Today, Hilary Rosen appeared on CNN again to talk about her controversial comments accusing Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, of never working “a day in her life.” This time, she said that being a mother is “the hardest job in the world,” but refused to apologize to Ann Romney or back down from her statements about her. “This isn’t about stay-at-home moms vs. working moms, it’s about women in general,” said Rosen. “I love stay-at-home moms and I have nothing against them and I support them all the time.”
Well, no. Rosen treats being a stay-at-home mom as a luxury. “This is not about Ann Romney,” she said. “This is about the waitress in a diner somewhere in Nevada who has two kids whose day care funding is being cut off because of the Romney-Ryan budget and she doesn’t know what to do … some means can afford to make a choice and stay home and raise kids. Most women in America, let’s face it, don’t have that choice.”
But that’s not true. A huge number of women make the choice not to work every year. And most of them are not rich. Most of them are younger, less educated, and have lower family incomes. Over 25 percent of married women with kids under 15 stay at home. 27 percent of stay-at-home moms are Hispanic, and 34 percent were born outside the United States.
The historic drop in stay-at-home moms is typically associated with the dramatic rise in single motherhood, which removes the option of staying at home for the most part. But in recent years, more women have been opting to become stay-at-home moms. Between 1999 and 2009, there was a 15 percent increase in the number of women staying at home. And polls show that these women are happier than their counterparts. A 2007 Pew Research poll showed that 48 percent of stay-at-home moms consider what they do to be ideal, as opposed to 21 percent of working moms saying that their life is ideal.
Rosen’s critique of Ann Romney demonstrates the true scorn with which liberals view motherhood. A woman’s life is not valuable, they believe, unless they’re part of the traditional work force. Raising kids doesn’t constitute a good use of time. Of course, if that’s true, we should stop treating teachers with kid gloves, since all they do all day is raise our kids. Perhaps we should stop worrying about government-funded day care, since the people who run those day cares aren’t doing real work anyway.
Raising children is work. It’s hard work. And it’s the most important work there is. Hilary Rosen’s pathetic attempt to browbeat Ann Romney into silence just because she didn’t draw a $300,000 per year cush job at a Chicago hospital or hammer a paycheck for lobbying on gay rights at the Human Rights Campaign is sickening. But it’s also representative of the deeper liberal mindset, which sees motherhood as a “punishment” (Barack Obama’s words) and marriage as a patriarchal institution.