You can't become a success at family life just by having a family!

I'm going to have to take a play from my friend Annie and just write a book! Dr. Laura Schlessinger has many enemies for her views on motherhood, fatherhood, the family.....and I know I've already made quite a few, but I just have to say it!

If you're not going to raise your children, why have them? It sounds so cliche to say that 'the most important job you'll ever has is raising your children', but it's so completely true. I was on vacation last week and caught a couple minutes of some movie called Baby's Mama...my friend in the room with me commented on what a funny movie it is, so I thought I would watch. Only minutes into what I saw, the SINGLE WORKING woman was at a fertility clinic and was asked if she was going to hire a Nanny. The woman quickly responded, " of course, I have my career"...........I was so enraged, that I had to change the channel!!

Why have them if you are so willing to put them in daycare or hire a nanny at 6 weeks of age, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and have someone else to bond with and raise them? I read a really nice illustration of this when a speaker was at a dinner discussing the issue of a two parent working household, when a belligerent women stood up in the back of the room and angrily challenged the position that a parent actually needs to be physically present to parent adequately. The speaker wondered aloud how she could be considered a good employee if she rarely showed up at work. "If one is not actually there doing the job, as a parent or a painter, how does one qualify as doing the job, much less as being good at it?"

I hate that the feminist movement has taken so much from women, men and the traditional family. You can't always have your cake and eat it too. Something will always suffer. Maybe a scale down in house size, maybe one vehicle, maybe no satellite television or nice vacations.......
This idea of the two parent working household with extended daycare hours, long after school programs, hiring drivers to shuttle our kids to extra curricular activities and video their activities........PLEASE!! Our children need us! They need their parents PRESENT!