I couldn't agree more.
Amy Curtis nailed it. Motherhood, nurturing, homemaking, and the incredible skills that are developed in doing those most important jobs well have been denigrated for some time. How many babies have been sacrificed on the altar of a career (whether or not the person is really good at what they do), often out of necessity because economic manipulation and inflation (devaluation of currency) don't often permit one income households to live up to the 'standards' popularized in media.
I was relatively poor, is some senses, but I lived like a prince in others. We may have lived in the sticks, and only rarely had a new car, my clothes may have had patches (I was the biggest boy, so no hand-me-downs), but those were sewn on with love.
Mom is (still) an excellent cook, and we ate like kings, and I credit endless hours of reading and probing through encyclopedias and the unabridged dictionary to her admonition to "look it up".
I have been truly blessed, and didn't really miss the material trimmings so many seemed fixated upon.
It's a pity, that in trying to destroy motherhood (a la
Brave New World) that so many of the things that make women women are being lost. Femin
ism (an
-ism) has replaced femin
inity all too often, and it's a small wonder so many flock to shrinks to try and get right with defying their natural hardwiring.
Mrs. Joe was never so happy as when holding a baby: her whole face lit up.
She could shoot, ride (better than me), and was not afraid to take something apart when it didn't work (even though I was usually the one who got to put it back together), cook, clean fish, bait her own hook, help butcher a deer, drive a nail and use power tools, and still quiet a crying baby, and console (and patch up) a tot with an 'owie'. But when we went out and she walked into a room, people noticed, no matter if she was gussied up or not. She could accomplish amazing things with just a look.
That's real power, not the cheap imitations that are being sold to young women today.