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Choice devours itself: Sweden wants to ban raising your kids at home

Ah, the glorious choices feminism was supposed to offer women. The opportunities! The empowerment! Put your kids in daycare and have a career because it's your choice to do so.

I remember almost twenty-five years ago meeting a Russian woman (this was before the fall of the Soviet Union, I emphasize) who was telling me how wonderful Communism was because it had liberated women. I told her that I didn't want to be liberated, that I wanted to have children and stay at home with them. She was almost literally unable to comprehend this. She kept saying over and over again things like, "But in Russia you would have a choice. You would have the opportunity to have a career." (I have no idea why, in the mid-80's, she believed that somehow this was not true in the United States. Perhaps because she had met me and assumed I was brainwashed and typical of American women at the time?) Telling her that the choice I wanted to make was not to have a career simply did not compute.

Well, the next time someone lectures you on the "softness" of Euro-socialism, or perhaps even chides you for referring to a country like Sweden as socialist, please note: Sweden is becoming my Communist acquaintance's dream. Some of us have already heard about Sweden's totalitarian and utterly committed attack on home schooling. Home education is illegal, and that's that. See here for more links and information.

But mandatory daycare, too, is on the horizon if not already here. In this article, along with more details on the persecution of home schoolers, we learn this:

Parents are pressured to put their children in daycare at age one.

"One mother told me when she went with her 18 month son to his medical checkup, and he was not in daycare. They said, 'Oh, your son is not in daycare? But he has to go to daycare. He needs that and you need to work,'" Himmselstrand told CBN News.

"The argument they give about this is that every child has a 'right' to daycare. This is not a right that parents are allowed to interfere with."

HSLDA translates from this link (which is in Swedish) the following argument for compulsory three-year-old daycare: “We cannot allow parents to deny their children the right to go to pre-school.”

The idea of children as free-standing actors in relation to the state, which enforces its own ideas of their "rights" against their parents, is not a new one. HSLDA has been warning about it for a long time. Sweden seems to have few qualms about a fairly extreme interpretation of the concept of the "rights of the child." A child has a right, in essence, to be separated from his mother.

And a mother has a duty to work. Thus the beneficiaries of feminism are now to be compelled to accept its vision, willy-nilly.

Choice? We don't need no stinkin' choice.

See Sage's sage comments on Sweden and home schooling, here.

HT for daycare pressure story, VFR.

Comments (34)

I checked Wikipedia and discovered that Sparta is a completely abandoned ruin. You would think that people would learn from history.

Reverence is the proper attitude of a citizen towards the Govt but all the Govts now, having crossed the Natural Law limits, are de facto tyrannies and need an irreverent correction.

Choosing something assumes having the freedom to select from a range of possibilities. Being forced to comply with a government edict - like having your children put into daycare whether you want to or not - is a denial of choice. In the topsy-turvy world of left wing politics, being told what to do is dressed up as 'choice'.

All this is obvious (and I often tell people things they already know), but I'd guess Polly Toynbee doesn't understand it though she's supposed to be an 'intellectual' and the queen of leftist journalists.

Reverence is the proper attitude of a citizen towards the Govt but all the Govts now, having crossed the Natural Law limits, are de facto tyrannies and need an irreverent correction.

As Radley Balko often says about cases like this "libertarianism happens to people." Usually when they have to deal with part of the government that has power over their lives.

Time constraints so I can't get into the weeds but I would remind everyone that for the last two elections Sweden has been governed by a centre-right coalition. The Social Democrats lost a governing majority in the 2006 elections and in the 2010 elections both the Social Democrats and the Left Party lost seats while the far-right Sweden Democrats won seats for the first time (and bested the Greens by 16 votes).

Given our experience in this country as it has swung to the right, we shouldn't be surprised that freedoms are constrained as a nation's politics swings to the right. As in Germany, France, and the U.S. the Social Democratic/New Deal - Great Society capital accumulated over the years is being frittered away by the Swedes.

What ever beef you may have with Sweden, it has nothing to do with the Left, socialism, or social democracy.

Al, you're a hoot. Really. A hoot. So it turns out that Sweden is *so crazy* that even when it has what *it* calls a "center-right" government they're still trying to force women into the workforce and babies into daycare and are banning home schooling and literally driving home schoolers out as refugees (if, unlike the Johansens, they're lucky enough to get away before their children are kidnaped off the airplane), and Al's response is to blame this on the right wing! It's just amazing. Never mind the fact that the policies in question here (as I have documented again and again) are *exactly the types of policies* advocated by self-described "comprehensive liberals" in dusty journals. Never mind the fact that having children in daycare and more women in the workforce are *by definition* goals of the feminist movement. Never mind the fact that all over the world it is far-right groups like HSLDA, groups that would be to Al as garlic is to a vampire, that are fighting these things, based on concepts of parental rights that Al and his left-wing ilk find odious. No, no. It's all to be blamed on right-wing wins in recent Swedish elections.

I guess that's about par for the course for Al.

As I implied above, it is pretty clear that terms like "right" and "left" do not translate well from European to American contexts. Many called "right" in a European country would definitely be "left" in terms of an American-written blog post by a right-winger like me, especially in areas like feminism. This article, however, while partly confirming this failure of translation, also has some interesting quotations. Emphasis added:

http://www.economist.com/node/15394132

Behind such policies lie a set of ideological beliefs, concedes a senior government official. Swedes are fiercely attached to gender equality. Economically, they think it good for women to work and pay taxes. They also believe “it is good for young children to be in preschool”, so they can be educated by trained professionals. In a nice piece of circular reasoning, officials argue that children need to go to preschool to make friends, because that is where all the other children are.

Only one political party challenges this consensus: the small centre-right Christian Democrats. A junior member of the coalition government, the party last year secured a law offering monthly allowances of 3,000 kronor (about €300) to parents who keep under-threes at home. Party officials give the example of a rural family, living some distance from the nearest preschool, with a child born in the spring. Once statutory parental leave ends, the family might prefer to keep their toddler at home for a few months more, perhaps until after the summer. Yet the bigger point is to send a political signal, say the Christian Democrats: parents should have a choice about how to raise their families.
That argument has triggered a backlash among centre-left politicians and education professionals. A 3,000-kronor allowance will mean little to middle-class parents, but it is enough to persuade immigrant mothers to keep toddlers at home, they charge. Mrs Danielsson says 5% of children in her catchment area have vanished, thanks to the allowance. After years running waiting lists, last year she had to go on local television to fill her places.

The author of the article (linked in the main post) explicitly recommending compulsory daycare from age three is Gabriel Wikstrom, currently president of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Social_Democratic_Youth_League

The kind of freedom that liberals want to extend to people is contrary to the form of life that the majority of people actually want and would choose if left to their own devices. This is why egalitarian social projects almost always seem to rely upon massive amounts of lying and coercion. Left to their own devices, many and perhaps most women would choose to raise children in domestic life instead of becoming wage slaves. But in a society in which a majority of women choose to raise children, it becomes harder for the determined minority of career women to maintain their status and to keep their options available. Thus, we have to vilify domestic life and treat the normal life for most women as some kind of intolerable "prison". We have to use legal and political power to prop-up the working woman so that she is shielded from the economic consequences of trying to have it both ways with family and a career. And, of course, we have to systematically lie about the obvious psychological and temperamental differences between men and woman. Feminism goes against the grain of human nature, and thus it cannot fail to become authoritarian and tyrannical.

I thought it was interesting that it said the Swedes are fiercely committed to "gender equality" and think that all women should work and pay taxes. Ah, there we go. God forbid some housewife should get out of paying personal taxes.

Untenured: And, of course, we have to systematically lie about the obvious psychological and temperamental differences between men and woman.


Untenured, I'm inclined to think you're right, but how should we respond to people who claim that the difference between the sexes in certain areas is not greater than the deviation within each sex -- that though there are obvious differences across the board physically, the principle applies to very few mental or emotional attributes?

that though there are obvious differences across the board physically, the principle applies to very few mental or emotional attributes?

Hmmm. One might try, "So, did you take a hot iron and put out your own eyes, or did someone else do it to you?"

On second thought, that might be a bit tactless...

Vince, while there may be some women who are more manly than some men, which (to some confused people) may appear to confuse the issue, there is a very definite and not small divergence between the typical, the average, the norm of each sex. That divergence cannot be explained away easily. The best explanation of it is different and complementary roles for the sexes within the human race, given physical, emotional, and psychological expression in the norms for each sex.

I agree with you, Tony, on the basis of intuition and experience. But do you happen to know of any psychological/anthropological/etc. studies that argue for this conclusion? (I'd imagine they'd be hard to come by, given the fact that gender difference is a socially contentious subject, and that liberalism dominates academia, especially on contentious issues)

I have never looked, but I would guess there probably is some stuff from about 1950 to about 1970 that would fit the bill. Before women's lib became de riguer in academia. The thing is, there is no doubting the different genes, and genes drive different organ development, which cause hormonal differences - these are all non-sociological in any form. The only real question should be whether all this causes differences in neural development / usage between the sexes.

Vince, in all seriousness, if people don't understand (or accept) that men and women are fundamentally different, not just physiologically different, through simple common sense and observation, they will not accept it through "studies" of some sort. They have an ideology to uphold, and d*** the facts.

Tony,
It would not matter much even if the male-female differences were sociological and learned.
Humans do not arise from a state of nature but a state of culture.

CS Lewis writes that normal sexuality is cultural and requires delicate adjustment process that some people and some societies fail to achieve (the discussion of the fallacy of doctrine of Unchanging Human Heart in the Preface to Paradise Lost).

Anthony Esolen has written a lot on the origin of male homosexuality in lack of proper affirmation from the father and the peers.

Vince -
IIRC, the "deviation within the sex is greater than that between the sexes" is how it's usually phrased-- which is mildly misleading.

Let's pretend it's something simple and objective. Group A has, when you chop off the 10% on the top and bottom to make things more normal, a range of 1-6. Group B, similarly treated, has a range of 7-10.
The deviation inside of the groups is much bigger than between the groups. The oddball 10% will have folks that fall solidly inside of the other group.
But the group's main body don't overlap, and there's no confusing them.

When you introduce stuff that isn't simple and is subjective, things REALLY get messy.

Vince, I think you'll find more willingness to admit male-female psychological differences in research on psychological problems. For example, if you google things like depression and Asperger's Syndrome you'll find admissions to the effect that these problems tend to manifest differently in men and women. It's a small thing, but it's there. I suppose it reflects one of the last places where our culture has some tendency to care about truth and to want to get it right--treating illness and problems.

Untenured, I'm inclined to think you're right, but how should we respond to people who claim that the difference between the sexes in certain areas is not greater than the deviation within each sex -- that though there are obvious differences across the board physically, the principle applies to very few mental or emotional attributes?

Vince, there is one emotional attribute most women have and that is being unable to work comfortably in an unabashedly male environment. This is the most frequent gripe cited in articles about "where are the women in engineering." It all comes down to the fact that we don't coddle women who wanted to be engineers (hardware, chemical, software, etc.) and pet them on the head whenever they do something that would be considered utterly banal if done by a man. Women frequently drop out because the competition in schools as the majors near their senior year can get very fierce, and women who are used to "grrll power" power trips often get chewed up and spat out when doing that to testosterone-filled 20-22 year old engineering students or entry level workers.

This is why there is so much rhetoric about inclusion, changing the culture, etc. In order to make women able to stomach working in a man's career field, they have to temper the things which normally make women shrink away from that sort of competitive, aggressive male behavior.

Note to conservative women: if you want to encourage more women to make a choice to go the traditional route, supporting changes in the law that let "men behave like men" more on the job even if it makes women uncomfortable is the way to go. It'll make it easier for your sons to learn how to become men who can become traditional husbands and fathers, and make it easier for your husbands to build a career.

Choosing something assumes having the freedom to select from a range of possibilities.

Alex, quite right. Even when it isn't a matter of government mandate, the possibilities have still been narrowed, the old options excluded.

A young woman of my acquaintance lamented just yesterday: she wants to be free to be a mother and a homemaker: to develop the skills and knowledge of raising children and running a household, of making a large family tick like a well-oiled machine, of keeping several children growing well though their personalities have different needs. But she isn't free to choose that as a "career" option. The economy no longer permits women to stay at home out of the workforce without major problems, men usually can no longer earn enough to support a good-sized family on one salary, at least without crippling debt that lasts into their 70s. Consequently, the 60s-and-after promotion of women's "right" to work has also resulted in women's *no-right* not to work.

Forget the data on children's psychological illnesses that mushroom without a stay-at home parent. Set aside the data on families broken up because a woman's sexual interests were piqued by a man with whom she has to work daily. Don't mention households where husband and wife no longer talk much because they each are absorbed by a world away from the home. Ignore the familial pressures that must be contained when a mother's boss imposes demands that the family cannot absorb. The sheer alteration in the economy itself makes it so that women MUST learn a trade outside the home, and they MUST expect to market themselves as something professional other than mother. That's not freedom, that's exchanging one set of chainss for another set. And a bad bargain at that.

Given our experience in this country as it has swung to the right, we shouldn't be surprised that freedoms are constrained as a nation's politics swings to the right. As in Germany, France, and the U.S. the Social Democratic/New Deal - Great Society capital accumulated over the years is being frittered away by the Swedes.

Al, that is so full of nonsense that one can't find the beginning of the errors. Our country hasn't "swung to the right" culturally in any meaningful sense in any decade from 1960 to 2012, except the 1980's, and almost ALL of the cultural rightward gains of the 80s were lost during the 90s. And the "losses" to the liberals are always a matter of 3 steps left, one half-step right. Culturally, there is not one major thread of the national position that is even close to as rightward as it was in 1960, or even in 1970 or 1980.

The economy no longer permits women to stay at home out of the workforce without major problems, men usually can no longer earn enough to support a good-sized family on one salary, at least without crippling debt that lasts into their 70s.

Tony, it's certainly hard and getting harder all the time as the economy fails to recover, but I have to say (fortunately) this is still a bit of an exaggeration. I know people who do it without the crippling debt, and I don't only mean myself and family. I also mean all the women in my home schooling community. Many certainly scrimp and save, and one wonders how they squeak by, but they do.

Where the crippling debt comes in, I'm afraid, is most often from before young people are even married--from college. Too many young people take on enough-to-buy-a-house-level college debt when they are at the very beginning of their lives, and it haunts and hounds their financial situation for many decades. Or, unfortunately, some young couples take on large amounts of school debt after they are married and sometimes have children because the husband is in school and they can live on student loans. The easy borrowing for students is terribly, dangerously tempting.

*raises hand* Also with Lydia. The cost of child care makes it kinda hard for us to choose otherwise, even if I were so inclined, unless I would be willing to work REALLY long hours.

I also mean all the women in my home schooling community. Many certainly scrimp and save, and one wonders how they squeak by, but they do.

Maybe it's a blue collar vs white collar thing. I have 2 close neighbors who are stay-at-home moms whose husbands are blue collar workers. The moms have to work from home in order to manage that - doing day care and telecommuting (and putting the kids through a topsy-turvy schedule to make that work). Another neighbor WAS trying to stay at home and homeschool, but her husband's blue collar job just wasn't enough, she had to go back to working, as a nurse. And none of those 3 families are large families. I am not sure I know of any homeschool families where mom is not an employee and dad is a blue collar worker, especially not with a large family.

Back before WW II and the baby boom and the sexual revolution, some people considered the "middle class" to consist of those who owned their own shop or small business, or who were white collar types managing a number of employees: they typically could afford to hire a maid for the cleaning and laundry, or to serve formal dinners, or maybe a handy man to come by weekly to fix odds and ends. Is the difference in classes now whether the family can afford mom to stay at home and not be fiscally productive?

The economy no longer permits women to stay at home out of the workforce without major problems, men usually can no longer earn enough to support a good-sized family on one salary, at least without crippling debt that lasts into their 70s. Consequently, the 60s-and-after promotion of women's "right" to work has also resulted in women's *no-right* not to work.

You're not going to change any of this until you make being a career woman a highly undesirable choice for most women. You have to actually make most women dread the thought of going out and competing in "a man's workplace" because all of the onus to fit in, perform, etc. will be on them.

The problem is, as always, that conservatives won't break a few eggs to make an omelette. Conservatives by and large are oblivious to the fact that the current state was bought with broken lives and undoing it will necessarily involve similar sacrifice.

Tony, I do think blue collar vs. white collar makes a big difference. In a number of cases I simply don't know what all my friends' husbands do. In the cases where I do know, the largest families among my close friends (ten and eight children, respectively, and others with six children) do have fathers in white-collar jobs. However, I know of one family with four children (not large but not super-small either) that is raising them on the father's salary as a garbage collector. I believe the older/grown children work at a relative's bakery to save for college and the like. And in this town a garbage collector isn't some sort of gold-plated job with a monopolistic company or with the city. There are something like three different private waste collection companies all competing in town. The particular company this man works for is conspicuously Christian-owned. I don't know what difference that makes to salary.

Mike T-
I'm from a ranch background. Very male-friendly area. Just not friendly to male... excretory orifices. Women do and did work, and raise kids, but guys who acted the way a lot of men who urge what you are in the 12:49 post were fired quickly because they tended to be donkeys who thought they had good reason.

In an office environment, for example, there's a world of difference between not allowing full frontal shots and banning James Lileks type cheesecake, or wives in tight shirts.

Foxfier,

In an office environment, for example, there's a world of difference between not allowing full frontal shots and banning James Lileks type cheesecake, or wives in tight shirts.

Yeah because if we cannot show T&A in the office, the terrorists will win. Clearly, you read my mind...

Mike T, your crank side is showing again. I've been studiously ignoring your advice that conservatives agree to "break a few eggs," meaning, apparently, "deliberately act like jerks" in order to drive women out of the workforce. Newsflash: If I had a son, I wouldn't want to teach him to be a jerk, much less a foul-mouthed jerk, or anything else you seem to have in mind (and I really _don't_ want to know, honestly) as a war tactic against the feminists. Why _must_ you always have such bizarre ideas and try to get people to agree with them on my threads? Please, stop.

Mike T, your crank side is showing again. I've been studiously ignoring your advice that conservatives agree to "break a few eggs," meaning, apparently, "deliberately act like jerks" in order to drive women out of the workforce.

I believe I've made it crystal clear in the past...

1) Abolish mandatory maternity leave.
2) Require women to meet the exact same standards in any given job as a man.
3) Judge women at review time by the exact same standards with regard to pay raises.
4) Make anything short of blatantly unwanted sexual advances and quid pro quos not constitute sexual harassment (that is, it is completely impossible to charge the office dork with sexual harassment for complementing your good looks or asking you out on a date).

Of course, you and Foxfier instantly assume that by "a man's workplace" I am referring to simply being foul-mouthed. Instead, I am saying that the way to do it is to ratchet up the expectations on women until they find that the only way to stay employed is to literally behave like a man in all areas of performance. That includes, for example, that if a female mechanic in the military cannot lift her toolbox she gets reassigned and put on the short list of not having her enlistment contract renewed.

One of the reasons why the workplace is the way it is is that women are frequently not held to the same standards as men. My wife has been a victim of this, having to clean up the #$%^ for code that some of her older female coworkers have left in version control (for which a man their age would have been fired at annual review time).

I completely agree with your 1-3. I also agree with your comments about not being able to lift one's toolbox.

On what constitutes "sexual harassment," what I'd really like to see is just employers with good sense who prevent bad sexually related behavior from both males and females (and _to_ males or females--I've read that lesbian advances in the academic world are not treated as sexual harassment even when they obviously are). This would include telling people to knock off dirty jokes and dirty talk on general principles, not per se because they are "sexual harassment." Obviously, complimenting a lady on her appearance in a gentlemanly way or even (if neither is married or engaged) asking her nicely out on a date should not be considered inappropriate behavior. If we got rid of the feminist category of "sexual harassment" and reinstated old-fashioned norms of behaving like ladies and gentlemen and behaving professionally, we would kill a couple of birds with one stone.

If we got rid of the feminist category of "sexual harassment" and reinstated old-fashioned norms of behaving like ladies and gentlemen and behaving professionally, we would kill a couple of birds with one stone.

Very true. However, it would cause a lot of women at least mild consternation in the form of having to put up with the rough edges of male behavior. Often, women find it offensive that a man who is unattractive to them would ask them out. Part of the psychology of feminism is to get revenge for the "abuses of the patriarchy" by getting payback on modern men, and this is one of the core methods they use for that.

This would include telling people to knock off dirty jokes and dirty talk on general principles, not per se because they are "sexual harassment."

I'm not sure that this is always the best approach. For example, I've worked on a few teams before where this was very, very common. However, the people worked very well together and were highly competent at their jobs. I'm not sure an outsider should have been able to come in, overhear a few bad jokes and then take anyone to task for that. In the scheme of things, they're the one who is actually rocking the boat and creating the problem by being different and then demanding change to their way of doing things (which given the fact that there were self-imposed limits on the conduct, one would have a hard time proving that there was sufficient harm done to anyone to coerce change).

as a war tactic against the feminists

As I said to a relative in an email today, conservatives fight with one hand tied behind their back against an enemy (the Left) that has full use of its limbs and won't hesitate to grab a weapon and turn a bystander into a human shield in the middle of fight. If you know the mentality of the left from personal experience, it leaves you with a clear understanding that there is an almost psychotic casualness to how they can use coercion (including violent coercion). Coercion comes to them as natural as breathing. Notice in this story that they don't even think twice about threatening to bring down the iron fist of the state over homeschooling.

That is your enemy. So devoid of reasonableness and civility that they would put a gun to your head, handcuff you like a criminal and seize your children like you're a violent pedophile for the (non-)crime of homeschooling.

To paraphrase CS Lewis, they are the worst kind of tyrant because they are convinced that their tyranny is righteous and healthy for you.

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