And why those with new attitudes are so vocal. Because they can now be heard.
<this is hopping down the bunny trail, off of the abortion thing. Thread split?>
Look, I'm not sure the "old" attitudes were all about Keeping Down teh Woman back in the day. I think it may have been more about logistics, really.
Women really needed to be the gatekeepers (she says, euphemistically.
) Birth control was spotty at best, and abortions certainly occurred, but they were hardly safe. So having sex without marriage meant risking everything; if a single woman had a baby back in the day there wasn't nearly as much social support as there is now. Welfare? Technically it started in 1939, but its usage really started to peak in the mid- 1960's. Medicaid? July 30, 1965. That was just a heartbeat ago.
So did a mother with a "bastard" child starve, back in the day? Some did, yes. Some had families with enough resources to support them. Not everyone had someone to fall back on, though.
Could mom work, to support her child? Yes, but it was terribly difficult. Not only did women typically end up in jobs with very low pay, but the negative societal attitude towards mothers who worked was worse than it is today.
Oh, so there is a negative social attitude toward mothers who work today, you say? Yes, definitely. I was shocked.. still am, really... about the negative pushback Sarah Palin got when she decided to run for vice president of the USA while she... gasp! had a young child at home.
Many people, including many liberals who would normally champion a woman's right to choose on many levels, criticized this well-organized woman with every kind of good support system on board because she was choosing to be ambitious when she should have been strictly maternal. As if the two can't coexist. As if that baby, who went with her wherever she was, didn't have far more care and resources than are available to many babies in this country.
People were writing things like "all that travel will interfere with the baby's nap schedule." Really? She shouldn't reach for an important and responsible office, because a child's naps "schedule" (in fact a fairly tenuous thing) might be compromised? Really.
JFK started his run for the oval office in January, 1960. His son John Jr. was born in November, 1960. I wasn't around then, but does anyone here remember him being chastised for running for such an ambitious office while his wife was pregnant with their second child, or while his son was a newborn? Anyone?
Palin's sin, other than just being disliked in general by so many? Not that she wanted to
work while she had a young child, but that she was
ambitious. She wasn't compromising her 100% time with baby for just a job... surely there are many, many women in this country who are working rather than staying home with their children 24/7... but that her job wasn't subsistence level. She wasn't barely making it, grinding it out in a sweatshop to feed her kids. That would be okay.
If she were working at McDonald's, nights and weekends, to support her family, she would be looked at with pity and understanding. But to leave that child (with his father, who traveled with them, or with competent caregivers, for part of the day) so that she could reach for the stars
herself? Unforgivable.
A woman can work only if she
has to, while a mother to young children. A woman who wants to work because she wants to continue a personal journey of excellence and achievement (
okay, I'm sort of not really talking about Sarah Palin specifically, anymore ) is ostracized and maligned.
It's kind of like the old saw that a woman CAN have sex (well, where are our sons to come from, if she doesn't?) but she can't ENJOY it. If it's just a duty, then society's okay with it. Sorta.
"What do you fear, lady?" Aragorn asked.
"A cage," Éowyn said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King