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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Feminism is about supporting women’s agency in making choices for their own lives, whatever they may be. If an MIL is a real feminist, she’ll embrace her DIL the way she is and become her supporter. I can’t think of a better gift than unconditional acceptance from any parent, no matter how they met their new child, by giving birth, by adoption or by law.[/quote] this is a relatively new concept in the women’s movement.  My mother fought for women to be able to stay in the workplace after marriage and children as she was forced out of her job after becoming pregnant with me in 1964.  In the 70’s women were finally able to get credit cards in their name. In the 1960’s women could get the pill IF they had permission of their husband. Unmarried women could not get it.  These are the things she and others fought for.  Many have trouble when a daughter or DIL chooses to sah because if feels like a betrayal to them for all the hard work it took to be able to be in the workplace.  My mother had a really hard time when I quit to SAH - and my children have SN -something DCUM tends to forgive if someone SAH when children are in school.  She understood it intellectually- but emotionally it was difficult for her.I think of her as a [b]real[/b] feminist even if you do not.

My generation had a hard time with SAH because we were supposed to be the Enjoli generation, (bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never let you forget your a man….’   We were told we could have it all and we could do it all. We had the hatchback babies - my son was born at noon on Monday and we were released at 9am Tuesday and no parental leave (paid or unpaid).  I still have my $.59 pin - I think women are now over $.75 to men’s $1 now.  That is progress.

My hope for the next wave is toward more equitable and affordable childcare options.  I like that this generation has more options for parental leave for everyone.    
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I’m sorry but no, you can’t have it all. The truth is your relationships with your children will just not be as close if you aren’t around. That’s the hard fact. Are you really going to wish you’d spent more time at work being a corporate monkey or some other such thing? I know I won’t. I won’t ever regret investing time into the relationship with my children. [/quote]

+1000.  “Having it all” is yet another lie of the left. [/quote]

No, it the lie of the right, because many of them do and believe that means everyone can, and if they don't, it's their own fault. The left knows most of us have far, far less than "it all" and working to help make life easier with parental leave, healthcare, child tax credits, universal preK, etc.[/quote]

But I thought the most educated and rich among us were mostly liberals these days? A lot of conservatives are actually working class families like you are describing the left to be. It’s flip flopped.[/quote]

This was the central premise of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" a buzzy political book 15 years ago or so.  The Republican party is a marriage of two wings: economic conservatives and social conservatives.  Economic conservatives want deregulation and lower taxes; social conservatives care about things like abortion, gay marriage, and teaching that America is (or was) great.  It paid off wonderfully for economic conservatives and the big business interests that they represent, while social conservatives mostly got hosed.  Of course, that may change now that they have captured the Supreme Court.

But the quick upshot is that most of the red states in middle America care less about getting screwed than they do about feeling bad about any of their actions.  I think the last Republican legislative idea other than tax cuts actually aimed (without any judgment on whether it would be successful) at helping middle class families might have been Bush's plan to privatize social security, which died a pretty quick death.  For all the Republican votes to repeal Obamacare, they had no plan at all for what to do without it.

Of course, it's a new age for the Republican party.  Mitt Romney was a Presidential nominee and now he's a pariah.  Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz beg forgiveness whenever there is any semblance that they have offended the Trump or his supporters.  Maybe once they ban abortion they'll get around to addressing the economic concerns of the working class that keeps electing them.[/quote]

It's telling that the working and middle classes are increasingly leaning Republican. I wonder what they'd think about your moralizing DC bubble screed. Maybe it's because they know the Democrats hate them, despise them, and couldn't care less about white working class people. They know the Democrats sold them down the river with open borders and liberal trade with China. A lot of wealth was generated from it - which went to rich Democrats.

I do agree that both political parties treated working Americans badly, overpromising and underdelivering and with an increasing inequity going primarily to affluent Democrats. For all their economic flaws, at least the Republicans don't also sneer at just being a white rural or suburban working / middle class and deliver hate-tinged speeches about being on the wrong side of history (aka Biden last week in Atlanta).

The Republicans were the party of unpleasant moralizers aka the evangelicals, 20 years ago. Today the ugly and divisive moralizers are the Democrats and their progressive ideologies. [/quote]

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