The article’s lumbering title reads like a summary of the past 50 years of feminism – American Motherhood Vs. The American Work Ethic – Working motherhood is getting harder, Let’s fix that!

Meet The New Boss…

Senior Data Reporter Rani Molla sets the scene, "’When you're in a tough position, when you're forced to make a choice that isn't ideal, oftentimes, you'll find a silver lining and you'll find a thing to look to that allows you to feel good about that choice.'”

And Vox is here to help you with that. “The root cause of this crisis long preceded the pandemic … and something's got to give.” Naming the pain gives the illusion of urgency without actually having to fix anything.

The pandemic has demonstrated how little has actually changed for women. 

We spent the past year getting used to being at home. Many lost their jobs, or quit to take care of the kids. Many more soldiered on, playing Mom, Wife and Worker on a single, ramshackle set. Meanwhile, Joe Biden executive-ordered us out of legal existence.

Adding insult to injury, #NotAllMen refuses to go away.

The response #TooManyWomen was pretty satisfying, but it exposed some confusion in the feminist conversation.

How Many Men?

“No one is saying that it’s all men,“ wrote one commenter, “so we don’t need to say ‘not all men.’“

I think men convinced themselves women were just a little too stupid for all those centuries, so they wouldn’t have to face what they had done to us.

Exploiting a natural weakness to strip an intelligent, self-aware person of their individuality, and put them to work for the benefit of others – Well, that would be pretty evil. One might be tempted to empathize with such a person, to imagine what it’s like to let go of any thought of personal achievement.

To have no dreams, plans, or hobbies of your own. That’s a miserable existence for any mildly intelligent person, without some serious brainwashing.

When I was 24, I committed an unforgivable crime.

I’ve learned to live with it, but my life has never recovered. Permanently marked, I have probably missed or been denied more opportunities than I even know.

For years afterward, I was unable to work full-time. The messy aftermath of my error demanded most of my energy. Nursing the whiplash from my hard left, course correction slipped further and further down my list. It’s been more than 10 years, and the career I had been building is a distant memory. 

What choice was there but to throw myself into reality as I found it? Along the way, I had to wrestle some big personal demons.

What do words like ‘freedom’ and ‘liberal’ actually mean?

Hong Kong has been in the news for a while now. Many of us will have at least a passing familiarity with the fact that the Chinese government is experimenting with various methods of running them into the ground.

But a more long-standing problem – in the country deemed 2020’s Freest Economy by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal – is the spiraling price of real estate.

Vox recently published a video addressing the issue. Land scarcity, the obvious suspect in an island nation of millions, is not the problem. Only about 3% of Hong Kong is zoned for urban housing.

“A civilized divorce is a contradiction in terms.”  So says Danny DeVito’s lawyer character, narrating the 1989 film The War of the Roses. This dark comedy was released the same year my parents divorced. Mom has told me she can’t watch it, “It hits too close to home.” Such drama, Mom.

Personally, I think it’s hilarious. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner chew the scenery and DeVito twists the Greek Chorus he loves so much. A farcical gem and definitely one of the best comedies of the era.

The divorce rate peaked in 1981 and has been slowly declining since, for everyone except Boomers. So I venture to say that my experience is a pretty common one. I can think of two friends my age whose parents were still together by the time they turned 20. A couple had parents divorce in high school. Contrary to common wisdom, this seemed to hit hardest.

….OK, Boomer.

Two words have crystalized our generational friction as we slip into the second decade of the 21st century. The “entitled” Millennials and our

Zoomer cousins are beginning to see we are in for a struggle to inherit the world.

Stephanie Hofeller has it worse than most. Her Dad, Thomas Hofeller, was the architect of today’s political landscape. Called “The master of the modern gerrymander” by The New Yorker, Tom died in 2018 and left a lot of interesting things behind.

Stephanie has been using her father’s files to chip away at his work. She was instrumental in the Supreme Court ruling against including a citizenship question in the 2020 census, after Tom’s cache revealed a study showing the question to be “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” Which, obviously, is a faux pas.

For many years, Feminism has encouraged women to turn our backs on the kitchen.

From De Beauvoir to Friedan, through to Sandberg and others, we are shown Traditional Womanhood as Debasing. As Zombifying. As Unfortunate Details.

Surely any self-respecting woman with half a brain would decline to pursue life as a “Housewife.”

But you’re not married to the house (although it does feel like that sometimes) and this lifestyle made little sense to me until I had my children.

When you are the mother of a newborn, your world is suddenly very small. It expands back out over time, but it’s never quite the same.

We have been doing a lot of important stuff lately. Today we’re going to take a break and ground ourselves with simple pleasures.

Our yard has been full of mulberries for a week. Nature’s candy, so plentiful I have collected bowls of them and will never be able to get them all.

Hubs made some delicious sweet bread. I want to make a pie. Today I resorted to just eating them off the ground. Perfect packets of juicy goodness.

I was supposed to be watering the vegetables, and I got sidetracked.

Hubs also got adopted by a dog. He jumped in the car at a gas station. He seems pretty young and very mellow. He lets the toddler hang off his face!

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

I was doing alright ignoring them until a few days ago. My sister Quinn, my only sibling from childhood, sent me a novella about why she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. She immediately blocked me.

Was there some kind of argument?

I sent her a link to my post about Donald Trump’s mental problems, because she doesn’t like him either and I thought she might appreciate it. She said it was terrifying, and she was “tired of being afraid all the time.”

Afraid of what?

Today our water heater died.

The day before Thanksgiving. The day before you’re supposed to scrub up and cook. Wash potatoes for mashing and celery for stuffing.

The day family you haven’t seen in a year comes to visit, and maybe you want a shower first.

Today was an excellent example of why, sometimes, I don’t get anything done.

This house has many issues, most of which don’t impede the average day’s living. Old linoleum is still good for walking on. The broken lid of the washing machine still latches. The toilet only leaks sometimes. But lacking hot water crosses into the realm of real poverty.

This is just your faithful narrator checking in. It’s been a while since I’ve published anything and I’m frustrated because it’s not that I haven’t written anything or have run out of ideas. Far from it.

But I recently started a job that has me standing in an industrial environment all day. The stories I shared this Summer about my parents are both still ongoing. We have been struggling financially at home and I feel like I have been living in a pressure cooker for six months.

It makes me sad because, back in June, I hit a stride and the world seemed to burst with inspiration. Thoughts came together naturally. Writing was fun and I put a little money into promotion. I got over 550 hits that month. I made connections with some great people. I could see it growing, envision myself getting somewhere with this.

This is the final installment of my Summer Of Hell series. Thanks to everyone for reading, your support has meant my world to me these past few months.

Not sure why, but this one is the hardest. There's no heroics or heartwarming lessons. Just some cathartic shit I need to get off my chest.

Read on, if you dare. 

If life were a movie, this trip would have been one of those reunions where people get together under less-than-ideal circumstances but pull it together in the end. It’s a difficult experience but it bonds them in their shared adversity.