that should have read …

(e.g., Ma Ingalls working as a teacher and working as a cook in a hotel

duh

If Lady Lydia learned “One thing I learned reading her books is that in those times there was a clear distinction between woman’s work and man’s work” … then she missed the point of the series.

Laura’s daughter ended up being a career woman … she was a journalist. Moreover, it is my understanding that Laura’s daughter was encouraged and supported to have a career by her parents & maternal grandparents.

I see that Lady Lydia conveniently ignores that most men could cook, sew, iron, manage a household, and more. Why? Several reasons …

• cowboys/trappers/hunters needed to perform these tasks consistently or risk losing their businesses (I am NOT saying there weren’t any cowgirls, trappers, hunters … e.g., Annie Oakley)

• a family could NOT afford to have women inside working all day … they needed EVERY body they could get out into the field to work … this was vital to the existence of the family

• when a woman was in labor men needed to perform these tasks to keep the family going

With respect to the statement: ““She did not like to see women working in the fields. Only foreigners did that. Ma and her girls were American, above doing men’s work”. (The Long Winter, 1st Harper Trophy ed., 1971, p. 4).”

That simply demonstrates that foreign women performed these tasks all the time. It demonstrates how nationalism was beginning to take root in the USA where American women felt that only the lowly European or Eastern European were fit to be in the fields. Even though this is a racist statement, it is beginning to demonstrate how American women were leaving the field for other paid endeavors (e.g., Ma Ingalls working as a teacher and working as a cook in the field, Laura Ingalls working for her own income, Laura’s daughter having a career as a journalist, etc.)

The women in Lydia’s cultic religious movement generally have a fantasy-based view of life as part of their “love you into loving yourself” mentality, their own reactions to their own upbringing. The men are detached and pathologically paternalistic, so they are a good yang to their partner’s yin.

Both types are Xenophobic, so the whole pious fear of contamination from other cultures and groups just becomes intensified by their gender-enmeshment traits.

They just read like the textbooks about dysfunctional (addicted) families, actually.

http://botkinsyndrome.blogspot.com/2008/07/roles-that-enmeshed-and-abandoned.html

So, THAT’S one way how so-called, modern-day hierarchalist, patriarchalists are made. For a while now I supposed it had more to do with peeniee envy only, and not just the neurosis of latent matriarchs with their lace collars buttoned up too tightly.

Loved the reference to the Allposters.com site I’ll have to be careful here, because I happen to really gravitate towards intelligent and pain-in-my-side-from-laughing-so-hard sarcasm. It’s addictive.

A former “lady-against-feminism,”
Molly

Their teachings drive even many conservative Christians batty.

And thanks for this, it seriously cracked me up.