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Devoted to your children? Tsk tsk, says Dutch PM.
 Not even at the height of the feminist movementwhen women were openly scorned for wasting their brains if they chose childrearing over careerdid anyone suggest that mothers should be punished for taking care of their children instead of earning a paycheck. But in Holland, thats exactly what a member of parliament is proposing.
MP Sharon Dijksma, a leading parliamentarian of the Dutch Labor Party, wants to impose a fine on women who waste their education on children instead of holding down a paying job. A highly educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to workthat is destruction of capital, Dijksma wrote in Forum magazine. If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.
| Remind us all again why it is that the birthrate is falling in the Y'urp-peon countries? At least in the non-Muslim population? |
Outraged Dutch mothers and their allies were swift in their condemnationand in their counterattacks. More than one critic has pointed out that Dijksma herself twice attempted and failed a college course, and that her grades were poor. It didnt matter, because by age 23, Dijksma was a well-paid MP. Let the fat cow repay her own scholarships first, because that was a real waste of public money, wrote one blogger.
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Of course, if the Dutch government really did impose fines on moms, many would have to get outside jobs in order to pay them. But wait a minute. If mothers return to paid employment, that means theyre no longer wasting their education. Does this mean they dont have to pay the fine after all?
| Don't confuse MP Dijksma with logic, it's clearly not her strong point. |
Some Dutch moms say its not worth working full time because daycare costs so muchthe equivalent of around $1,000 a month, according to one mother. But isnt the high cost of daycare evidence that caring for children all day is actually a worthwhile use of ones time?
Whether Dijksma thinks so or not, Dutch mothersmany of whom prefer part-time work when their children are youngclearly do. Put aside for a moment the fact that these mothers never agreed to an ROTC-style repayment of their college educations. While Dijksma evidently has a purely utilitarian view of education, anyone who ever took a college class for the joy of learning knows theres more to an education than preparing for a paycheck. As well, mothers know they can put their educations to work every day as they rear their children. But if women are now going to be required to pay back the state for their educations, those who hope to have children one day may decide that the cost of attending college is too high. Does Dijksma want only uneducated women to have children? How will that help Holland?
| This assumes that Holland can be helped. |
Dijksma is arrogant in assuming that what society wants and needs is more mothers earning paychecks while their children grow up in daycare (and 77 percent of Americas working moms say theyd prefer to be at home with their kids). The money that funds all of those college educations doesnt come from a big box in the basement of the parliament building marked state funds. Its paid through taxes by relatives of those kidsincluding fathers and grandparents who just might want their children and grandchildren reared at home, by their mothersnot dumped in daycare. Its paid by mothers who have dropped out of the paid workforce, and who will likely re-enter it when their children are older. Did Dijksma ask them if they considered their capital wasted if an educated woman chooses to labor at home instead of in an office?
Perhaps Hollands mothers ought to be asking Dijksma some hard questionssuch as who will be asked to bear the cost to society of children brought up away from home by indifferent strangerspeople who may dislike children, but who took the job because it was the only one they could find. Studies reveal that children who attend daycare suffer from more illnesses and are more aggressive than children cared for by their mothers. And the first generation of children brought up in daycare are now saying they plan to raise their own kids. Why? Because they hated daycare.
| Why don't they just ask her if she still wants to be an MP? That might focus Sharon's tiny brain just fine. |
One of Dijksmas blogger critics agreed to see at-home mothers fined for not joining the paid workforcebut only if they also fine women who never contribute any human capitalotherwise known as childrento their societies. Indeed, given Hollands plummeting birthrates, its leaders might want to consider paying mothers to bear children. Joseph DAgostino, a vice president with the Population Research Institute, points out that Dutch birth rates are below replacement level. Given that at-home mothers are more likely to bear additional children than are employed mothers, DAgostino believes the Dutch would be wise to consider finding ways to encourage mothers to care for their own children.
Thats not likely to happen as long as MPs like Dijksma are in charge. When Dijksma speaks of women throwing away their education on children, when she attacks at-homes mothers for not working (as though at-home mothers spent their time lying in hammocks, eating bon bons and reading romance novels), she is revealing a deep animosity towards traditional family life. Her views are ultimately not so much anti-woman as anti-child.
| It's anti-woman, anti-child, anti-family, and anti-society as society currently is constructed. Ms. Dijksma is one of the hard-line progressives who believes all goodness must come from the state, and that 'citizens' (I use the term loosely in her case) exist to serve the state. That is Leninism, pure and simple. |
Nowhere in Dijksmas Punish Mommy proposal do we find any concern for the children whose lives she would disrupt. In fact, if Dijksma succeeds in forcing mothers to pay back their educations, children will suffer the consequences: Some will be forced into daycare while mom works off her debt. The lucky ones will keep their moms, but will hear, We cant afford it, Honey, much more often.
Mothers Day, which Americans celebrate this Sunday, was initiated as a day to express appreciation for mothers. In recent years, its become a day in which many motherstrying to balance career and childrenguiltily wondered if they were doing right by their kids. If we do not take care who we choose as our leadersif we do not pick leaders who appreciate the work involved in giving children a happy, healthy childhood, and of instilling character in the next generation, we may eventually find ourselveslike our Dutch sistersunder threat of punishment for choosing our children over our careers.
Posted by: Korora 2006-05-15 |
