The Role She Wants to Fill — Stay-At-Home Mother

Grace Dyck offers a troubling view into her experience as a student in a ‘Family Studies” course at the university level. “Finally, I thought. I’ll get some solid instruction to aide me as I build a family. Wrong again.” She was enrolled in several courses that looked promising, but found the professors holding to a basic and undisguised hostility toward the traditional family.
In “A Role I Want to Fill,” published at Boundless Webzine, Dyck identifies what lies behind her classroom encounters:
I believe this kind of antipathy toward the family lies at the root of the attack on gender roles. Though proponents of the new equality may claim to defend women, they often carry a deep disdain for childrearing and the traditional family. Attacking the traditional home involves an assault on its historical centerpiece, the housewife. It’s assumed that to be fulfilled, a woman must pursue a full time career in addition to her domestic duties. This belief has changed the shape of our society – in many destructive ways. Many double income homes spend nearly the entire second income to replace the mother. Daycare is expensive. Nannies (who most often leave their own children to care for the children of the wealthy) are often hired to pick up the slack. Cleaners are contracted to maintain the house. Not only does replacing mom cost economically; family cohesion suffers. The absence of gender roles creates a strange world indeed, one in which the most intimate responsibilities of family life are outsourced to strangers. Yet this is the unavoidable predicament in a culture that enforces uniformity to ensure equality.
Mrs. Dyck wants to be a stay-at-home mom. She didn’t find any support for that aspiration in her university experience.  Anyone surprised?