Did you know that the pro-family movement is being labeled as “supporting the restoration of a patriarchal family?”
No doubt we can expect to see frequent references to “the pro-patriarchy movement’ from now on – in just the same way that the positive, life-affirming philosophy of the pro-life movement is denigrated as “anti-abortion” or “anti-choice.” On the other hand, dear reader, perhaps we should be rejoicing. It’s proof that the pro-family movement has arrived: we’re significant enough to warrant a put-down.
I should explain that this is not the Globe’s “morning smile” (although I found it a lot funnier than some I have read). I found the phrase in a report of a speech given by Margrit Eichler, a sociologist at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She was pounding away at the pro-family movement during a conference on the family. (Isn’t that a nice irony!) This conference on the family was supported by our tax dollars through the Canadian Advisory Council of the Status of Women. REAL Women asked to attend officially and were told that there was not enough room.
Eichler referred directly to REAL Women as “pro-patriarchal.” She also singled out for attention the Alberta “United Front for Families” (I presume she really meant the Alberta Federation of Women United for the Family). Also, Positive Parents, National Citizens Coalition and Campaign Life were all said to pose “a threat to equality for women.”
A large grain of salt
This is the second time I’ve seen the “pro-patriarchy” label pinned to the pro-family movement. In January, a Calgary newspaper interviewed a Toronto sociologist (who wished to remain anonymous at the time, saying that her infiltration of REAL Women was incomplete and she didn’t want to blow her cover). The anonymous “expert” talked about a “belief in the patriarchal family” to describe the philosophy of REAL Women.
How Eichler reached her conclusion I don’t know, but the anonymous expert’s findings might be taken with a large grain of salt. She claims they are the result of a survey of REAL Women members: I checked and discovered that REAL Women has never released their membership list to anyone for any purpose.
But just exactly what threat does a “patriarchal family” present to the professional feminists? Symbolic ogres – domineering men intent on imposing their will on downtrodden women? They certainly mean to reject the idea of a family with a man at the head. It’s all a question of power, you see. Men are perceived as always having the real power in the family. (They don’t seem to know much about families?) Who now shall have the power? And of what will it consist?
Today we’ve all had our consciousness raised and we have affirmative action programmes, equal pay for work of equal value legislation, homosexual and lesbian rights, quickie divorce, “reproductive rights” and prostitution made (by law) a socially-acceptable career choice. (And that’s only a partial list). The family is floundering.
Sounds to me like we’re well on the way to replacing the so despised patriarchy with a demeaning matriarchy, one in which a feminist ideology is the only allowable outlook. By law.
Feminist leaders are resorting to ever-escalating virulent attacks on, not to mention dishonest representation of, those moderates in the middle of the spectrum. And they themselves practice discrimination against people trying to promote real equality – and equity – between the sexes by banning them from conferences and bickering over government funding. They aren’t pro-women, they’re just pro-themselves.
The goal of the pro-family movement is not to insist that a “woman must remain in the home as a housewife,” as Margrit Eichler would have it. We’re not idiots. The goal is to make the at-home mother again a respectable (and financial) choice for the family that wishes to organize itself that way.
I talk to pro-family people every day and I have yet to hear anyone insist that women must stay in the home. What I do hear is genuine concern about the effects of changing family structure on all the members of the family.
I hear people who challenge the assumption that the best answer to social and economic problems in families is to have the government step in with universal day care, explicit sex and AIDS education campaigns, free birth control and government-funded abortions when the contraceptive fails.
Pro-family people are not backward-looking wearing rose-tinted spectacles, pretending that the family of the past was always idyllic. Nor are they timid little non-individuals afraid to face the challenge of new opportunities for women. They are sensible, responsible, moderate people who recognize that rights for one group in society are intimately tied to the rights of other groups. They want all proposed changes in legislation and social values to be weighed first to see how they affect society as a whole, not just blindly pushed through to satisfy the wants of one section.
Pro-life speaking out
Margrit Eichler asserts that the pro-family movement fails to recognize major threats to the family in the new reproductive technology which is “redefining motherhood” (surrogacy, embryo transfers and so on). These technologies, she says, “medicalize and judicialize pregnancy; they will pit women against the fetus, women against women and women against men.
She should spend some time studying the pro-life literature of the past few years. Pro-lifers were the first to recognize that abortion pits “women against the fetus….” And have been far from silent on surrogacy and related matters. It’s the pro-family movement that has been speaking out consistently against the sexual promiscuity that is responsible for the AIDS and STD epidemic.
A final thought. Now that AIDS is beginning to infect women, it is instructive to note that the feminist organizations have been and remain strangely silent on this plague. Is it because they realize they will have to admit that the sexual liberation ideology has once again made fools and victims of those it was supposed to benefit? It takes a strong individual to admit she is wrong, and perhaps it is impossible for a group to acknowledge its mistakes. We are supposedly in the “post-feminist” era. I believe the successor to feminism is the pro-family movement.
