“You're Attacking Our Wives, Mothers, and Daughters.”
Readers accuse me of disdain for stay-at-home-moms.
Aren’t mommy wars so 2012? Really, I thought we had reached a detente of sorts between hardriving career gals and stay-at-home-moms. From what I’m seeing, both sides are exhausted and ready for cocktails.
Apparently, I was mistaken.
A posse of readers on LinkedIn are taking me to task for my last article, “Katie Britt, Housewife Extraordinaire.” They’re angry because I criticized Sen. Britt (R-Ala.) for deploying the “I’m-just-a-suburban-mom” schtick in her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address. They accuse me of being disrespectful of SAHMs.
But here’s the twist: It’s not the tradwives and mothers who are getting all hot and bothered but the men in their lives. “You're basically attacking many of our wives, mothers, and daughters,” sniffed one of my non-fans on LinkedIn.
While the feedback I got about my Britt article was overwhelmingly positive, the negative ones stood out because they were so impassioned and persistent. It’s as if I had personally attacked the women in their lives and they’re gearing for battle.
One particular critic—an assistant U.S. Attorney in Tennessee, according to his LinkedIn profile—stood out because he seemed to have studied almost every word in my article in his hunt to uncover my “real” agenda. Here are some of his takes:
You are part of the feminist deepstate:
“In feminist circles, women like my wife who make traditional gender role choices are ridiculed. Mocked. Held up as handmaidens of the patriarchy. Lacking ‘ambition.’ Stupid. Let’s not pretend that this article was anything other than a veiled attack against ladies who make that choice and then have the temerity to reference experiences as wives/mothers as qualifications for office. We all know it undermines the feminist narrative, and that’s why it is such a threat.”
Mothers make awesome senators. But being a mom is better:
“I believe being a housewife and a mother is absolutely relevant to being elected to a higher office. Doing that job (wife and motherhood) well requires a formidable array of skills that translate to positions outside the home—a notion that the original poster openly mocked.”
That said, he added: “My wife believes the job of wife/mother is more significant and more powerful. Her legacy will be longer lasting/more powerful than that of a blog writer or a dime-a-dozen lawyer or politician.”
And how dare you call our wives “hausfrau”?
At the end of my article, I urged Britt to “stop the hausfrau act” because I found it “fake and condescending,” coming from someone so obviously ambitious. But this reader took particular offense at my word choice. "Hausfrau carries a pejorative sense in English,” he wrote on LinkedIn, adding that his research indicated that it connotes “frumpy, petty-bourgeois, traditional, pre-emancipation type housewife,” as well as a “henpecking and fretful homemaker.”
Well, thanks for the etymology lesson! Honestly, I used “hausfrau,” which I thought was appropriately quaint, mainly to avoid overusing “housewife” in my article.
But before I go on, let me say that this guy seems like a genuinely sweet, loving husband. How lucky for his wife that he praises her to the sky and defends her so ardently—and I mean that without irony.
The question is, though, did she or other stay-at-home-moms need the defense? (By the way, he wrote that his wife is now back in the workforce as a high school math teacher.) I don’t think so.
As far as I can tell, women in traditional roles are doing just fine. No one is threatening to take their jobs away or forcing them into the office. Undoubtedly, they take pride in what they do—as they should—just as women who work in law, finance, medicine or any other field. Then again, everyone should be proud of what they do.
Real men defend their women
But it’s interesting that he and the other men take my criticism of Britt so personally. A few even surmised that I’m jealous of Britt, though I’m not sure of what. (Is it her position as senator? Her tidy kitchen? Or that she’s married to a hunky ex-NFL player?)
What’s clear is these men think that it’s their duty to defend the women in their lives. (Where are the women who took umbrage at my writing?) Indeed, another male commentator wrote on the LinkedIn thread: “Real men defend their women and stand up to those who ridicule or slight [them] in any way.“
If that doesn’t smack of paternalism—albeit, the loving, chivalrous sort—I don’t what does. Gentlemen, can’t the ladies speak for themselves?
Related post: Katie Britt, Housewife Extraordinaire
Contact: chen.vivia@gmail.com
Twitter (X): ViviaChen
Actually the "Mommy Wars" were well underway in 1985, when I had my first kid, and started before that. Still waiting for the "Daddy Wars" on the same topic.