Social Progress

“There were a lot of tears when it came time to put my 3 month old daughter in daycare,” my old coworker told me.  “But I told my wife that she’s the one with the title ‘Dr.’ in front of her name.  If anyone is going to be staying home with the baby, it is me.”

I shut my mouth and tried to keep a straight face as I turned back to my monitor to check on the test data.  It was a professional environment, and I didn’t want to come off as judgmental toward people I’m working with on an important job, but my gut clenched up, and I died a little inside after hearing him say that.

Does my old coworker really think that men and women are interchangeable to the extent that it doesn’t matter who stays home with the infant?  Doesn’t he see that a woman who wants to stay home so badly that she is crying is actually more suited to do so?  Doesn’t he understand that a woman’s body is flooded with ocytocin bonding hormones as she breastfeeds that baby, creating a bond so tight that it would provoke this reaction, and that, no, it isn’t the same to just place the infant in the hands of another adult, even the father?  Doesn’t he see that the personality differences that we can measure between men and women are in large there because of the mother-infant duality, and that they are often most pronounced in such settings?  Are the cars and fabulous house really worth more than his wife’s and infant’s happiness?  Couldn’t he have suggested instead that if she really wanted to stay home with the baby, then they could think about how to reprioritize their lives?  He makes more money than me.  Together, they are a power couple.  But no, he didn’t think it was a viable option. 

In an age of modern day feminism and empowered womanhood, this is what we get.  Women doctors who return to work full-time instead of part-time or taking an extended leave of absence because the men in their lives expect them to be providers.

I can’t help but think that we are putting a woke feminist label on the age-old barbarous practice of ripping infants from the arms of their crying mothers.