If the subject is Schlafley, though, it wouldn’t surprise me if she actually had a response to her critics, like, "I stayed at home most of the time, and being a political activist was only part time for me." Which is quite believable I think. I mean, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to me that writing a syndicated column and making occasional speaking and television appearances, and running a non-profit organization out of your house, are at all inconsistent with trying to be a stay-at-home mom.

Again I’m not trying to be Schlafley’s advocate here, because maybe there’s more here than I am aware of, but it doesn’t strike me that I’ve ever read or heard her saying women should never work, that all women must and should be full-time homemakers with kids. I know vanishingly few people who think that way at all, including an awful lot of very culturally conservative people.

Dean and Martin,

We agree on the premise that kids (and the working parent) benefit immeasurably from a stay-at-home parent. But I don’t think buying DVD players and late-model cars (which I also agree are extravagant) are necessarily everyone’s goal with a second income. They probably are for a lot of people–ie there are probably many families that prove your point–but what about to save for the children’s college educations? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to to–be less reliant on the government for loans and scholarships–and find ways to pay for things ourselves? I say this because this is why my parents both worked when I was growing up (during which time I wasn’t even allowed to watch much television, let alone play expensive video games), and I was one of the only people I knew to graduate from college debt-free. That gift was, to me, beyond price, because it let me pursue a career I loved instead of having to be shuttled into something I hated just to pay for school.

My mother would have preferred to stay home with us–she’s told us that on many occasions. But I’m grateful for what she gave me by choosing to work. What I’m saying here is that extremes are unhelpful…we shouldn’t pretend there’s never any reason for a woman to work, just as we should never demonize the necessary and wonderful work stay-at-home moms do.

"Self-fulfillment" isn’t the reason a lot of women work. Indeed, it strikes me as almost mythological to think that there was ever a time when women never worked out of the home.

From reading Schlafley–and again, I’m not encyclopedic on her by any means–it seems to me that she opposed the ERA because she believed it would take privileges away from women (a strong argument that most women found convincing, by the way), and she had great pride in being a homemaker, but didn’t think working part time while the kids are in school, or working before having kids or after they left the home, was objectionable.

That’s my impression.

There’s a very large gap, though, between that subsistence living in Africa and a two-income lifestyle. Somewhere in that gap, many people manage to successfully find a one-income lifestyle with no intestinal parasites or vitamin deficiencies and adequate shoes. I’m not saying anyone is morally obligated to live more simply; and I’m certainly not saying everyone has that choice; but simple and healthy living is available to many people who think they have "no choice".

To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t grow up in poverty. We were just working class. Dad was a blue-collar factory guy his whole life, with a major drop in income in the mid-70s when his plant shut down. Oh, our house was pretty large, allowing six people the luxury of four bedrooms. (No, that didn’t say one thing or another about our wealth. Mom and Dad built that house, over two decades, and spent three decades paying those outrageous $80 house payments. There were parts that were only finally finished the month before they sold it.) But the newest car we ever owned was seven years old when we bought it. I can scarcely remember a time when one of the two family cars or the utility truck or the tractor wasn’t in the garage for repair; and that meant our garage, with Dad and sons working to the wee hours to get transportation running in time for work and school. When the cars didn’t need repair, Dad was repairing something else: fixing the furnace or the water pump, mending fences, clearing drain fields, fixing wiring, replacing shingles, whatever. On all but the auto or plumbing or electrical work, Mom was right there doing the work with him. We "went out" (McDonald’s) maybe once a month. Our vacations, when we could afford them, were a week in a rustic campsite in the UP. We planted a garden, along with grapevines and strawberry beds and berry trees, and harvested them all diligently. Mom canned and pickled and preserved. Food from a box was possible, but food from the freezer or the canning shelf was just as likely. We raised our own beef a couple of years, until Mom got tired of chasing cows that were too stupid to stop for a fence. Pop (soda for those of you who aren’t from Michigan) was a sure sign that there was a party coming, and you didn’t see parties more than maybe four times per year. Candy meant you had been very good all week, and then you only got a small amount. For a treat, you went to the pickle crock: a big earthenware crock in the cold room, filled with last year’s cucumbers that had soaked in the brine all winter. Or maybe you pulled a potato or a carrot from the cold room and washed it and bit into it raw. (Me likey them pickles and potatoes and carrots!) We had a black & white TV (color only after I was 12 or so), but all the books we could handle. The one thing Mom and Dad never skimped on was buying anything we wanted to read. I may not have had pop in the house, but I just assumed everybody had the Encyclopedia Britannica (purchased one volume every month for nearly three years) to browse through for hours on end. (And it was the real Britannica, thank you very much! By age 5, I knew that the red "junior" books were for kids, and I wanted the grown up information.) We also had a pool, because Mom’s oldest brother drowned when she was young, and she was determined all us kids would learn to swim like fishes. And, luxury of luxuries, we had horses! And cats, and a dog or two; but to my brother and sister — and now to my wife — "horse" meant "home". That also meant buying a barn full of hay once, sometimes twice a year, with the whole family taking a day to pick it up off the field, stick it on the wagon, haul it to the barn, and then pitch it into the loft. (Oh, for the days when I could throw 50 pound bales across an 8 foot gap!)

Would I want to live like that today? Heck, no! I like my six cans of pop a day. I like the variety I get in different restaurants. I like my sporty red 2005 Mazda 3. I like my computers and my DVD player and my T-Mobile Dash. I like the fact that my wife can have all the horses she can care for. (But boy, I hope we hit the limit soon!)

But growing up, I almost never felt deprived. Once in a while the "rich" kids had some toy I was envious of, but the envy never lasted very long. (Somehow, the toys I really couldn’t get over would show up at Christmas or birthday time.) So when I see a family who has "no choice" but to have two incomes to "get by", and then I see one or two late model cars, multiple TVs with DVD players, gaming consoles, small stacks of DVDs and games, waste baskets full of fast food trash, cell phones, and more, I don’t call that "getting by". I don’t begrudge people the choice to live that way, but I do see it as a choice.

Now some people have less choice than others, granted. If you’re low income in the city, it’s hard to put in a half-acre garden, and pretty much impossible to raise a cow. If you never learned canning and preserving and just simple, basic cooking skills, then you don’t know how to stretch the food budget. If you never learned auto repair skills (despite years of Dad trying to yell them into me, the skills never took, in my case) or just can’t keep up with the new computerized systems, then a later model car will make more sense. If your job has you on the road a lot, then a cell phone moves from luxury to necessity.

But I know families of four living on less than $40,000. They live about the same life I grew up with, to one degree or another. They decided that their life choices are more important than some the luxuries they’re missing.

Willow, obviously  at the age of 83  she ought  not employ anyone to do the housework.

What a bitch ?  Or have you not  reduced her entire life to like six sentences ?

Now of course she’s out of date.

Cool.