Family not merely a private arrangement

@writersabstract aka abstractruth writes:

In conducting research for my upcoming book about American culture, I came across the controversial figure of Phyllis Schlafly. I remember her as someone my mother liked, as she was exactly the demographic Phyllis tried to reach: a Christian homemaker. I vaguely remembered the controversy surrounding the Equal Rights Amendment growing up, and the argument that while its supporters claimed they wanted “equal rights for women,” its detractors believed it would strip women of certain protections and privileges, such as exemption from the draft. ...

Now we come to the usual complaint about Schlafly, other than the fact that she was not a Marxist feminist in the style of today—or even the 1970s. Even those attempting to be “fair” to her often lapse into the same condescending refrain: “She was so intelligent and ambitious, yet she wanted to deny rights to women. Such a paradox.” Or: “She left the home, but wanted to trap all other women inside it.”

By now, these observations are so trite and thoughtless they hardly merit serious attention. ...

To Schlafly, the family was never merely a private arrangement. It was the central institution through which morality, memory, culture, and continuity were transmitted across generations. ...

But perhaps Schlafly’s greatest insight was this: women traded away a profound form of civilizational power. They exchanged the ability to shape the culture of families, neighborhoods, communities, and future generations for peripheral participation in bureaucratic and corporate systems that neither know nor love them. Modern ideology snookered women to surrender deep and lasting influence for managerial status inside institutions built by technocrats.

Essay is reprinted here.