Personal shopping- for older people this is needed.

Personal tutoring

Pet grooming “Many people loathe bathing their pets and trimming their hair – I know I do,” says Hamm. “Pet groomers can do this for a small fee – a perfect job for a person who loves dogs and cats.”

Pet minding/walking

Slivers of Time OK, this isn’t strictly a business idea, butsliversoftime.com matches people with a few spare hours here and there with part-time work. Register with the site, then put your spare time on the calendar. Your hours are sent to local agencies and businesses who regularly use part-time workers.

Scrapbook making

Translating

Wedding planning

Wedding/social photographer

Website designing

Event planner- For kids birthday parties or so on

Designer- I have done major renovations with my kids on two houses. The designing parts, calling contractors, hiring the best person and shopping can be done with kids around.

Virtual assistant “Many ultra-busy professionals appreciate having someone who can check and answer their email, organise task lists for them, update their calendars and so on, with minimal interaction,” says Hamm. “You can provide this service from home with a good internet connection.”

Writing/writer

Travel agent or Vacation Planning Counselor

Company Chef- Professionals in the culinary world experience their fair share of restaurant work. The odd hours and grueling pace make lots of chefs want to head for the hills but there are options. Small companies are starting to seek out chefs who can prepare lunch and dinner for their staff members during the week. These company chefs are able to cook the entire meals in their homes where they are surrounded by their favorite kitchen gadgets and a familiar layout. These jobs usually also include delivery of the meals, so it’s important for chefs to live near the company, but be willing and able to work at home.

K-12 Teachers- You’re not seeing things: K-12 teaching positions have gone virtual! A number of charter schools, academies, and educational organizations have begun recruiting top-notch teachers for all sorts of teaching positions like math, science, geography, foreign languages, music, art, technology, and even physical education. Licensed and certified teachers are responsible for running online instructions and tutorials, monitoring and evaluating student progress, and collaborating with other teachers and learning coaches to ensure student success. Many of the employers are nationwide organizations that contract with local schools, so there is opportunity everywhere!

Will be adding more, but really you do not need a list you just need to know yourself. What are you good at and how can you turn it into a small business!

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life never make a RICH man your husband!

Yeaaaaa, this goes out to all the poor guys. Much love!!!!! I know this song is sung about ugly girls but I love it cause I consider myself and ugly girl and I think guys are very often judge on wealth and the truth is poorer guys are more likely to make better husbands and can also be great providers! So just exchange the words to match my sentiment and sing away!

The myth of parenthood.

I remember when I first searched for the words ‘’the myth of motherhood’’. Our firstborn was about 3 weeks old. I felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My life before her was great. I had the job I wanted, the guy I wanted, there was nothing much that we could not afford and we had so much time. We woke up late on a weekend, had sex whenever we wanted to, and traveled from time to time. Everything changed with having that child. A friend of ours was having a birthday party that week. We had gone to this party the two years before the baby arrived. It was usually something that ended in the morning with everyone drunk. We were arguing about how best to get the baby to sleep.

It was clear that neither of us could go to the party and it seemed like we would never be able to do things like that again. It seemed like for the next 18 years our lives would be controlled by a screaming, completely illogical child. What’s more is that every day when my husband left for work I found myself counting down the hours until he got back. It was boring and exhausting and impossible to do all of the things that I defined myself by pre-baby. I could not read, I could not do my hair, I could not even do the regular housewife things that I imagined doing like cooking or cleaning. I was so tired and stressed out from trying to keep the baby calm and caring for the baby’s needs that everything my husband said or did started getting on my nerves.

For the first time our marriage started to change, there was less sex because the baby took all our time, less bonding, we were too tired to talk. Before the baby came we would talk every morning before work and eat breakfast together. I quit my job to be a stay at home mom so there was no longer any reason for me to get up on a morning. The baby was a late morning sleeper so that was also my only chance to sleep, I stopped seeing my husband on a morning. We were definitely growing apart and so I thought WHY didn’t anyone tell me about this? Why didn’t anyone tell me about the sleepless nights and how hard it was to sleep train a baby and about how the crying could send you insane and just about how horrible and suffocating it feels to have children.

I thought the myth of motherhood and parenthood was that it sucks and that parents regretted it and were all involved in a conspiracy to make the lives of single people horrible by also bringing them into the horrible world of parents. But in fact I was wrong. The time with my first born was an adjustment period, it was hard to give up parts of my single life that I will never get back, but what I got in return is so much better. So I am here to tell you (in case you do not know) about the real myth of parenthood. The far more destructive myth of parenthood is that it sucks. The real myth of parenthood is that it takes more from you than you give. The real myth of parenthood is that children and toddlers are all tantrum throwing trolls who seek to end all good things in your life.

And that myth is far worse than the myth that it is a bed of roses or a walk in the park. You see the thing is kids are humans and as human beings more than money or cars or houses or travelling we all crave human connection. Children are like balls of innocent love that are so open to human connection without knowing it that they allow us to find things that we did not even know we were missing. They kiss you when they wake, and sit on your face, or jump on your bed; they love you before they can even say the word love. They teach you about yourself and about life. They help you to grow and they do not misbehave half as much as they do behave. They are fascinating to watch and to see them change and grow is amazing.

Children give their parents, through love and companionship so much more than they could ever take away that every time a single person tells me that they want to remain childless I want to scream at them ‘’no! do not buy into the myth’’. I do not say that because I know their situation may not be compatible with kids, or their personality and they may in fact enjoy life to the fullest without kids. But I cannot help but feel that they have been poisoned by the lie that children take more than they give. Society is lying to single people, the lie comes from a good place, it comes from the fact that there are hardships (many of them unnecessary) that parents face, but the good in children far outweighs the bad.

Also your life does not stop when you have kids. A new chapter of your life begins, but your life does not end. Since having our two kids I have started a business and made a world of friends and my husband and I have in fact gotten 10 times closer than we could have gotten without our kids. It is not true that kids destroy your marriage. Kids are like projects that you and your spouse share. You are both working on the same project and that brings you closer than you can imagine. Children also push you to become more responsible and to start owning your life and to stop complaining so much. They make you focus and they motivate you. They open you up to the world of parenthood, you begin to understand the problems that other people may be facing.

You start understanding and seeing relationships differently and you empathize with people differently.  You can see all humans as children who were once loved and nursed and cared for and you know some of the problems that parents are facing and so can better empathize with them. Also watching children grow just gives you a joy that cannot compete with the freedom to party or wake up late on a Saturday, though I really believe that we should not have to choose between those two worlds. I think that the reason many parents hate parenthood is because they are not supported as much as they should be. It takes a village to grow a child and to me that is why the stay at home model does not work as well as it should. Unless there is an active stay at home parent community available to the parent and kids. The stay at home model is isolating.

But that is for another post, for now I just want to say if you are thinking about having kids whatever you do DO NOT FALL FOR THE MYTH OF PARENTHOOD! Children do not take more than they give, they are not all roses and butterflies, but they certainly are worth every sleepless night and every missed party! Yes, society still has a lot of work to do with respect of making the average person’s life more compatible with kids. Yes, to enjoy kids to the fullest we have to bring back the community and allow parents the room to bond with the children, but those are all issues with society, not kids.

Bad advice in a don’t marry before you are 30 article!

Why I think this article is bad advice.

This writer says that she has it all, a career, the man of her dreams and great kids and she has it because she married late! Now I think that that is great for her but I could easily say the opposite. I have it all, a career (or at least what I always dreamed of work-wise), the man of my dreams and great kids and I think I also got it all because I married young (at 22 years). What’s more I have years and years of pretty dam good memories with my husband and kids.

So yea marry when you meet the guy of your dreams regardless of what age you are at. What I think she is right about is that it does take work to find the guy of your dreams, it does not just happen naturally. Well it does, but you should also have and idea of what you want and go out looking for him.

What I hate though is the idea that you should not commit to someone because you are lonely or when you are not 100% happy. Right now in my life I am 100% happy lol.. actually I am 150% or 300000000%. I really just have a very perfect life at the moment, but that was not how I was before I met my husband. In fact, I was pretty depressed, I had given up on men or the idea of ever finding a good guy and then I met my husband.

There is no black and white in love, there is no you need to be independent first, or you need to love yourself first, or you need to have a career first. There are tips and things that help. Maybe a career helps, but it is not a necessity. You just need to connect on a deep level. To be understood and to understand the person. I am so happy that I had my children young, I am very happy that I put my career on hold for them and that I am now growing the type of business I always dreamed of. Having children when you are old is not always the best idea as she claims either, because health risk can increase then and you can enjoy your kids at any age.

I am also happy that I have years of blissful memories with my husband when we were young and when we traveled the world together and grew together. I am happy to know so much about him and his past. I mean I know every story, every job he ever had, how he got the job, what the people he worked with were like. There is an intimacy that comes from that unlike any other intimacy I know. The fact that he has been there all through my studies and just though my development; it rocks to have your husband know you so well. And we laugh about things from the past everyday. Marry when you find the man of your dreams, it is just that simple. Nothing more, or nothing else. You do not have to be 30 and you do not have to have a career, you have to be committed and in love!

So Mrs. Joy Chen, Congratulations but I disagree! It worked for you but that does not mean it will work for most people.

My po-choice take on child support and abortions.

Males need reproductive Rights. Being pro-choice should mean being pro-male reproductive rights. If you won’t tell a woman to use a condom if she does not want a child why would you tell a man that? If you won’t tell a woman not to have sex if she does not want a child why would you tell a man that? If we are going to hold women and men equally responsible for the care of children we have to start given men and women equal reproductive rights.

I think that abortions should be legalized under these conditions: If a woman is married then she should have to ask her husband for permission. He must show ID, be present and sign that he is okay with the abortion.

If she is not married then she can have an abortion or not freely, but no child support for unmarried women should be legally enforced.

That is my take on it.

Also about male reproductive rights; I think they should have reproductive rights. But I can not see how that would happen without a male pill or so. I thought of the option for women to make males sign an intent to father form, as in to declare before the deadline for an abortion has passed that they want to be fathers and if such a form was not signed then the women should not be able to claim child support. I think this would be fair but then again it may just cause children to grow up without fathers or financial.. tricky.. tricky… what are your thoughts?

Addition to post: this article on how to convince a girl to have an abortion is a good example of why men need reproductive rights. Men should not be in this position.

Parallels between black communities and societies under the attack of feminism.

This quote comes from the artcle ”All the Single Ladies”.

But the non-committers are out there in growing force. If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace—and of course it is—today we’re contending with a new “dating gap,” where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players. For evidence, we don’t need to look to the past, or abroad—we have two examples right in front of us: the African American community, and the college campus.

IN AUGUST I traveled to Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a small, predominantly African American borough on the eastern edge of Pittsburgh. A half-century ago, it was known as “The Holy City” for its preponderance of churches. Today, the cobblestoned streets are lined with defeated clapboard houses that look as if the spirit’s been sucked right out of them.

I was there to spend the afternoon with Denean, a 34-year-old nurse who was living in one such house with three of her four children (the eldest is 19 and lived across town) and, these days, a teenage niece. Denean is pretty and slender, with a wry, deadpan humor. For 10 years she worked for a health-care company, but she was laid off in January. She is twice divorced; no two of her children share a father. In February, when she learned (on Facebook) that her second child, 15-year-old Ronicka, was pregnant, Denean slumped down on her enormous slate-gray sofa and didn’t get up for 10 hours.

“I had done everything I could to make sure she didn’t end up like me, and now this,” she told me.

It was a clear, warm day, and we were clustered on the front porch—Denean, Ronicka, and I, along with Denean’s niece, Keira, 18, and Denean’s friend Chantal, 28, a single mother whose daughter goes to day care with Denean’s youngest. The affection between these four high-spirited women was light and infectious, and they spoke knowingly about the stigmas they’re up against. “That’s right,” Denean laughed, “we’re your standard bunch of single black moms!”

Given the crisis in gender it has suffered through for the past half century, the African American population might as well be a separate nation. An astonishing 70 percent of black women are unmarried, and they are more than twice as likely as white women to remain that way. Those black women who do marry are more likely than any other group of women to “marry down.” This is often chalked up to high incarceration rates—in 2009, of the nearly 1.5 million men in prison, 39 percent were black—but it’s more than that. Across all income levels, black men have dropped far behind black women professionally and educationally; women with college degrees outnumber men 2-to-1. In August, the unemployment rate among black men age 20 or older exceeded 17 percent.

In his book, Is Marriage for White People?, Ralph Richard Banks, a law professor at Stanford, argues that the black experience of the past half century is a harbinger for society at large. “When you’re writing about black people, white people may assume it’s unconnected to them,” he told me when I got him on the phone. It might seem easy to dismiss Banks’s theory that what holds for blacks may hold for nonblacks, if only because no other group has endured such a long history of racism, and racism begets singular ills. But the reality is that what’s happened to the black family is already beginning to happen to the white family. In 1950, 64 percent of African American women were married—roughly the same percentage as white women. By 1965, African American marriage rates had declined precipitously, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan was famously declaring black families a “tangle of pathology.” Black marriage rates have fallen drastically in the years since—but then, so have white marriage rates. In 1965, when Moynihan wrote with such concern about the African American family, fewer than 25 percent of black children were born out of wedlock; in 2011, considerably more than 25 percent of white children are.

This erosion of traditional marriage and family structure has played out most dramatically among low-income groups, both black and white. According to the sociologist William Julius Wilson, inner-city black men struggled badly in the 1970s, as manufacturing plants shut down or moved to distant suburbs. These men naturally resented their downward mobility, and had trouble making the switch to service jobs requiring a very different style of self-presentation. The joblessness and economic insecurity that resulted created a host of problems, and made many men altogether unmarriable. Today, as manufacturing jobs disappear nationwide (American manufacturing shed about a third of its jobs during the first decade of this century), the same phenomenon may be under way, but on a much larger scale.

Just as the decline of marriage in the black underclass augured the decline of marriage in the white underclass, the decline of marriage in the black middle class has prefigured the decline of marriage in the white middle class. In the 1990s, the author Terry McMillan climbed the best-seller list (and box-office charts) with novels like Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which provided incisive glimpses of life and frustrated romance among middle-class black women, where the prospect of marrying a black man often seemed more or less hopeless. (As she writes in Waiting to Exhale: “[Successful black men have] taken these stupid statistics about us to heart and are having the time of their lives. They do not hold themselves accountable to anybody for anything, and they’re getting away with murder … They lie to us without a conscience, they fuck as many of us at a time as they want to.”) Today, with the precipitous economic and social decline of men of all races, it’s easy to see why women of any race would feel frustrated by their romantic prospects. (Is it any wonder marriage rates have fallen?) Increasingly, this extends to the upper-middle class, too: early last year, a study by the Pew Research Center reported that professionally successful, college-educated women were confronted with a shrinking pool of like-minded marriage prospects.

“If you’re a successful black man in New York City, one of the most appealing and sought-after men around, your options are plentiful,” Banks told me. “Why marry if you don’t have to?” (Or, as he quotes one black man in his book, “If you have four quality women you’re dating and they’re in a rotation, who’s going to rush into a marriage?”) Banks’s book caused a small stir by suggesting that black women should expand their choices by marrying outside their race—a choice that the women of Terry McMillan’s novels would have found at best unfortunate and at worst an abhorrent betrayal. As it happens, the father of Chantal’s child is white, and Denean has dated across the color line. But in any event, the decline in the economic prospects of white men means that marrying outside their race can expand African American women’s choices only so far. Increasingly, the new dating gap—where women are forced to choose between deadbeats and players—trumps all else, in all socioeconomic brackets.

Now I am not American, but I am black. The above is true! What is happening in white america has happened in black communities. Just look at the Caribbean (where I am from). Just visit Jamaica to see exactly where family life is going. Feminists THAT is where you are taking your communities and you may not care about the future generation, you may only care about yourselves but promoting that type of mentality to others is just wrong.

My entire dating experience (besides my husband who is the most amazing partner in the world and is white and German) was in Jamaica and it was horrible. HORRIBLE. Women in that setting HAVE NO CHOICES. There is no choice about whether to work or not to work. As a woman you know that you have to work and will always have to work because if you get pregnant you have to financially support that child. Men are not educated enough and do not have stable jobs and those that are will NEVER be faithful to you because they have far too many options.

Choice does not exist in such a society. So feminists if you want choice for women back off now. If you care in the slightest about women just stop.

The major parallel between post slavery communities and modern day communities is that there was no traditional structure in place in post slavery communities and the traditional structure in modern day communities is being destroyed. And while we destroy the social structure we are leaving the system the same, so we are trying to fit a new social structure into an old system that was not designed for the new social system.

The weak or lack of social structure fitting to the surrounding system in post slavery communities is why black communities did so poorly during and after slavery. The lack of a normal family life for children. The lack of stability and male role models contributing to the home. The unwillingness of black women to commit to black men who could not provide for them. Along with many other things this is why black males became so badly marginalized, because there was no structure and people did what felt best. See”We are living in a Patriarchy which has been designed with the Traditional Family in mind.” post.

The very same this is happening in communities under the attack of feminism and liberalism, you all are giving up structure and replacing it with ”do what feels best”. What feels best is not commitment to males who can not provide, what feels best is single motherhood and absent fathers and sleeping around, what feels best results in marginalized males, more crime, less children and a generally less successful and less happy society. This is especially the case in a capitalist economy and in a patriarchal setting. Please read this for a more updated view on where I think society is going.

Another very important quote on this topic comes from this JudgyBitch article:

Burrell’s chapter on black sexuality and family formation is disturbing, to say the least. He charts out how the legacy of slavery and early emancipation was deliberately designed to fracture black families and make it incredibly difficult for black men and women to see each other as fully realized humans.

A common, modern critique of black culture is that plenty of other groups have had a rough go in terms of being dehumanized, vilified, and outright murdered throughout our long, sad history, and have still managed to maintain their basic orientation towards family and community.  Most notably, Jewish people, subjected to the Holocaust, mass murder and plenty of anti-Semitism across the globe have still managed to be productive, functional members of civilized society.

The Holocaust lasted 12 years.

Slavery lasted 250 years.

That’s a whole lot more time to destroy the foundations of a culture.  And the reverberations have carried across a wider gulf of time.

The effect of slavery on families is pretty much a no-brainer.  Children could be, and were sold away from their families.  Marriages were either outright forbidden, or destroyed at the will of the slavemaster.  Once it became illegal to import new slaves, existing slaves were used as breeding stock, and the bonds of family were completely and utterly irrelevant.

What I found very interesting was how early welfare laws STILL acted to destroy black families.  In order for a woman to be eligible for benefits, she could not have a man in the house.  She had to choose between her children and her husband.

Here is how Burrell lays out the historically rooted dysfunction in black families:

Disrespect:  words of mutual contempt, ridicule, wide mistrust of mates

Roots:  Black family life, not conducive to a slave based economy, was disrupted, disrespected, and destroyed.  Black men and women were stripped of their roles as parents and protectors.  Soceity, through the welfare system, dismissed black fathers

The beat-down: disproportionate rates of physical, verbal, spiritual, and psychological abuse in black families

Roots: Slaves and descendants were conditioned to accept physical and psychological abuse. Emulation of slave-era dominant males norms continues today with a misplaced sense of “manhood” and reaction to powerlessness

Can’t be true to my Boo: the acceptance and expectation of infidelity

Roots:  Result of male slave emasculation and bearing witness to misogynistic, humiliating crimes against black women. Black men portrayed as unreliable and unable to protect. Black women portrayed as the property of white males. Unquestioned belief in black male and female unworthiness.

Icing:  Emotional shutdown and distance that fosters unhealthy relationships

Roots: Slaves learned to endure conditions outside their control. Protective mechanisms to provide family safety fractured during slavery. Generational acceptance of trauma and instability of black life.

What I find most compelling about Tom’s book is that he is not offering EXCUSES for how black culture operates, nor is he asking for ACCEPTANCE.  He is offering an EXPLANATION, and using his analysis of how and why certain aspects of the culture came to be as a means of charting a way out of the mess that exists now.

And he very clearly points out that white, especially liberal, thinkers are a key part of the strategy to CONTINUE to represent black people as inherently inferior all the while pretending to be sympathetic and understanding.

Many communities in Jamaica in my view show how nature would structure society in times of abundant resources and it is simply not as productive as the way in which the patriarchy has structured society. What is worse is that post-slavery communities are set within a patriarchy, so they are matriarchal societies set within a patriarchy and that in my opinion leads to more crime. Male contribution is not the same as it would be when they are involved in family life. Males contribute more to society on a whole when they are a part of family life. It makes a difference, and by forcing male female interchangeability we ask the sexes to be independent and that weakens the relationship between the sexes. It leads to absent fathers, it leads to less productivity than could otherwise be achieved.

More feminist pictures.

If by well behaved women you mean homemakers, those are the mothers of history. Women who committed to men and did not sleep around made history far more than ”not so well behaved women” because they enabled men to work together and to focus on technology and they were the mothers of the most successful societies. It is their languages we speak and their customs we practice and that is all because they were well behaved. So well behaved women do make history, far more so than liberal minded women do!

So single is great to feminists when a woman does it, but when men do it we get this photo:

Yes women have contributed to science but it is not a competition okay, and if it was women certainly would not be the ones to win!

What does define our beauty? Cause as superficial as it is the word beauty is about looks. It is about size, is just a superficial trait. It is beauty. We have other words for less superficial traits which are also important. Words like intelligence and empathy.

Rape is a serious issue, but women and family members also have a duty to protect themselves by not putting themselves in dangerous situations. I agree with what you say about not joking about rape but also please acknowledge that women do have a responsibility to protect themselves and that family members have a responsibility to protect young girls. Many survivors that I know were raped when they were too young to even understand what was being done to them and their mothers were at work. Being present as a mother is important!

Okay maybe women do get asked silly questions, but so do men. People just ask silly questions.

Lol, I do not really think so. But would you be offended if someone said when women do something half as good as men everyone goes bravo! As if they have done something twice as good as they have? Then why aren’t you offended by the text above?

If they want to run for the house and the senate! But if not leave them alone!!!

There is no pleasing feminists. Damned if you do, damned if you do not. As far as I know there are no laws prohibiting men from wearing dresses, if it was something they wanted to do, they would. Maybe the overwhelming majority of guys have not yet come in touch with their desire to BE women. Give them time. Also keep in mind that dresses are not as comfortable as pants are and that the purpose of a dress is to make your hips look wider which is purely a beauty thing. Men find wider hips sexier because it means you are less likely to die in child birth.

Wait aren’t feminists trying to make slutism and whorism out to be the best thing since sliced bread? It is empowering to be a slut right? Sleeping around is great? Why? Oh cause men can do it so we should do it too!

That is true. You are pretty amazing. We all are!

So then what is it with this why aren’t there more scientist etc.? Stay at home moms and housewives are aware that work sucks, that is why we do not want to be scientist and judges!

Okay I am not sexually attracted to females. I am sorry, I just am not. I can and do have female friends who I love, but the thought of sharing my life with them would mean that I would have to go out and find men to have sex with ever two to three days or at least have a male fuck buddy in every place that I live. That is pretty unappealing to me because sex and touch in that way is a part of love to me.

Yes okay, intelligence is beautiful. I would have liked to see that photo show a less good looking female though 😛

If by work you mean the work one produces, then yes. Equal work deserves equal pay. We already have that though, and we have had it for quite some time. It is just the way the economy works. If two farmers produce the same amount and same quality tomatoes anyone buying those tomatoes would be a fool to pay one farmer more just because he is a male!  And if he priced his produce higher because he was a male everyone would buy from the female farmer. The wage gap is present because women do not do equal work when compared to men.

This is true. Equal but different!

Patriarchy is in your head, smash away!

That should read feminism is the radical notion that women are MEN!

Yup.

There are laws against rape. Rape can cost a person years in prison, a bullet can not!

What if they want to submit to there husbands and attend to their children? If that is better for society and would make them happier than submitting to their bosses and putting their children in day care or after school programs?

What about all the bedding he is wearing? When this comes from a Muslim woman I can take her seriously. If Muslim women do not want to dress like that they need to protest against it.

Exactly! Sad that the comments to this picture seemed to indicate that people actually think equal pay means the woman should get the same pay as the guy in the picture. They have different jobs. Equal pay does not mean they should get the same pay. Not unless you live in a communist society

Lol not true. No modern day woman would last very long in prehistoric times. What without painkillers, formula, birth control…. she might find herself needing to depend on a man and then what will she do?

Yes but they also seem to understand what it means. They understand that we can be of equal value without being identical or interchangeable.

I do not know anything much about muslim women. Maybe they need feminism, but that is for THEM to decide.

This is pretty reflective of real life. In chess the King dies to protect his Queen. You would think the Queen would appreciate this instead of making fun of him.

Yup anyone can misunderstand the meaning of equality!

So are you saying I am a doormat because I cook, clean and take care of my children? Oh yes that is right, that is what you are saying because you are a feminist!

Oh so feminism does have a meaning. Because you guys have been pretty elusive about that.

Yet feminist do not complain that construction jobs are dominated by men or any other low paid, menial job. Nope, let men have the jobs, we will only complain if it is a high paid job that looks easy. What about the fact that mostly female teachers are teaching our boys?

The wage gap is not real. Prepare your daughter for a happy life; keep her away from feminism!

Maybe she is a rape victim? To me men are much more quiet and have a much harder time speaking out about anything from abuse to rape to emotions to anything. Men are the silenced sex.

For your children’s sake forget you ever heard about feminism. For your children’s sake you do need a man. For your children’s sake stay close to them and protect them.

Cause men are all evil and women are all o-oh!

Listen to men for a change!

I am pro-choice but I would prefer that if women are going to have unprotected sex that women are encouraged to put themselves in a position where it is okay to get pregnant. Also although it is your own body you are destroying an entirely new human being. You are destroying a body that is not your own.

No person can be defined as strong or weak. We are all a lot more similar than you think. There are not strong women and weak men. We ALL have insecurities and feminists are no different! Men opposed to the idea of feminist women are not necessarily weak they just have the ability to see that no one can do it all. The are humble enough to admit that we need each other.

Yep that is what you girls are doing. I think most women would be happier finding and marring the men they wanted to marry rather than becoming them. Men would be happier as well.

And feminists say men should care less about looks lol.

Okay just please try and understand that to be equal to men you do not have to be a man.

No, she is like a fish without water.

I love traditional men!

Society has told men not to rape. Men get put in prison for rape, do you get put in prison for how you dress?? It was advice. Good advice. Society has told men not to rape way more than it ever told you how to dress.

There are just as many famous smart women out there as there are famous smart men. Some women do get famous via their breast, but often that is their choice and aren’t feminist all about choice!

Girls and BOYS are the future. Give boys proper role models or you are screwing over the next generations.

And men can not understand those problems?

Everyone ”buys” someone once they choose a partner that is what the analogy means. It means choosing someone. Why would you buy the cow, means why would you pick to spend your life with someone and commit to them.

Extremist also try to control men. They try to control everyone. The use men to fight their wars. If making someone die for you is not a form of control I d not know what is.

Women are the weaker sex. Men can go through all of that too and they DO. The weaker sex comment is a physical comment. Most men are stronger than most women so women just are the weaker sex.

The wage gap does not exist.

Yes your choice but please take my advice. Do not have unprotected sex unless you are okay with getting pregnant! It is not just your body involved, as soon as you conceive a child is becomes about your body and the body of a new human being.

If feminists believe this why do they make such a huge fuss over Muslim women being oppressed because they where more clothes than western women?

Yes but so are men’s rights. So how about we make all laws gender neutral??

Do feminists really want to give women more choices or to take away the choices that women once had?

Feminists claim that they just want to give women more choice but it is clear from the questions that they ask that they (just like me) have an agenda. When was the last time you heard a feminist say there are not enough stay at home mothers? When was the last time they complained about there not being enough housewives? Or that more mothers should have the choice to work from home?

According to this article more than 40% of working women would prefer to work from home, and I am sure that percentage would increase if you asked that question solely to mothers. Many other polls that I have seen on mothering websites etc, show that there are many, many, many women out there who would like to stay at home close to their children and work from there but do not have the option/choice. So if feminism had no agenda and actually cared about obtaining what women want then would they really be asking why there aren’t more female scientist or politicians or judges.

Have they done polls on how many women want to be scientist but do not have the choice? Or how many women want to be politicians but can’t? Because I am sure if they did they would see no gender difference when doing polls like that. Women, more so than men do want choice. Of all the mothers I know who stay at home they all HAVE a choice, because all women have the choice to work! Every one of them has the option to put their kids in day care and work. Sure their entire pay check and maybe even some of his would go to day care but these women are the ones with choices. I cannot say the same for working mothers. There are undoubtedly some working mothers with choice but most that I know work either because they need the money or because their husbands and sometimes they themselves feel they should be contributing economically.

Why then aren’t feminist fighting aggressively against the perception that women must work in order to contribute economically? Why aren’t they fighting against the idea of men thinking women must contribute economically? Do you really think there are more men who think women should not work than they are who think they should? Because I would like to see a poll to prove that. It is clear from the questions that feminists ask that they have an agenda. And that agenda is to make society approve of working women. They could care less about what women actually want, and they could care less about making sure that homemaking is respected by men and women as a legitimate choice.

Why aren’t there more female scientist or judges? Maybe because women do not want those jobs and would prefer to be housewives or work from home and live in a society with males who are educated and responsible enough to support, marry and make babies with them. Sure we also want the freedom to work and become a scientist, politician or judge but we already have that and having 50 percent of the scientist being female will not change the fact that we currently have the freedom to become anything we want!  In fact it will limit our freedom because you can be sure that there will be female scientist who resent not having the choice to be a stay at home mother. More proof that women actually want the opportunity to stay home more than the opportunity to work is below:

What’s more, 68 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 34 say they would prefer to stay at home and raise their children to working outside the home, according to a national poll conducted in 2000 by the Manhattan-based market research firm, Youth Intelligence.

From: Women who want to stay at home.

Compared with people who had never been married, those who were married at the time of the survey were more likely to say that working mothers made it harder to raise kids (82 vs. 62 percent), more likely to say that working mothers made it harder for marriages to succeed (56 vs. 37 percent), more likely to say that kids were better off with their mothers at home (56 vs. 30 percent), and more likely to say that unwed motherhood was a big problem (74 vs. 44 percent). In nearly every case, the gap between marrieds and never-marrieds was bigger than the gap between the youngest age group (18–29) and the oldest (65+). If you want to predict what somebody thinks about women and families, marital experience is a better clue than age.

From: Do marriage and parenthood make you conservative?

2012- 84% of working women told ForbesWoman and TheBump that staying home to raise children is a financial luxury they aspire to.

What’s more, more than one in three resent their partner for not earning enough to make that dream a reality.

From: Opting out the new American dream for women.

A survey revealed that 52 per cent of mothers return to work because they cannot afford to stay at home bringing up their children.

Only a small minority, just 22 per cent, return because they actually want to continue their career.

From: Women with choice choose motherhood.

If money were no object, 54 percent of working mothers would make a different choice, compared with 9 percent of mothers who stay at home.

From: Mommy Wars or More on Mommy Wars.

This article claims the opposite of what I am saying yet still mentions that;

A Pew Research Center report released in March found that 32 percent of moms with children under age 18 think the ideal situation is to work full-time, while 47 percent said they would prefer to work part-time. Twenty percent said they would prefer not to work at all.

Other articles on this topic:

More women want to stay at home. 

Feminists need to make peace with the fact that some women want to stay home. 

Women choose to stay at home.

It’s easier on families when women stay home.

Retro housewife.

Men value looks (and kindness) and women value money; here’s why!

Here’s the thing biology intended for men and women to have different focuses.

Remember essentially without science we can define women and men by saying women make babies and feed infants and men do not make babies or feed infants freeing them up to do other things with their time.

So males are naturally inclined to focus on other things (ie bringing in the bacon), while females are naturally inclined to focus on child care.

The most important factor determining how well a women will do her job of raising children is how kind she is and her health and her looks. If she has big breast she is more likely to be successful at breastfeeding. If she has a wide hips she is less likely to die during childbirth. If she has great hair she is eating well and more likely to conceive a child and provide a good home to that child both during pregnancy and after. Similarly how kind you are to him is an indication of how nice you will be to his kids. So women the most important thing about you to a man is instinctively going to be how you look and how nice you are!

Women throughout evolution have been taking care of babies so we are naturally inclined to be pregnant and tied to our offspring. So women are naturally incline to be impressed by how well a man can take care of her when she and her children are in a state where they cannot take care of themselves. In our past this had nothing to do with money though so we unlike men are not instinctively attracted to money but rather we are mentally attracted to it, instinctively we are still attracted to bad boys because they once represented good providers. So guys; no matter what a woman tells you, she is naturally inclined to be impressed by your wallet!

Now feminists can you please stop spamming my facebook with message like this:

because it is all BS, men are attracted to your looks because biologically it indicates that having sex with you will produce a child that is likely to survive and you are attracted to rich guys and bad boys for the very same reason; you biologically think having sex with them will produce a child whose chances of survival are high!

The historical wars between traditional and liberal societies.

Traditional societies will always win the war between traditional and liberal societies.

I spoke about my early society theories here. Traditional societies are based upon having relationships between men and women which helps males to not be marginalized and causes them to work together while contributing to family life and society instead of competing while contributing. Liberal societies devalue the male female relationship and boys become marginalized because they are not a part of the family unit.

I think traditional societies throughout history have won the majority of the wars not because they are more aggressive or better at fighting but because they cooperate better and the males were able to develop better technology that allowed them to increase their numbers at faster rates and allowed them to fight smarter. And that is why I think traditional societies will always win the war. This argument actually speaks in favor of women being in the work force though because it is in part based on the fact that the more diverse the group of people working together the better the resulting technology will be.

It should also be noted that traditional societies have been typically against homosexuality; which seems to be a very natural form of birth-control. Being against homosexuality therefore meant higher populations. Higher populations meant having a better chance in any war.

The best indicator that traditional societies have won all the wars of the past is religion. The world’s major religions all support monogamy (christianity, islam, hinduism, others?). I think these religions actually made it so far because the societies that used them supported monogamy and gender roles and therefore lead to a more productive society. Monogamy led to males (the stronger sex) being more useful to society and being able to develop better technology.

More on this here.