Redstate
The Truth May Hurt, But Is Not Mean
By Erick Erickson
May 30th, 2013

I feel the need to add to this post as it is obvious a lot of people take up this topic with some heavily preconceived notions and biases. I am shocked to learn I think women cannot be breadwinners. That is what the left says, but it is not so. Even now I am getting beaten up for suggesting women should stay home with their kids. While I think it is preferable, I also know it is often impossible. I know from first hand experience.

Prior to having kids, Christy and I both worked. Once we had our first child and I was making a full time go of RedState, Christy had to work if we were to have insurance. Frankly, we could not make ends meet on my salary alone and, even after the cost of day care, had to have the remainder of Christy’s salary to help make ends meet. We still struggled.

At one point I had to contemplate being a single dad, but thank God I did not have to be. When we made the decision that Christy would stay home with the kids, we did so contemplating I would have to get one or more additional jobs in order for her to do it. God truly blessed us in how he arranged it, but we had made the decision to make the leap to her being a stay at home before those blessings even arrived. I work three jobs rather constantly, but am fortunate to do most of it from home.

All of this is to say there are many people who’ve heard what I said and think I’m judging them. I am not. In my own family we’ve been there and struggled. But just because the world has moved on and seems to think the two parent nuclear household with a stay at home mom is no longer necessary or useful does not make it so.

Ladies, if you want to work that’s fine. If your position in life makes it advantageous for you to be the primary bread winner, that’s fine. But your individual circumstances and mine should not hide the fact that there is an ideal and optimal family arrangement whether we in our own lives can meet it.

We should also, as a society, recognize that many single moms are in that position because the men in their lives abandoned their obligations. We should work on all those fronts to put the pieces of the nuclear family back together.

Having said all that, now on to the main point wherein all the controversy lies. . . .

Many feminist and emo lefties have their panties in a wad over my statements in the past 24 hours about families. I said, in a statement reflecting the view of three quarters of those surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll, that more women being the primary or sole breadwinners in families is harmful to raising children. This result came from a survey that found “nearly four in 10 families with children under the age of 18 are now headed by women who are the sole or primary breadwinners for their families...

Read the rest of the article at Redstate