Recently, a group of scientists in the United Kingdom made international headlines by releasing a study of 20,000 families and it had some less-than-politically correct findings. The study concluded that children whose mothers work outside the home are 25 percent more likely to be obese. Meanwhile, the study showed that having a father who worked had no effect on childhood obesity at all. These findings should not be a shock to most people. After all, who doesn’t have memories from their childhood of being scolded by their mother for spoiling their dinner or having too much candy after school? Where there are more stay-at-home mothers, it would make sense that there would also be more healthy meals and physical activity.
Now it’s not my job to tell women whether they should work outside the home or not. Certainly, they have every right to do so here in America. However, the feminists could not help but use this study to tell fathers what to do with their lives. As soon as the findings were released, feminists jumped at the chance to condemn fathers for not doing more domestic work to help their working wives. One feminist went so far as to offer this conjecture: “If fathers were to pick up the slack, it’s likely that this wouldn’t be a problem.” How silly. While the world waits with bated breath for these feminists to conduct a study of 20,000 more families and prove their claim, let’s get back to dealing with the facts.
The late Phyllis Schlafly always said that women in America are free to choose whatever path in life they want to take. If they want to only marry a man who will do certain household chores for them, they have the right as long as they can find a man to go along with it. Women are also free to pursue higher education, to work a job outside the home, to volunteer, or to stay at home and raise children full-time. No one in America is trying to take that choice away from anyone. However, every choice has consequences. No set of laws or social values can ever be so free as to free an individual from the consequences of their actions.
