Bah humbug to feminists, just let me be a mother

THANKS Virginia Woolf. Thanks a lot to you and all the other feminists for nothing. Okay, I shouldn’t say anything.

THANKS Virginia Woolf. Thanks a lot to you and all the other feminists for nothing.

Okay, I shouldn't say anything.

Thanks to women like you, I can vote, I can be a journalist instead of a nurse and I can tell my husband to get knotted if I so choose.

But when I look at the so-called liberated women of today, I have to wonder how much better off we are than in the dark ages of the pre-feminist movement.

The women I see, particularly the mothers, aren't happier because they can now send their children to someone else's care and go and work.

Even though women can vote and stand for local government, take a look at the candidates in the local government elections and you will see how few actually do.

We can blame men for this. Why not, we have in the past?

But maybe the problem is more endemic than that.

Maybe the problem is with our Y chromosome and the reality that women are a woman's worst critic.

While men might cut us down and be bolshie and bullies because they know no different, what we do to each other is far worse. We gossip, we backstab and we criticise under the veil of meaning well.

What we have done in our quest for equality is desexualised men and restricted our choice to stay at home and be a mother. It is virtually impossible for one-income families to survive.

With the cost of homes so high and incomes so low (irrespective of sex) most couples are forced into mortgages they both have to pay off.

And as family benefits have eroded in the push to make child care more affordable, the stay-at-home mother is almost non-existent.

In the 1960s, only six per cent of American women were doctors. Today that figure would be considerably higher.

But I wonder what percentage of women can stay at home now and why that isn't considered - mostly by other women - as a valid career choice?

We might have more sway in the "real" world, but we've also become nastier and, if you ask me, unhappier.

At the end of the day, when we've worked our eight hours, it's hard to be happy to see our kids.

We're tired, they're tired and the easier option is to put on the television or check Facebook.

And we wonder why our society is so dysfunctional and family values have eroded. Not only have we taken away the traditional "mum", we've 'castrated' the "dad" as well as men no longer know what their roles are.

Heck, they can't even open a car door for a woman in case it is perceived as sexist.

In my youth, I was a bra-burning feminist too as I was determined anything he could do she could do better, or at least as well.

Now I know I can probably still do most jobs as good as the next bloke, but I'm wired to want to nurture my children.

And when I try and rewire that to fit in with career aspirations, it is as if I am denying a valid part of myself.

It's taken me half my life to realise that I want my family more than a job.

Sadly, this view seems to have no place in our society.

Originally published as Bah humbug to feminists, just let me be a mother