A reader (whom I respect) sent me the following email:
“I just read an excerpt from a new book called The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands [Dr. Laura’s new book] . . . and one paragraph in particular stopped me dead in my tracks. You seemed like the right person to share this with:
‘Since Gloria Steinem wrote that "women need men like fish need bicycles," more than a generation of women have foolishly bought that destructive nonsense and have denigrated men, marriage, familial obligation, and motherhood -- all to their own detriment. Normal, healthy women yearn to be in love, married, and raising children with the man of their dreams. However, when their own mothers, much less society, tell them that they don't need men to be happy, or to raise children, and that their own children don't even need a mother raising them (day care will do), it's caused many women to lose the incentive and the ability to treat their personal lives with the love, dedication, sacrifice, compassion, and loyalty that will ultimately bring them happiness.’”
The reader who sent me this message didn’t say why the paragraph stopped her dead in her tracks. So, for a moment, a rather dismayed paranoia kicked in: “My God,” I thought, “Have I turned myself into a poster girl for Dr. Laura?” (The horror! The horror!) I’m just trying to find my way here, in this blog, but one thing I know for certain: Her way is not my way.
It’s true. I do believe that dedication, sacrifice, compassion and loyalty are fine ideals, that the act of feeding one’s family is a worthwhile, soulful endeavor, and that marriage, familial obligation and motherhood should not be denigrated, but Dr. Laura is not my guru by any stretch of the imagination. She can dispense good advice, now and then, about personal responsibility, but she completely undermines her self-appointed authority to tell others how to live by making such sweeping generalizations as the statements above.
Normal, healthy women yearn to be in love, married, and raising children with the man of their dreams. And she is to decide who is healthy? What is normal? Didn't Hitler try that once?
Just that one oily,despicable paragraph of Schlesinger made me overjoyed I steered clear of her book. And, it made me want to drink long and hard from the pure, intelligent words of Dorothy Sayers:
"What,” men have distractedly asked from the beginning of time, “what on earth do women want?” I do not know that women, as women, want anything in particular, but as human beings they want, my good men, exactly what you want yourselves: interesting occupation, reasonable freedom for their pleasures, and a sufficient emotional outlet. What form the occupation, the pleasures, and the emotion may take, depends entirely upon the individual.
11:21:50 AM 
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