1. I’m afraid Flanagan just doesn’t do it for me. As a popular columnist her only value is in NOT accepting every orthodoxy and impulse of the far left. She is kind of like the slightly right wing, married version of Maureen Dowd. Neither of them will do any real heavy lifting however. Both are susceptible to the charge of elitism because they seem to concentrate on the upper middle class and beyond. I don’t appreciate the emotive stance of either author. It all seems like a defensive crouch toward either the travails of upper income single women, or upper income married, child centered motherhood.
2. Either way authors such as this tend to stumble across a truth of modern life rather often. They do not however stumble upon the truth of our contemporary predicament very often. In fact, they seem to scrupulously avoid it. With 70% illegitimacy rates among the underclass, 50% divorce rates holding steady, increasing numbers of young people remaining unmarried to later and later ages, and increasing numbers not marrying at all.
Women going barren through no “choice� of their own, never having either the number of children they desired or any at all. Meanwhile verifiable social scientific consensuses continue to emerge about the ill-effects of fatherlessness, divorce, daycare, pornography and on the grows. Young women & men are thoroughly sexualized by age twelve through a openly decadent youth/pop culture that continuously seeks to “push the envelope�. Resulting in a million abortions a year, teen pregnancy, unprecedented venereal disease, normative promiscuity in a “hook up� culture translates into a misogynistic, debased, sex-obsessed society well into adulthood. This all takes place within a social-political context were feminism remains in strict orthodox control of the universities (witness Larry Summers) and causes like gay “marriage� and polyamory are given serious legal and political acceptance..
No- I’m afraid authors like Flannagan are just simple minded apologists for a select few women’s life-work balance. No contemporary popular author is willing to seriously critique and assign (or accept) blame in our sexual revolutionized decaying marriage culture. Sad but true, most commentators just don’t have the historical or philosophical depth or breadth to truly topple the shibboleths and slay the sacred cows of our day. If any did arrive they would not find a home at either the Atlantic nor the New Yorker.

my read on flanagan is that she romanticizes the past. it's a tempting thing; she can't help herself, and hell, it's not like i don't romanticize some parts of the past (oh for the days when medicine was all natural and holistic and the curanduras dispensed wisdom about the glorious human body... but wait, that was when people died of dental cavities and syphilis was incurable. er, nevermind). we should be able to dismiss her without hating her, right? right?

but what's creepy to me is the way she's reveling in her extremism and her unpopularity. i thought she did well on the show, in that she was never flustered or taken off-guard by colbert. on the other hand, holy shit did she make herself look like a nutcase!

She was WAY Stepford. Esp that whole "perfect woman" exhange. Ick.

You people have no sense of humor. You do realize that was a clip form Comedy Central, don't you?

Um, yeah. Do you realize she wasn't kidding?

I think the greatest thing about this was that Stephen Colbert actually started slipping out of his character to say things like, "So... going back to the days where women were completely dependent on their husbands is a good thing?"

Ms Flanagan: "Well... not when you say it like THAT."

Wouldn't it be nice if every woman in America was in a nice, stable marriage and could have a nice, cushy job that enables them to spend extra time with their children in a nice, middle-class home? I mean... if you step outside reality for a moment. I'm sure Ms. Flanagan's kids love having their mommy make dinner for them every night, unless of course, she is a terrible cook. (Which would entertain me highly.)

Would you also say that stay at home Dads are making the wrong choice because it forces them to be dependant on their wives?

I don't think anyone is saying that women staying at home is the "wrong" choice. But Flanagan is very much saying that not staying at home is.

I think you're just biased against her haircut.

"I'm sure Ms. Flanagan's kids love having their mommy make dinner for them every night"

Isn't sacrificing for your children what a parent is supposed to do? I never wanted to make those sacrifices, so I never had children.

If a couple can afford it, why shouldn't one parent stay at home with the kids?

The worst part of it, for me, was hearing her talk about scoring the New Yorker staff writer gig even though she lives in LA: "A certain kind of woman, they’ll search the country for." Ugh. The most respected magazines have a dismal percentage of female bylines, and yet they're willing to hunt for a woman like Flanagan. Sad but true.

I saw this the night it aired. I was shocked. She's frightening! How convenient for her to believe women should stay at home with their kids. I shudder when I think of women reading her crappy books.

Any woman who advocates sex as part of your wifely duties is a sadmasochistic jackass. Any man who cheers for that has never had genuinely good sex with someone who was really into it.

It's too bad, because Caitlin Flanagan is actually a very witty writer. When she first started at the Atlantic, she was obviously no feminist, but she never seemed to take her traditionalism very seriously; I remember her starting one piece by pointing out that she was on her second husband and two was really enough. This scary Stepford persona just came out of nowhere.

wow, that was even more offensive than I expected. You never see Colbert break character like that, and yet he pushed her to say that she preferred the lifestyle of a wife in the feudal days (who could be lobotomized at will by a husband who wasn't getting any "nookie") than a modern woman. it's too bad, her piece on the Rainbow Party didn't make her look this wingnutty.

Raging Moderate, you're missing the point of what I said. Ms. Flanagan regards it as a mother's "wifely duty" to stay home with her children, and seems to look down on women who don't do that, when we are all well aware that most women do not have the privileges she has, and do not have the option to leave their jobs. Is it fair to accuse them of being bad mothers when they're trying desperately to make ends meet, or put money in college funds for their children?

If either parent chooses to stay home with their children, that is their decision. The last line was an acknowledgement that her children most likely do appreciate her staying at home. However, I think I can safely say that she is not a stay-at-home mother in the traditional sense. She can, after all, find the time to fly across the country and hang out with Stephen Colbert.

And let's not forget that while she is staying home, she is also being fulfilled in her successful career. She is not going to feel the frustration I've seen in so many of the older stay-at-home moms around me who had very little to do when their children were old enough to take care of themselves.

This was a really interesting discussion. I'm interested in learning more about fitz and prairielily...send me your urls if you have them. I'm a single parent, have been divorced/single for eight years. I have two daughters. I'm concerned about a culture that seeks to mainstream porn and the "hook up" culture fitz mentions. Although isn't the "hook up" culture alot like the "open sexuality" of the 70s? - this didn't do anything for women, either. It is possible, though difficult, to raise non-sexualized children - I mean in the pop culture sense but you've got to turn off the tube. It helps enormously to have a community that values the same, supervision of your children and conduct of your own that becomes an adult. Valuing the spirit and integrity of our sons and daughters is so important.

Thanks for posting this--I hadn't seen it. For me, besides her 1950s-era rhetoric, the problem with someone like Flanagan is that she's disingenuous. If she was busy doing everything she claims women should be doing as part of their "wifely" duties, then when does she have time to write? Who was taking care of the kids while she was on the show? If she really believed what she's espousing, she wouldn't have written the book or been promoting it on the show.

Prarielily, I would say that ANYONE, male or female who relies on someone else financially is taking risks with their own lives and that of their kids. Witness my husband. He rolled back his career to spend MUCH more time with his kids, and go to school for a second career. He got them off the bus every day, took them to all their doctors appointments - you get the picture. His ex screwed him financially in the divorce. He could have fought her to make her take her rightful share of household debt and get her 401k, but could not affort a drawn out legal battle. He did not make the "wrong" choice to raise his kids, but in exhange for doing that, should have had his wife enter into an antenuptual agreement, had his own personal retirement account, his own stash of cash, etc. If you can't/won't stand up and demand that stuff for yourself AND YOUR KIDS while you stay home, you need your own career to fall back on. His ex placed absouletly no value on the fact that her children were raised at home, not by strangers, and her's is the typical attitude, unfortunately for the career minded spouses of many nuturing people. We used to understand this in western society and had "marriage articles" to make sure that people had property rights spelled out up front; not that the terms were always great for women, but a life estate in a house is better than half your husband's credit card debt.