Is Romney's Outdated View of Family a Threat to Modern Society?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/romneys-outdated-view-family-threat-modern-society



During Tuesday night’s second presidential debate , while answering a question about assault rifles, Mitt Romney veered off on a family-values tangent. "But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea," he said. Earlier in the night, Romney boasted about letting female employees off work in time to make dinner for their kids. It was a uniquely honest glimpse, as one New York Times editorial succinctly put it, of a man desperately trying to graft “2012 talking points onto his 1952 sensibility.” These moments of transparency exposed a man deeply out of touch with what families are like today, a man still pining for a world in which we all aspire to be the Cleavers.

Unfortunately, Romney wasn’t the only person launching public attacks on the unmarried this week. In a confounding move, a prominent Rabbi writing for The Jewish Press shamed 42-year-old, unmarried, childless Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman for her inability to “forg[e] a permanent relationship,” offering unsolicited advice for why “a happy marriage is the key to wholesomeness” and to pray publicly that Silverman will “pursue marriage and, if you are so blessed, raise children.” What made this unsolicited public attack so shocking was that Silverman’s main transgression was daring to make life choices that didn’t conform to Rabbi’s Yaakov Rosenblatt’s worldview about what women are supposed to aspire to: marriage and babies.

In reality, the country is very different than both these men would like it to be—the structure of our relationships, families, and work lives have all been changing rapidly in recent decades.

On the professional front, women have been outpacing men in bachelor’s degrees since 1996, and now have more advanced degrees than men , too. They make up the (slight) majority of the workforce , and in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the United States, young women’s salaries are higher than those of their male peers.

[dchill]

1. Put it this way...

Romney's whole life is a threat to society.

[Edweird]

2. I don't see anything wrong with "1950's values" or a "bodily fluid monogamous"

relationship as long as it's what both participants want.

[Zalatix]

4. Things are out of control because of trickle-down economics.

It used to be that one person could support a whole family. That meant the other could watch the kids.

Ronald Raygun did away with that.

Instead of attacking single parents how about we give them livable wages and free child care. Real solutions instead of bullshit right wing troglodyte rhetoric.

[xchrom]

5. i think that's a kind of projection. people's values and morals weren't better in the 50s

than they are today.

we press on the past a false image that it was some how better then than it is today.