 Not even at the height of the feminist movement—when women were openly scorned for “wasting their brains” if they chose childrearing over career—did anyone suggest that mothers should be punished for taking care of their children instead of earning a paycheck. But in Holland, that’s exactly what a member of parliament is proposing.
MP Sharon Dijksma, a leading parliamentarian of the Dutch Labor Party, wants to impose a fine on women who “waste” their education on children instead of holding down a paying job. “A highly educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work—that is destruction of capital,” Dijksma wrote in Forum magazine. “If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.”
| Remind us all again why it is that the birthrate is falling in the Y'urp-peon countries? At least in the non-Muslim population? |
Outraged Dutch mothers and their allies were swift in their condemnation—and in their counterattacks. More than one critic has pointed out that Dijksma herself twice attempted and failed a college course, and that her grades were poor. It didn’t matter, because by age 23, Dijksma was a well-paid MP. “Let the fat cow repay her own scholarships first, because that was a real waste of public money,” wrote one blogger.
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Of course, if the Dutch government really did impose fines on moms, many would have to get outside jobs in order to pay them. But wait a minute. If mothers return to paid employment, that means they’re no longer “wasting” their education. Does this mean they don’t have to pay the fine after all?
| Don't confuse MP Dijksma with logic, it's clearly not her strong point. |
Some Dutch moms say it’s not worth working full time because daycare costs so much—the equivalent of around $1,000 a month, according to one mother. But isn’t the high cost of daycare evidence that caring for children all day is actually a worthwhile use of one’s time?
Whether Dijksma thinks so or not, Dutch mothers—many of whom prefer part-time work when their children are young—clearly do. Put aside for a moment the fact that these mothers never agreed to an ROTC-style “repayment” of their college educations. While Dijksma evidently has a purely utilitarian view of education, anyone who ever took a college class for the joy of learning knows there’s more to an education than preparing for a paycheck. As well, mothers know they can put their educations to work every day as they rear their children. But if women are now going to be required to “pay back” the state for their educations, those who hope to have children one day may decide that the cost of attending college is too high. Does Dijksma want only uneducated women to have children? How will that help Holland?
| This assumes that Holland can be helped. |
Dijksma is arrogant in assuming that what “society” wants and needs is more mothers earning paychecks while their children grow up in daycare (and 77 percent of America’s working moms say they’d prefer to be at home with their kids). The money that funds all of those college educations doesn’t come from a big box in the basement of the parliament building marked “state funds.” It’s paid through taxes by relatives of those kids—including fathers and grandparents who just might want their children and grandchildren reared at home, by their mothers—not dumped in daycare. It’s paid by mothers who have dropped out of the paid workforce, and who will likely re-enter it when their children are older. Did Dijksma ask them if they considered their “capital” wasted if an educated woman chooses to labor at home instead of in an office?
Perhaps Holland’s mothers ought to be asking Dijksma some hard questions—such as who will be asked to bear the cost to society of children brought up away from home by indifferent strangers—people who may dislike children, but who took the job because it was the only one they could find. Studies reveal that children who attend daycare suffer from more illnesses and are more aggressive than children cared for by their mothers. And the first generation of children brought up in daycare are now saying they plan to raise their own kids. Why? Because they hated daycare.
| Why don't they just ask her if she still wants to be an MP? That might focus Sharon's tiny brain just fine. |
One of Dijksma’s blogger critics agreed to see at-home mothers fined for not joining the paid workforce—but only if “they also fine women who never contribute any ‘human capital’—otherwise known as children—to their societies.” Indeed, given Holland’s plummeting birthrates, its leaders might want to consider paying mothers to bear children. Joseph D’Agostino, a vice president with the Population Research Institute, points out that Dutch birth rates are below replacement level. Given that at-home mothers are more likely to bear additional children than are employed mothers, D’Agostino believes the Dutch would be wise to consider finding ways to encourage mothers to care for their own children.
ThatÂ’s not likely to happen as long as MPs like Dijksma are in charge. When Dijksma speaks of women throwing away their education on children, when she attacks at-homes mothers for not working (as though at-home mothers spent their time lying in hammocks, eating bon bons and reading romance novels), she is revealing a deep animosity towards traditional family life. Her views are ultimately not so much anti-woman as anti-child.
| It's anti-woman, anti-child, anti-family, and anti-society as society currently is constructed. Ms. Dijksma is one of the hard-line progressives who believes all goodness must come from the state, and that 'citizens' (I use the term loosely in her case) exist to serve the state. That is Leninism, pure and simple. |
Nowhere in Dijksma’s “Punish Mommy” proposal do we find any concern for the children whose lives she would disrupt. In fact, if Dijksma succeeds in forcing mothers to “pay back” their educations, children will suffer the consequences: Some will be forced into daycare while mom works off her “debt.” The lucky ones will keep their moms, but will hear, “We can’t afford it, Honey,” much more often.
Mother’s Day, which Americans celebrate this Sunday, was initiated as a day to express appreciation for mothers. In recent years, it’s become a day in which many mothers—trying to balance career and children—guiltily wondered if they were doing right by their kids. If we do not take care who we choose as our leaders—if we do not pick leaders who appreciate the work involved in giving children a happy, healthy childhood, and of instilling character in the next generation, we may eventually find ourselves—like our Dutch sisters—under threat of punishment for choosing our children over our careers. |