Mom Power

The Washington Post has finally matched the ignorant arrogance of its 1993 declaration that conservative Christians "are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command".

Sunday's Outlook section featured a front-page essay titled "Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms", by Linda Hirshman, author of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.

Ms. Hirshman explains that she's "judgmental" because "I'm a philosopher, and its a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives."

The judgment-thesis of Get to Work is that "educated elite" women who choose caring for their own children over "elite jobs" are making a serious mistake. "[T]he tasks of housekeeping and child[-]rearing," Ms. Hirshman insists, are "not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings."

Why is that? "The family--with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks--is a necessary part of life," Ms. Hirshman sneered in "Homeward Bound", a 2005 article in the liberal American Prospect, "but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government."

So what "flourishing" do "public spheres" offer that the family doesn't? Money, of course. "Money is the marker of success in a market economy; it usually accompanies power, and it enables the bearer to wield power, including within the family," according to "Homeward Bound".

Jonathan Swift could not have penned a better parody of the modern materialist mindset, and even his "Modest Proposal" implied a higher regard for the value of children than Ms. Hirshman's Manifesto.

Modest proposals being beneath a judgmental philosopher of Ms. Hirshman's stature, "Homeward Bound" gives women "three rules: Prepare yourself to qualify for good work[;] treat work seriously, and don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry." The last rule is to be obeyed by marrying "a spouse with less social power than you".

So here is Ms. Hirshman's feminist utopia: Selfish "educated elite" women, with high-status jobs and low-status husbands, presumably foisting the care of their children off on their unintelligent, uneducated inferiors. What a sadly ironic outcome for a social justice movement sparked by the Abolitionist struggle.

Yes, significant money can bring social power. But it is always a morally inferior power. At its worst, it is the power to threaten, to taunt, and to tempt. It is a power than moves the evil and weak in human nature.

At its best, money can meet legitmate material needs. And it can enable the ennobling and enriching things of life, like art, good education, intellectual exploration. Its highest end is as a hand-maiden to real power.

The power that moves minds and heals hearts and stirs souls isn't delivered by direct deposit. It's the power of love, of truth, of grace, of faith, of hope, of compassion, of art, of words, of ideas, of example, of suasion.

It's the power that mothers exercise every day.