Neglected Children as Evidence of Progress

Western Europe serves as an indicator of the prevailing cultural winds which, curiously, seem to travel eastward, bringing with them progress and enlightenment or death and decay, depending.

Across the pond we go, to the United Kingdom, for further evidence of inevitable decline--patent pending on the expression by the way.

A typical working parent spends just 19 minutes a day looking after their children, official figures revealed yesterday.

Observation seems superfluous. Of course,It is impossible to substantially influence a child's life when one's time is confined to a shorter period than that of a sit-com. When the power of the home wanes, something must subsitute for it; it's not as if children are self-sufficient creatures, rendering care and education luxuries. If parents will not deign to raise their own children, the state and the media will do so. Although, curiously, our survey here seems to suggest that Big Bird and Snuffleupagus are actually better at parenting than your average working Brit. Still, I'm loathe to trust giant pigeons. Then again, I'm a traditionalist.

The findings come at a time when record numbers of women are working as huge mortgages and soaring household bills force them to earn a living.

Official figures show that 12.6million women have a job, compared to just 8.5million in the 1970s.

More signs of progress. 'Twas a time when more women folk stayed home. I realize that feminist thought hinges upon the belief that the home is confining, almost like a prison--as opposed to a cube, which is... smaller. Anyway, I reckon the little rugrats used to get more than twenty minutes worth of attention from mum, which seems to be a good thing.

Now, another feminist fallacy is that women have been forced to work due to economic conditions. This is fallacious because 1) not all women need to work and 2) the economic conditions responsible for forcing women into the workplace are largely due to application of feminist thought, namely the idea that women should work rather than stay at home, irrespective of her necessity to become a wage-earner.

Expounding on point the first: some portion of the female population has always been "forced" to work. In agrarian times, certainly, women did a great deal of work, in and about the house as well as the fields. Throughout history, women have always done some type of work when the wage earned by the husband has been insufficient to meet the family budget. It should be noted that sometimes this compulsion is only due to consumerist enchantment, in which case a more modest definition of one's "needs" would allow for the woman to avoid the corporate rat race. Yet some women will still be forced to work.

This leads handily into an explanation of point the second: by touting the working world to the detriment of home, many women who have not need to work have yet done so. Notes Vox Day:

And few indeed are the women who understand that their present need to work is inextricably tied to the societal expectation that they will do so. When women began to enter the work force en masse in the latter half of the 20th century, the overall supply of labor increased, obviously. As per the iron law of supply and demand, over the last 60 years, this increase in supply has somewhat outstripped the growth in the economy and the attendant demand for labor, which is why real wages are still lower in 2005 than in 1973. Combined with the ever-increasing tax burden, this decline in real wages is why both husband and wife must now work when previously the husband's labor alone would have sufficed.

It is interesting, though perhaps not suprising that feminism has been disatrous for women. Not only are more women being compelled to work, further mitigating the power to choose which feminism was supposed to bring, but little girls are receiving little of the love and care they need to be healthy and reasonably happy human beings. If feminists hadn't already given up on such a bizarre concept, I would urge them to rethink their little revolution. Some of them are:

Maire Fahey, editor of Prima, said: "In the 1980s, we thought we could have it all and aspired to high-flying careers and happy families.

"But the cracks are starting to show. Family life is suffering and something has got to give."

It's good to see that someone besides Camille Paglia--and various unfairly maligned commentators such as Mr. Day--realizes that the law of scarcity does in fact apply to women.

Lastly, the article notes:

A woman will spend 8.3 hours asleep, 2.4 hours watching television, DVDs or videos and 2.2 hours working.

A man will spend eight hours alseep, 2.8 hours watching television, DVDs or videos and 3.5 hours working.

Just 24 minutes in 24 hours is spent reading, a figure which drops to just 10 minutes for younger people.

One imagines that less time in front of the lobotomy box and more time pondering various ideas explained in book form might help reverse the feminist inspired digression--sorry, progress. Goodness how I hate television. Maybe if the time spent in front of the t.v. was instead used for playing with our children--you know, flesh and blood as opposed to a box full of electronic equipment. I'm such a traditionalist.