By: Judy Berman
Source: Salon.com
No one would ever accuse conservative radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger of harboring progressive views on parenting. But if this excerpt from her new book, “In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms,” is any indication, the good doctor’s 16th opus may turn out to be her most culturally tone-deaf dispatch to date. While I would never criticize anyone’s choice to be a stay-at-home mom (or dad), Dr. Laura’s insistence that women give up or radically revise their careers if they want to raise children is not only retrograde, it’s downright impractical in the midst of a recession.
And if any doubt remained regarding the extremism of Dr. Laura’s views on motherhood, she dispelled it in an interview that ran in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. Asked whether stay-at-home parenting is realistic for families shouldering economic hardships, the talk-show host replied, “What I have discerned is that people of modest means have been able to handle what’s going on far better than people who are used to having a lot of stuff; it’s the people who put their life’s worth into products, and not people, that are probably the most shell-shocked.” Uh, sure. But what about the moms who… oh, I don’t know… can’t afford to pay their rent and buy groceries? Should they renounce their destructive materialism and hightail out of the workforce, too?
