What’s the most important thing most of us will do? The answer is, obviously, raise our kids. And that’s what New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in his New Year’s Day column, but believe it or not, he caught all sorts of grief.
Brooks was responding to a recent piece in the American Prospect by Linda Hirshman of Brandeis. She criticized the idea that “staying home with the kids is just one more feminist option.”
For Hirshman, “the family — with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks — …allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government.” She adds that women assigning domestic roles to themselves is as “unjust” as their being forced into these roles. Well, so much for women’s “choice.”
Brooks calls this whole assertion “astonishing.” He urges his readers to look back over their own lives. Then he asks, “Which memories do you cherish more, those with your family or those at the office?”
While Brooks found Hirshman’s views of the family “astonishing,” there was nothing surprising about the reactions to Brooks’s column. The most virulent — and, thus, easiest to disregard — objections accused Brooks of having a “problem with educated, achieving women.” They caricatured his position as saying that women should be content with “birthin’ babies and fixin’ vittles.”
And of course, their comments drip with contempt for the millions of women who have chosen to stay at home with their children.
A more substantial and troubling response comes not from the left but from the libertarian right. Former Reason magazine editor and Times columnist Virginia Postrel reduces Brooks’s argument to “errands are what matters most.” Well, that’s not what Brooks is saying. He is talking about priorities, not “to do” lists.
After noting the obvious — “somebody’s got to do the errands of life” — Postrel turns to the heart of her argument: “I do not believe there is One Best Way to live.”
Postrel writes that a life lived “attending to small chores” is not “inferior to one devoted to more focused pursuits.” But the use of words like errands, small chores, and focused pursuits reveals that, while she will not berate women for staying at home, she does not think much of their choice.
In fact, calling these decisions choices misses the point. When Postrel or anyone else calls for “neutrality” of any kind toward childrearing, they are overlooking the obvious centrality of that task. Forget about the satisfaction Brooks writes about: We’re talking about simple survival, on both a personal and societal level.
Ask the Japanese: Last year, Japan’s population declined for the first time since 1899. As a result, Japan could face economic ruin and, some say, possible extinction because of the “choices” its young adults have made.
While our situation is not that dire, there is still, according to Brooks, the matter of our children’s “I.Q., mental habits, and destiny.” Is this the kind of thing we should be “neutral” about?
That it’s even necessary to ask this question is a mark of a culture obsessed with “choice,” pleasure, and personal autonomy. There is nothing we will let get between us and our idea of “full human flourishing” — not even the future.
(This update courtesy of the Breakpoint with Chuck Colson.)