Forget the Feminist Merit Badge

Dalrock talked about the “feminist merit badge.” This is the idea — it is everywhere today, but nobody talks about it — that a woman must go to a good college, get a good job, and then build a career, then find a husband around age 28-30, and then quit her job and career, have children and become a housewife. What is the point of all this labor? Why not just become a housewife from the start? And yet, even those women who are quite enthusiastic about quitting their job and becoming a full-time mother (good for you!) nevertheless feel that they have to go through the whole career-building process anyway. This is the “feminist merit badge.” It is particularly prevalent among the upper middle classes, who generally make enough money to live comfortably on one income, and who have “careers” instead of simply “jobs,” like most women.

Girls, young women, and parents, should stare this “feminist merit badge” in the face and decide if it is really worth all that effort. Not really, is it? A woman who wants to build a career later in life, when her children have left the home, can then go and get whatever training she needs at that time. A woman who wants to develop her mind can do a much better job of it studying at her father’s house, rather than any university, and it doesn’t cost anything.

Plus, there are many women who would make very fine wives and mothers, but who are not very well suited to the competitive realm of academics and the corporate ladder. Must they suffer because they are forced into a role that they have no aptitude for? We can also have at least a moment of pity for those women who are actually very well suited for academics and career; and then have too much to lose by giving all this up, or, in many cases, fail to find a husband at all, and thus never become wives and full-time mothers, even if they want to.

There is, unfortunately, more to this “feminist merit badge” than merely wasting time. What is a woman to do during all this labor? She is unmarried and childless for a good ten years, 18-28. To a greater or lesser degree, she will end up “dating,” or, as it is known to men, “riding the cock carousel,” thus damaging and perhaps destroying her ability to form a stable marriage and family. Some women, who understand this and try to avoid it, will actually become celibates for this decade of maximum fertility and sexual urge, which is hardly a tolerable solution. Get married young, and have children.