Feminists? Any here?

[OakLeaf]

I'm so frustrated by the number of posters in this thread who view feminists as somehow looking down on stay-at-home moms.

Of course there are many people who do look down on stay-at-home moms - just as there are many who look down on any other work traditionally done by women - nurse, secretary, elementary school teacher, fiber artist, etc. It's unsurprising that some early feminists still harbored some of the prejudices that had been drilled into everyone since their birth. "Consciousness raising" is a process that didn't and doesn't happen overnight.

But devaluation of housework wasn't invented by feminists, and it certainly has not been feminists who've perpetuated it. For the past 30 years, it's been largely those who describe themselves as "conservative" who revile women (exclusively women) who "have children they can't support." Where is the equivalent vituperation of high-earning males who "have children they can't raise?" Where is the government mandate and popular demand for them to spend more time at home? What is the inverse of "welfare queens" - "day care kings," perhaps?

I wish these posters would remember that it's the second-wave feminists in the early 1970s who developed the concept of wages for housework. How much more is it possible to respect and validate homemakers, than to demand that homemaking be valued equally with all other work?