...home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such choice, too many women will make that one.

--Simone de Beauvoir, interviewed by Betty Friedan

Sure, I had choices, but did I choose to find myself at thirty-eight aching with a ferocious emptiness and a desperate sense of longing, so overwhelming that at times it sent me quite mad? ... Yes, I suppose I did.

--Virginia Haussegger, Wonder Woman: The Myth of "Having It All"

ONE IS OFTEN REMINDED that "progressive" social theory requires a rejection of moral absolutes, while "politically correct" devices serve to protect the relativist assumptions upon which this theory often relies. As these devices continue to take greater hold in public discourse, they have ironically become uncompromising and dogmatic in the manner in which they treat dissenting opinions. Reflecting this trend, any debate concerning gender that falls outside the rubric of feminist theory is almost certain to attract controversy. Responses to those in the media and publishing industries who question the accepted dogma illustrate this new "progressive absolutism", a phenomenon most evident in the debate about modern family and traditional values.

The heated reaction to Michael Noer's piece published by Forbes magazine late last year is a pertinent example. Titled "Don't Marry a Career Woman", the article drew on mainly US-based research and considered the impact careerist tendencies have on individual members of families, and the family structure itself. Noer claimed that marriage to a careerist wife was not conducive to the establishment of a stable family unit, and would ultimately be a cause of dissatisfaction and unhappiness for its members. References included: Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, American Journal of Sociology, American Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, as well as data from the US Institute of Social Research. In the interest of impartiality, the author concluded with the caveat that "as with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation".

Despite Noer's warnings against the ease of misinterpreting the results of his research, the reaction to his article from liberal circles provoked its removal from the Forbes website. It returned only after an opinion "counterpoint" was also published immediately parallel to it on the same web page. This unusual manner of internet publication betrays a view that such an opinion cannot stand on its own merits and can only be heard if it is tempered with a contemporaneous rebuttal. Internet chatter predictably swung from shrill accusations of "misogyny" and "sexism", to the entire text being republished by sympathisers in an attempt, no doubt, to prevent the message from being censored out of existence.

One of Noer's considerations was that the birth-rate among families with careerist wives was low, and here a theoretical nexus appears with another no less controversial thesis recently published last year in Foreign Policy magazine by Phillip Longman.

Longman's outlook is far more optimistic. He suggests that traditional values will eventually return to dominate society, since a currently falling birth-rate among the secular and liberal demographic has rendered it incapable of sustaining population growth. As a consequence, those who adhere to traditional values are able to invest in a proportionally larger share of successive future generations through steady or increasing birth-rates. A recent survey conducted in the USA concluded that those who adhere to traditional values already constituted 31 per cent of the American population, whereas "progressives" amount to no more than 17 per cent. Whatever the accuracy of these figures, this disparity will further increase over time if Longman's thesis has any merit. However, his demographic model does not take into account cultural mobility among young men and women, who, even if raised in traditionalist families, may nevertheless favour career and "personal development" over marriage and raising children. Despite some of its flaws, Longman's provocatively titled article,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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