RJesq said ...
Since you asked the question, no I dont agree with Dina. That prosecutor could be working exceptionally hard on only this case, she could have a crib in her damn office.Sounded to me like the woman was under pressure to return to work for the Kelly trial but refused. Sounded to me like she said you either wait or give the case to someone else. They waited.
I dont AUTOMATICALLY ASSUME that this woman is some career-obsession woman who loves Clark County more than her kid and that she's only working so as to be able to indulge her need for meaningless excesses.
But Dina is entitled to her assumptions and judgments...I mean opinions.
Meanwhile, Kathy Hilton, Brenda Ritchie and Dina Lohan were at home with their children.
Lotta good that did.
Intellectual Insurgent said...
Ahhhh, DV's trying to instigate a cat fight. LOL!!!But since we got it going, why not?
Let's quit rationalizing this b.s. and make it simple.
Having a crib in her damn office makes her no better of a mother than having a computer in my baby's nursery makes me a good lawyer.
Pointing to all the stay-at-home mothers whose children turned out as train wrecks is an easy target. Come on now Robyn. You got more game than that.
Could it be perhaps that we encourage our smartest, most thoughtful women to go slave for massa 60 hours per week while the remainder end up at home because they are not economically viable?
What would happen if we convinced the smartest and brightest women that the highest accomplishment was not to get an R. Kelly conviction, but to raise well-adjusted kids? Would homegirl be popping in at bedtime just in time to kiss the kids good night, while dedicating every bit of energy to her job? Prolly not.
Our society has it completely backwards. A wise thoughtful woman should be at home raising wise thoughtful children. Leave the peasants to go fetch for massa.
Now let me put the qualifier. IF A FAMILY CANNOT AFFORD FOR MOM TO STAY HOME, THIS DISCUSSION DOES NOT APPLY. So let's not run down bunny trails all butt hurt about the women who have to work. My mother worked for the better part of my childhood. She had to. It is what it is. I don't fault her or begrudge her for it, but that's not the ideal and just because she did it doesn't mean it isn't ideal for women to be home full-time.
33 comments:
Dont retreat now, D.
Now "the women who can afford not to work" should be at home with their children.
A while back, didnt families just need to "get their priorities in check" and "tighten their belts?" Wasnt public transportation something folks should get off their high horses about and birthdays and vacations unnecessary waste?
Okay. But now I'm clear. Poor folks are excused from your rant. "But what about the children?!"
You challenge the notion that a crib in one's office makes them a good parent.
Well I challenge the notion that being within arms length of your baby 24 hours a day makes one a good parent.
That aint shit but geography.
When your daughter is home with her father are you derelict in your duties during your time away? Absolutely not. You are no less a mother than when your baby is in your lap.
Motherhood is a state of being. Not a to-do list. You clearly mean well and have the most honorable intent, but you have unknowingly diminished the role.
Heaven forbid your child ever has a babysitter. But if she does, (your) motherhood is what will make her ears perk up when your keys jingle in the door.
Shit, my mom smoked cigarettes when I was young. Motherhood made the made the mix of Kools and Afred Sung smell sweet.
When its all said and done, if you've done a good job, Manar wont be somewhere tallying up the number of diapers you changed. If you dont believe that, think of how you regard your own mother.
You say I can do better than citing Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie.
I absolutely can.
RNJ, DA and K.Slde.
Robyn, I must commend you that you've stepped up your game immensely in the past few months. I always enjoy a worthy adversary.
Well I challenge the notion that being within arms length of your baby 24 hours a day makes one a good parent.
You're responding to an argument I haven't made. Please read what I wrote carefully.
Being a good mother requires a great deal of wisdom and thought. Thus, one must wonder why it is that our society encourages the women who are the wisest and most thoughtful to NOT BE MOTHERS. Why is it that a woman who shows an ounce of sense will be put on birth control and encouraged to be an astronaut or a lawyer or a doctor, but motherhood will be diminished as a waste of her talent?
How the hell did this happen? It got normalized by accepting without challenge inane suggestions that "working a long day, then going home to put her sons to bed before returning to work late into the night at the Criminal Courts Building" is evidence of dedication to family.
That is not dedication to family. That is dedication to career. Let's call it what it is.
Does one need to be with her child 24-7 to be a good parent?
No.
But that doesn't mean the opposite is true - that being away from the child the majority of the day is healthy or should be encouraged.
Separating mother from child is a new phenomenon and we're starting to see the consequences of it everyday. It doesn't mean that the kids will turn out horribly if mom has to work.
But shit. Ask yourself why men are unable to commit these days? Because their prime example of a female was a woman who wasn't around. It doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter if she "had" to work, what matters is that he didn't feel like he was top priority. And understand that men, in their hearts, need to feel that. If you don't understand that basic principle, you will never be married.
A boy who grew accustomed to having a relationship with his mother over the phone, part-time, over a tv dinner, for 20 minutes at bedtime before she returned to the office, carries that model into adulthood.
And then 30+ women wonder why men don't call, send them text messages every few days, don't want to cook a meal together and get terrified about actually bonding with a woman.
Fuck Lindsay Lohan and the rest of them. You want to fix the Black community Robyn? Get married, make babies and raise them yourself. You be the primary example of a down ass broad that your daughter will want to be and that your son will want to marry. The rest is talk.
Ladies, have you ever heard of normotic illness?
In Thailand, I have a British friend who is the son of a well-to-do university professor in London. Several years ago, this Brit married a Thai girl from a poor rice farming family and moved into the family compound when their first child was born. About a month later, I visited them for three hours one late afternoon and early evening. Probably ten parts of nuclear families live in the compound, which has several buildings and something like a communal long-house. As I went up the stairs of the long-house, the one-month-old child was receiving a bath in a barrel proffered by six or seven people dunking, tossing, tickling, and giggling the infant. I sat in the upstairs communal room drinking rice wine, meeting everyone, and talking with my Brit friend. About two hours into the occasion, the friend became very pensive and I asked what was preoccupying him. He explained that, though he had lived in Thailand for most of the past ten years, he had not yet managed to emerge from the culture shock induced by his one-month residence in the family compound. I asked him what was so unsettling. He pointed at his child bouncing on the knee of an “uncle” and asked me how many pairs of hands the baby had passed through in the last hour. Close to 20 people were sitting in the room and there was much traffic in and out. The child was in virtually constant movement from person to person. “A damn lot of them,” I exclaimed. “That kid passes through more hands in one hour,” he announced, “than I did in my entire childhood. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what that means for how different we will be. I am certain there is no possibility I will ever be able to understand my own son.” Significantly, immediately after this, he talked of the daily rituals engaged in to service the family ancestral spirits at various critical points around the compound and surrounding rice fields, and how the behavior of the dogs was always peculiar when passing near these locations, most of which did not contain a shrine or other type of marker.
Bollas' account of the mother as “transformational object” is obviously highly culture bound. His conception of mothering is single-mother mothering within the monogamous nuclear family setting. With single-mother mothering, the identity of the transformational object must be singular, not multiple. In early infancy, the mother is not experienced as known other, but as transformational “environment-mother” object. She is in large measure the infant's environment, and her properties define the nature of that environment. The ego complex is understood by Bollas as an unconscious FORM that organizes subjective/objective contents conveyed by “transitional objects” in process of internalization and symbolization. (Consider the relevance of G. Spencer Brown's LAWS OF FORM here, in which he proved Sheffer’s postulates for Boolean algebras and made reference to Post’s m-valued logics.) Formation of the healthy ego complex is regarded as a result of good mothering. I ask: Would the singular transformational object in single-mother mothering impart the same unconscious ego-form as would the multiple transformational object in multi-mother mothering? I think not.
The logical properties of the unconscious ego-form which organize subjective/objective contents (processed by Piaget's logical-structures of sensory-motor intelligence, which solidify in the early stages of childhood development) would have to be secondary, according to Bollas' account of their emergence, to the identity properties of the transformational object. Single-mother mothering imparts logically single-valued ego-form; multi-mother mothering imparts logically m-valued ego-form which organizes subjective/objective contents via the logical properties of sensory-motor intelligence ANIMISTICALLY. If normotic illness -- habitual projective identification and resultant de-symbolization of the mental contents projected -- “…contrasts with animism in that live objects are endowed with the qualities of death”, to quote Bion, then the advent of single-mother mothering, in and of itself, even more fundamentally than the virtually concurrent advent of single-valued monetary economies, can be identified with origins of normotic illness. Given that monogamy (as opposed, for instance, to “frequent movement between several life partners” which some anthropologists maintain was characteristic of rural rice-culture communities in many parts of Asia -- if not all animistic communities) is normally associated with single-mother mothering, then monogamy, too, must be identified with origins of normotic illness. Normotic illness would move to epidemic fulmination as extended families fragment to nuclear families (in part under forcing functions derivative of single-valued monetary economies), nuclear families become dysfunctional and decompose into single-parenting social fragments and no-parenting institutional surrogates of the state.
CNu ... you a brilliant cognitively agile muhfugga.
" nuclear families become dysfunctional and decompose into single-parenting social fragments and no-parenting institutional surrogates of the state."
Alas ...
We have arrived at the De Facto consequence of the euphemistically titled" "working mom".
The "No-parent" institutional surrogate of the state.
"Early" Childcare is a trap. "Daycare" is a corporate proxy from the biological mother.
Robyn, challenges to the 'working mom' paradigm challenge your entire world-view. I can see why that may spur a reflexive balling of your fists.
However, upon further review of our collective cultural pathology, one quickly realizes that our dysfunction transcends mere Hip Hop or the occasional Sex and The City model.
People's mommas just aint raising them right.
People's mommas are not that engaged in raising them.
Momma's have been transformed into financiers. Daddies with titties.
take note of the term single-valued monetary economies DV.
Your yapping technut chihuahua could luck up on the keys to the enigmas of his tiny little world if he carefully studied the science being dropped by my man Pensinger...,
LOL. The High Priest of Technocracy?
Our secular Jihadist?
What's the significance of a 'single-valued monetary economy'?
It's an extension of and encasement for the western normative psychology - you know - what I otherwise refer to as dopamine hegemony.
Pensinger calls it the "monoculture".
I was just now hollaring at my girl Mahndisa about this very thing...., serendipitous to get to refer multiple folks to a deep well like that in a single day....,
Got busy yesterday. Still am today and couldnt continue with the discourse. D, I too appreciate a worthy adversary. Thanks. We can discuss it all on the 14th.
CNu, I'll have to re-read the piece. I read it (quickly) yesterday and came to an understanding of its substance that is opposite to DV.
I could be wrong, I do plan to read it again.
Robyn,
DV spun it to his own purposes.
What Pensinger is laying out, is the plasticity of human cognition and the dependency of mentality, culture, and even spirituality on that foundation.
I don't want to try to boil Pensinger down, that would defeat his purpose and utility, but at the very least he's stating that we even lose cultural and spiritual possibilities due to the cognitive monotony of being parented by one full-time maternal unit, rather than the throng of parental sources one experiences in the long-house environment.
I like to think in terms of solutions. F'zample, what kind of benefit could be obtained if single mothers entered into cooperative living arrangements with one another, whose terms and conditions were fairly, uniformly, and objectively enforced. i.e., no nasty lazy asses laying up on the others, but errbody pulling their weight and contributing to the best of their ability to the collective?
Impending economic conditions are going to make such innovations increasingly necessary, why not start on it intentionally and carefully now?
CNu,
I see the 'long house' model a bit differently in the context of this discussion.
Obviously the model is not exclusive to Thailand, and collective care of babies has existed for the majority of human history.
However, I think it is important that we not duplicate the mistake ... oops. The 'cognitive error' of the FemiNazis who were successful in their efforts to reduce the significance of a mother to something roughly akin to a "care-giver".
Fundamental to feminist propaganda used to brainwash women into abandoning their children and their homes and to seek happiness and fulfillment on factory lines and in cubicles was acceptance of the meme that motherhood was drudgery limited to wiping asses and breast feeding.
When in fact, the mother's primary role is not mere "CARE", but to teach "VALUES".
To shape children.
Understand that the recent hysteria to snatch children from the breasts of their mothers and to herd them into state sponsored "care" centers at earlier and earlier ages - is not to care for them - but to SHAPE them.
The state no longer wants to compete with parents when it comes to shaping children.
Is there any wonder why so many of the last couple of generations of men are de facto faggots?
Even when I'm busy and reading fast...
This...
"I don't want to try to boil Pensinger down, that would defeat his purpose and utility, but at the very least he's stating that we even lose cultural and spiritual possibilities due to the cognitive monotony of being parented by one full-time maternal unit, rather than the throng of parental sources one experiences in the long-house environment."
Dont translate to this...
Fundamental to feminist propaganda used to brainwash women into abandoning their children and their homes and to seek happiness and fulfillment on factory lines and in cubicles was acceptance of the meme that motherhood was drudgery limited to wiping asses and breast feeding."
or this....
"Understand that the recent hysteria to snatch children from the breasts of their mothers and to herd them into state sponsored "care" centers at earlier and earlier ages - is not to care for them - but to SHAPE them."
LOL. Ahhhhh. You funny Robyn.
But understand that
That ...
aint supposed ...
To translate ...
into This ...
Cuz DV aint no muhfuggin Pensinger.
When you not so busy, let's skip moot court and exchange ideas and contrast perspective, instead of playing semantic "I gotcha".
Do you accept or reject the notion that 1) a mothers job extends far beyond mere care, 2) a mothers role is to shape and instill values and 3) the institutional urgency to remove children from the mothers at earlier and earlier ages is part of a larger effort by the state to control personal development in lieu of the parents?
the institutional urgency to remove children from the mothers at earlier and earlier ages is part of a larger effort by the state to control personal development in lieu of the parents?
DV, to what governance source do you ascribe the Leisure Class organization of lifestyles such that the long-house model - if instantiated - will meet with scorn, reistence and defamation as "communist" or "primitive"?
Breaking these observations down and spinning them in service to a political/economic objective is wrong-headed. Robyn rightly points that fact out.
We recently saw the long-house model in effect here in America. The State of Texas felt threatened by it and kidnapped over 400 of the children of that model.
And where did they send those children? To State-subsidized and approved "foster" care homes.
CNu,
Western civilization is based on a conspiracy against God. The "Enlightenment" refers to the angel Lucifer, the "light bringer", who represents rejection of spiritual and natural laws in favor of human "reason." (Skip, Technocracy, Strauss, Secular Humanism etc.) In practice, "reason" is whatever the power elite want rationalized.
Generally speaking, the rich don't provide an audience unless you advance their program, as "human rights" advocate (Darfur) or "safe sex" advocate or "early child care" provider.
The governance source opposed to the 'Long House' model, is the same governance source opposed to marriage, family and ultimately humanity itself.
"Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism." -
Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Toward a Feminist Theory of the State" (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10
"Destroy the family and you destroy society." - V.I. Lenin
Touche Dina, touche...., nicely done.
Guess that one fell under the disallowed because "primitive" classification?
DV:When you not so busy, let's skip moot court and exchange ideas and contrast perspective, instead of playing semantic "I gotcha".
Moot court, school, a seminar, a knife to cut through your rhetoric, a much needed back hand...we can refer to my contributions on the topic in whatever way you like.
How about this for an exchange of ideas...
Most folks gotta work. They shouldnt be fit for the chopping block because of this.
A good mother is going to be one even with a 9 to 5. A shitty mother couldnt be improved if her baby was fused to her hip.
Should a 4 week old be away from her mother, no. But that mother should not be subject to the judgmental rants of a women financially secure enough to have the luxury of a different decision. Disposable income, contrary to what can be deduced from the arguments here, does not a fit parent make.
Some dynamic children were born to working moms and dads. Some fucking nuisances were born to SAHM moms. Folks simply have to do what
they do. The contempt is the problem.
Additionally, I do not buy into the notion that a mother should have only her baby "to do." When the baby powder and diaper induced haze wears, this may become clear. Dont worry, you have my permission to want to something other than watch the baby. LOL!
The governance source opposed to the 'Long House' model, is the same governance source opposed to marriage, family and ultimately humanity itself.
Whether capitalist or communist, I guess we're then obliged to look more deeply at that "normotic" dimension of the monoculture.
What precisely is the "light bringer" who thinks in pictures and words and sets about the total muffled domination of every alternative governance scheme?
Have the rural agrarian animists in southeast asia been misidentified as communists? Perhaps they were nothing more than unsuspecting animists in an unfortunate proxy war being waged by competing monocultural cliques.
Perhaps, otoh, they were the victims of a genocidal onslaught by a deeper system of acculturation and a mentality that cannot abide the existence of alternatives to itself?
Robyn,
You are completely stuck on the woman who "has" to work. Wheels spinning in the mud, kicking up a mess all over the place.
Which, I suppose, makes it convenient, since you keep responding to an argument that I am NOT making.
Let's get to the heart of the matter, which you seem to not want to discuss. Why are women encouraged to use their talents in the service of massa instead of in service to her child and family? Why is our society so insistent on getting women back to work?
You'd think if women's lib were really about making women better off, they would have fought for the French model, where women get a year off after having a baby. But, alas, they didn't. A woman in the U.S. gets something like 6 weeks + uses the remainder of her paid vacation and sick time to hopefully make it 3 months (and that's in a better job), just enough time to wake up from the haze and stick her kid in daycare, where he or she will be guaranteed to catch whatever illness du jour is going around.
I condemn no one. I condemn the philosophy that says women should hand over their kids to the state as a matter of course. I condemn the notion that women who spend 20 minutes a day with their children are "dedicated to career". I condemn a culture that has raised a bunch of men who don't know how to bond with women because they never bonded with their mothers.
You're all butt hurt, insulting me, because you think all of this is judgment of your mother. BUT IT IS NOT. It is a judgment of a culture and a society that puts women in a position where they have no choice but to choose work over their children or, worse, to make choosing work over children the norm instead of something that is done only when absolutely necessary.
Pay attention Robyn. You're taking this personally and running down bunny trails as a consequence.
Unless I'm grievously mistaken, the "work" described here with - with such abject earnestness - is some paper pushing make-work. Not manufacture, cultivation, innovation, or anything crucial to the care and maintenance of the community in which it is performed?
Sacrificing one's own essential parental responsibilities on the alter of careerist self-promotion - suggests a profoundly skewed set of priorities.
Methinkst the prosecutor is REALLY intent on her possible 15 minutes connected with a high-profile case that went cold several years ago.
Insurgent,
I too was confused by Robyn's take on this as a condemnation of women who choose to work vs. a condemnation of a philosophy which compels women to do something that ultimately most don't want to do at all.
Gotta her hit her up to get a clarification on that.
Cnu ...
"is some paper pushing make-work. Not manufacture, cultivation, innovation, or anything crucial to the care and maintenance of the community in which it is performed?"
DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
Quickly,
D no one is insulting you. Calm down. If I were interested in insulting you, it would be very clear.
Nice try with the bit about my mom. Kinda sounds like an observation I made about someone else over at TSO. I protest so as not to be protested against.....so to speak. yada yada yawn. I think Brenda Jones was/is the bomb. Aint no question about that. I didnt want for a thing.
Its you, not me, with the problem with women like my mother.
Its you, not me, who obviously feels as though you were neglected in some way.
Its you, not me, who is unfortunately unaware that you would make a fabulous mother regardless of whether you employed outside care and/or had a job.
I am simply letting you off the hook. I'm trying to provide some relief from such exacting standards.
I have not one problem with your decision not to work. Shit, this morning I was particularly envious. I"m just saying resign from the position of self-appointed moral authority on who is and who is not dedicated to their children.
and DV, I gotta read the part about you requiring clarification at a later time.
Jasai ... I mean Robyn,
We must be reading different posts.
I am missing all this "Judgment".
I thought of his as a simple critique of culture among friends.
Is there anyone on this thread whose mother did not work?
Hello?
Anyone?
Are we condemning our own mothers ... or simply questioning a system?
How the shit turn left so quick?
I mean, I used to eat TV diners as a kid.
I wouldn't feed that to my children.
Does that I mean I hate my mother?
Am I being "Judgmental" of mothers that do?
Or am I simply learning as I go along? Evolving?
Damn.
DV, your take is to be expected since we dont agree of the subject.
Not to mention, you been "missing" a lot of shit this week. Sharpen up and/or stop with the "what did I /she say" act.
I dont suggest this to be a quote but D has often stated that mothers who dont stay home with their children have their priorities mixed up and have wrongfully placed their careers ahead of their children. She has also suggested these women to be most concerned with material possessions and questioned their dedication to their children.
Are you sitting here saying that that's not judgment?
"It's a nice day" is a "judgment". "She is smart" is a judgment. All people make judgments. Fuck. You couldn't live without making them. It's only when one doesn't agree with it does the accusation of being "judgmental" come into play.
Attack the messenger instead of addressing the message.
So it's a colossal waste of time to go back and forth about whether something is judgment. EVERYTHING IS.
I am reminded of a time a while back when I made the comment that eating healthy was expensive and, thus, was out of reach to most poor people.
Jasai slapped me on my digital hand and said, STOP PUSHING THAT MEME. It is possible, you just have to believe it is possible. And she pointed out that the healthier she ate, the less money she was spending on food.
Is it possible, just possible Robyn, that Jasai's logic applies equally to the mothering example?
Fair (and quite self serving) response re: Judgment. I get that.
But since this is "not about mothers who work" but instead about "a system that encourages them to do so" point out where, on this blog, on any blog, IBM has ever been referred to as " that lawyer bitch [who is] a pathetic excuse for a mom."
Now I know you didnt type that, Byrdeye did, but it is a fair illustration that its garbage to conveniently compartmentalize this debate as solely "an attack on a system."
Perhaps you have evolved, admittedly your recent writings do not attack the women themselves as much as in the past. I'm just not so sure you can call a working mother "an oxymoron" without attacking that woman.
Robyn,
Birdeye's comment was not mine. Nor was it illustrative of the point that I have been making.
But, again, that really is beside the point. It is completely beside the point whether I am "attacking", "judging" or otherwise criticizing the women.
This is a battle of memes. The newspaper put out a meme that a woman who works all day, goes home for 20 minutes to put the kids to bed and then returns to the office is dedicated to family. Sorry, but that simply isn't true.
But if you think it is true, please tell that to any man who you are interested in and see if that gets you a ring on your finger. Please let me know how many minutes it takes for homeboy to ask for the check and end the evening.
Women wonder why they are single at 30+ and this article is precisely why. Because they have been sold the notion that 20 minutes at bedtime is dedication to family. So they repeat that nonsense OUT LOUD to men and wonder why that man, from that day forward, ceases to see her as a potential wife.
That man then hears that meme repeated by woman after woman and gives up - and we end up with a Byrdeye or half the characters on TSO yacking about "it's ok to be 30+ and not married. Maybe some people aren't meant to get married."
This is all connected Robyn.
It is memes like this that are the reason that a woman like you - who would undoubtedly make a bad ass wife - is still without a ring on her finger.
No one is saying whether a woman can be a good mother or not if she woeks. Although, a woman who HAS A CHOICE and returns to work nonetheless, is letting her husband and kids know where they stand on her priority list. So it should be no wonder why the divorce rate is so high and men are terrified to get married.
But really Robyn. The proof is in the pudding. If your philosophy is producing the results you want, then keep it.
So, now, the woman who works is less likely or unlikely to have a husband?
Okay, just making sure I'm keeping up with all this.
Shaking my head.
Maybe you should detail the type of "work" you were accustomed to doing. Did you sleep in your office? I ask because my personal frame of reference does not allow me to fathom how my job would preclude me from being a mom or a wife.
Maybe this is what accounts for our very clear difference in opinion.
Anyway, nice debating. I'm losing steam and interest. Good stuff. See you soon.
To answer the question- a career mom is not an oxymoron.
Anonymous -
For the sake of clarity. Help me out. How would you differentiate a "career" from a "job"?
Simple DV
I don't differentiate between the two.
I don't blame you Anonymous,
Who'd want to differentiate between 6 and a half dozen?
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