On 1/14/04 8:36 PM,"Dr. Brat" posted:

Dianne Lewandowski wrote:
The question was gender neutral. I'm not making a case for one side or
the other. A male can be a homemaker just as can a female. :-) When I
lived in Illinois, a neighbor did just that: Dad stayed home, PhD mom
brought home the bacon. Somebody has to raise the children. Day Care, in
the main, isn't teaching child basic manners and civil behaviors.
Unless, of course, you make a zillion dollars and can afford the type of
Day Care that does this responsibly and has sufficient staff to do it
responsibly.

The question as you relayed it here was NOT gender neutral. You said
that one cannot be a good mother without being a homemaker. I disagree.
Even if you make it gender neutral by saying one cannot be a good
parent without being a homemaker, it still doesn't hold. Some parents
work, even in dual parent households (duh). The working parent is not
automatically a lesser parent.

Exactly - well said, Elizabeth. IME - some of our working parent friends
seem to be truly good parents - of course, that is to the point that they
are perpetually tired. OTOH, some non-working parents I know are pretty
crappy (as in self-centered, and yelling a lot) parents. One circumstance of
life doesn't necessarily dictate the other in this particular example - at
least in my opinion.

Ellice