The Washington Post recently published an article called The New Domesticity which asks us to consider, again, if it isn't somehow detrimental to women in general and feminism specifically for women to be spending so much time returning home to raise their babies, their food, and the quality of family life.  The question itself is simplistic, sexist, and outdated.  We should be asking why our society doesn't value children and why our society seems almost determined to keep fathers away from their families.

It would be appropriate and helpful to parents if children were welcome and incorporated into what we call normal adult life in western society.  But they aren't.  It would also have been intensely neato if nature had arranged biology such that Dads could breast feed their infants interchangeably with Moms.   But mammals aren't made that way.

And its harsh and I apologize in advance for this.  But you will never hear an "attachment parent," a mother given to exclusive breastfeeding, nor any locavore suggest that staying home to take care of children and properly feed a family is anything other than an act of appropriate and necessary love.  It is helpful to believe all women and all men can equally share in every aspect of successful career building, hand raising each child as individuals, and figuring out a way to wrest some decent food out of our profoundly ill and dangerous supply.  I don't see how that's possible in our society today, but feminism could be asking how to attain such a life.  And learning from families that come close to managing such equality.

Oh the irony that staying home to hold and feed your baby is radical.  I might even call it The New Radical Feminism.  And I believe my husband, who is heavily invested in a full time career outside (woefully far outside) our home, would agree.  And we both wish we could each share with perfect equality in every aspect of the other's life.  We work together to share our burdens and our time with the children, which is not always easy but does seem to be working.

Who has the most important job in this picture, the mom, the dad, or the baby?  All three of us.  Feminism has "a long way to go, baby" and might be better served with some new questions.