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High school commencement speaker tells females: stay at home, don’t be CEOs

Funny, though - that when I was employed: I still came home and cooked dinner - did chores in the evening . . . all the same things I do now, I did then.

My mother was the same - she was a sahm until we were all in school and then she, too, just added full-time employment onto her list of things to do for the day.

Strange, overall - that my Dad's life didn't become more complex at all as we aged . . . he just always worked - and then relaxed all evening while my mother fussed after us kids and hurried around the house to get everything done.

Same thing with my husband (back in the day) - his life didn't shift at all - I was just busy busy while he sat and watched tv all evening.
 
Funny, though - that when I was employed: I still came home and cooked dinner - did chores in the evening . . . all the same things I do now, I did then.....

.....Same thing with my husband (back in the day) - his life didn't shift at all - I was just busy busy while he sat and watched tv all evening.

Similar to the situation I grew up in....

My mother worked until she became pregnant with me. At that point she left the full-time job world to be a mother (she'd already been a wife for almost 4 years). She maintained a part-time job as a church musician but didn't go back to full-time work until all three of her children were in high school. She had done some substitute teaching when we were a little younger, but that was always a secondary activity to what the family and home needed. When she did work, her schedule was designed to ensure she could be home to get what needed to be done at the house. My father was not one to come home and just sit around, though. He always had different DiY projects, home maintenance, yardwork, etc.... going on.
 
Good, Lord, this was a social studies teacher in a town that has a whopping population of around 2,500 people in Indiana. I don't even remember my school graduation speakers' messages, and I didn't the day after it was over either. People need to have a little perspective and stop being so freaking thin-skinned. Every day somebody somewhere is saying something you don't like. BFD. It isn't like this guy was someone who actually has a say in how affairs of state are run or has their own TV show or something.

Politically incorrect thought has to be stamped out anywhete it rears its ugly head.
 
Archaic? No. Different than you, yes.

You are more than welcome to teach your children they have a choice. I do the same with mine. Although my wife stays at home and our kids are homeschooled, that was the choice of my wife, not me. We have a pretty good thing going here.

Just because the statement wasn't politically correct doesn't mean it was wrong.

No, he said:

"The greatest impact you could ever contribute to our world is a loving investment in the lives of your precious children. To solve the problems plaguing our society, we don’t need more women CEOs. We need more women as invested mothers.”

So yes, he is in fact telling young woman that they should stay at home. More importantly, he's telling them that their contributions to the world are best achieved through staying at home and squeezing out babies. That is both ridiculous and positively archaic thinking.
 
Archaic? No. Different than you, yes.

You are more than welcome to teach your children they have a choice. I do the same with mine. Although my wife stays at home and our kids are homeschooled, that was the choice of my wife, not me. We have a pretty good thing going here.

Just because the statement wasn't politically correct doesn't mean it was wrong.

Who said anything about political correctness? Certainly not me. The statement was wrong because it's factually inaccurate and based in archaic thinking re: women.
 
Never read so many pages of absolute tripe before. To some of the male posters on this thread, my wife is smarter than most of you on here, she has a more important job than most of you on here and she is still a great mother so get over yourselves. To some of the female posters on here, there is nothing wrong with being a stay at home mum but don't throw other women under the bus just because they have more ambition than you and don't feel the need to be supported by their male counterpart. The whole notion of a mother staying at home was great back in the day but we live in a world with high inflation and low wages and of course the whole women are equal thing happened, as much as some of you on here would love to come home and have your wife greet you with a cigar and a martini those days are over.

Interesting that you manage to say there is nothing wrong with it but turn around in the same sentence and accuse them of lacking ambition. While some of your words seem to support the idea of a stay at home mom, the whole tone of your post seems to insinuate that any woman who does so is lazy and stupid, so which is it?
 
Feel free to explain a world where woman don't have children. How long does that world have humans? 70 years?





People who 'think' like you are one of the reasons why Barack Obama is in the White House and Mitt Romney is wherever he is.

I haven't seen a single post on this thread where anyone said that no woman should ever have children. You are projecting.






"Better days are coming." ~ But not for today' out of touch, running out of time, GOP.
 
Who said anything about political correctness? Certainly not me. The statement was wrong because it's factually inaccurate and based in archaic thinking re: women.

Doesn't the bolded kind of prove his point? There is nothing wrong with being old fashioned generally speaking. We don't all have to live by the new ways of thinking and it might just be the old way is better. Since being old fashioned these days is thought of as politically incorrect, I'm sorry, but you just proved his point.
 
Doesn't the bolded kind of prove his point? There is nothing wrong with being old fashioned generally speaking. We don't all have to live by the new ways of thinking and it might just be the old way is better. Since being old fashioned these days is thought of as politically incorrect, I'm sorry, but you just proved his point.

At some point it'd be really nice if conservatives figured out that they're the only people bringing up political correctness as if it matters. My concerns have nothing to do with political correctness, so to the extent that you're commenting on it, you're not understanding what I'm saying. My concerns have to do with 1) the factual inaccuracy of the statement, and 2) the underlying misogyny which is, in fact, archaic. There's nothing wrong with being old fashioned in theory. There are plenty of things wrong with quite a lot of old fashioned thinking to the extent that it's bigoted, misogynistic, etc.

So no, I really didn't prove his point, you've misunderstood mine.
 
Fewer of us (by far) grew up in an urban environment back then. The only thing the majority of American teens would have known about that crap is what we learned when we went to see West Side Story at a local theatrical production.

IOW, CJ was wrong to blame the times for the ills he spoke of because those ills are associated with urban living, and not the morality of a certain time period.
 
IOW, CJ was wrong to blame the times for the ills he spoke of because those ills are associated with urban living, and not the morality of a certain time period.

Not necessarily, even in the urban environment then that behavior wasn't the norm. Also could be that rural families stuck together more than urban families did. Or any combination of all those factors.
 
Not necessarily, even in the urban environment then that behavior wasn't the norm. Also could be that rural families stuck together more than urban families did. Or any combination of all those factors.

No one said it ever was the norm.

And there's been plenty of teen violence in rural areas.
 
At some point it'd be really nice if conservatives figured out that they're the only people bringing up political correctness as if it matters. My concerns have nothing to do with political correctness, so to the extent that you're commenting on it, you're not understanding what I'm saying. My concerns have to do with 1) the factual inaccuracy of the statement, and 2) the underlying misogyny which is, in fact, archaic. There's nothing wrong with being old fashioned in theory. There are plenty of things wrong with quite a lot of old fashioned thinking to the extent that it's bigoted, misogynistic, etc.

So no, I really didn't prove his point, you've misunderstood mine.

There is nothing bigoted about his statement. Try again.

I'm sorry, but when you used the word archaic you did not make any sort of effort to put any importance on exactly what it might be. That is not my mistake, but yours.

Btw, the only reason any of this matters to anyone ever is political correctness.
 
Not so much, no. As I've explained numerous times, there are any number of career paths women can have that will result in her having a much larger impact on the world than she would by raising children.



Biology won't necessarily win here, but a career in biology (or chemistry, or physics) might:

Marie Curie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tell you what - why don't you take your argument back to the 1950's where it belongs, and let the rest of us enjoy the modern world, m'kay?

Why are there men and women if both can fill all roles equally with the exception of having children?

Were the "traditional" roles actually based upon needs and developed over the whole period of human evolution, or do you see them as just made up bs to oppress women throughout history?

Currently, the approximately 1 Billion in the first world is seeing reduction in populations (except US which is actually being driven upwards by immigration) but they control a huge amount of resources. In the end, what is the likely evolutionary results if the other 6 Billion continue on as the have been and we don't keep up our population? How long will we have those resources?

Our technologies and our cultural is based upon individuals, if women are seeking to be CEOs and not raising their children correctly or not having any at all, how long can our society remain at such a pinnacle? Are we not already seeing a massive impact from the fracturing of traditional families? A lack of discipline necessary for individuals to achieve their potentials? Do we not already have shortages in educated fields because not enough "Americans" seek out and achieve the skills necessary to fill those positions?
 
Both parents have an obligation to care for their kids. It was a stupid and sexist remark.
 
Interesting that you manage to say there is nothing wrong with it but turn around in the same sentence and accuse them of lacking ambition. While some of your words seem to support the idea of a stay at home mom, the whole tone of your post seems to insinuate that any woman who does so is lazy and stupid, so which is it?

where did I say they lack ambition? Working mums have MORE ambition which is self evident.
 
Not necessarily, even in the urban environment then that behavior wasn't the norm. Also could be that rural families stuck together more than urban families did. Or any combination of all those factors.

For some posters, being able to make any assinine argument they can simply to counter another's point somehow makes them feel superior while all it does is mark them as devoid of independent thought. I've moved past them - I've got better things to do with my time.
 
No one said it ever was the norm.

And there's been plenty of teen violence in rural areas.

Wasn't the point of CJ's post and this is yet another distraction from the thread topic. Something you do with regularity. If you want to discuss the thread topic, go for it.
 
When did being a great wife and mom become a bad thing? The only thing wrong with this statement, as I see it, is that he didn't also encourage the male students to be great husbands and fathers and forget all that wasted time working late and on weekends chasing the CEO ring and spend more time with your wife and kids and help them be successful in their lives too - it's the greatest reward.

This is all that needs to be said on the subject.
 
Wasn't the point of CJ's post and this is yet another distraction from the thread topic. Something you do with regularity. If you want to discuss the thread topic, go for it.

Don't like my posts?

Then don't respond to them
 
The fact that you continue to perpetuate a misrepresentation of his comments suggests that you do indeed see this from a certain perspective. That's fine. Perhaps you see what you call stereotypical roles as evil or wrong - that's exactly what the speaker is trying to tell these young people to reject - to encourage them, to dare them to embrace what you reject because they are roles that are important, perhaps most important, for the survival of society.
You're not addressing my actual point so I'll see if you can answer it honestly in question form.

Are the mother as caretaker and father as provider/protector stereotypical gender roles for women and men, respectively?

You see something sinister and evil - I see it differently.
Don't put words in my mouth.
 
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