Director Ira Levin’s 1972 cultural thriller Stepford Wives has been remade into a sometimes funny but always confusing mess. The original film helped to usher in the gender wars. This latest release illustrates the chaotic mess that radical feminism is in.

Women today do not consider themselves to be Stepford wives nor Stepford feminists. Equality feminism has led to improvements in job pay and opportunity. But the harsh dogma of gender feminism, which theorized that all sex differences are the result of cultural oppression and not natural attributes, insisted women can only be free when they become anti-family, anti-men, anti-children, and anti-religion. Betty Frieden called women in traditional family roles “parasites” and “less than fully human.”

This more ideological feminism insisted that sexism join racism and classism as equivalent forms of cultural slavery invented by Western civilization. Their verdict on what women must do? The traditional family had to be jettisoned for women to live happy, productive lives, regardless of the cultural consequences.

The problem facing radical feminism today is that most women do not view families and faith as prisons. In fact, their families and their faith remain more important to them than a fulfilling career. Improvements in job satisfaction are welcomed, but not at the expense of their most intimate relationships.

Given the recent truce in the gender wars, tothesource asked Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse to comment on Dr. Steven Rhoads’ recent book on this subject, Taking Sex Differences Seriously.

It has become a modern article of faith that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. This secularist creed of the Church of Political Correctness brooks no dissent or disagreement. So Professor Steven Rhoads’ heretical book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, amounts to 95 theses tacked on the door of a modern Wittenberg Cathedral.

The first dogma Dr. Rhoads tackles is the one that says mothers and fathers are interchangeable. “Maternal instinct” is a fiction. Distinct roles for mothers and fathers are relics of a superstitious age. There is only generic “parenting” which either parent of either sex can do equally well.

Dr. Rhoads committed the sin of actually gathering data on this question. He chose a sample of new parents most likely to support the ideal of androgynous parenting: university professors having their first baby. Virtually all the men and women professors assented to the Dogma of Androgynous Parenting. Many of their universities offered generic Parental Leave Policies, equally open to mothers and fathers. Guess what? Mothers took the Parental Leave far more often than did fathers. And those few fathers who took the leave used it differently than did the mothers. The women used the Parental Leave to take care of their new babies; the men used it as a sabbatical. They got more articles written; they advanced their careers, while their wives took care of the babies. So much for equality.

Dr. Rhoads found another astonishing fact. The mothers enjoyed taking care of the babies far more than did the fathers. For virtually every child care activity, from changing diapers to feeding to playing with the baby, the mothers reported more enjoyment than did fathers. The mothers’ attitudes toward most aspects of child care ranged from indifference to great enjoyment. The one task that men liked to do more than women was “managing the division of labor of parenting tasks.” Except for getting up at night to care for the child, this was the task women liked least. Dr. Rhoads speculates that women might dislike managing the division of labor because taking on this duty led to arguments with their husbands.

One possible reason that women enjoy child care more than their husbands, is that babies respond more favorably to their mothers. Dr. Rhoads asked the academic couples whether their babies seemed to have any preference for mothers or fathers. The parents reported that the infants had an overwhelming preference for being comforted by their mothers. It is easy to imagine that parents respond to their baby’s feelings. Even the most egalitarian father would eventually be reduced to saying, “Here honey, you take the baby; he wants you.”

Women are setting themselves up for failure and disappointment if they accept the cultural expectation that their husbands ought to share all household responsibilities equally. Men and women have different perceptions about what needs to be done. Men and women do not equally enjoy various household task, from child care to roof repair. Defining equality as a tit-for-tat, symmetry of chores requires men and women alike to suppress their natural inclinations, ignore their natural strengths and overlook their partner’s contributions.

A more sensible approach to equality would acknowledge the natural gender differences in preferences, abilities and sensibilities. A more humane understanding of equality would be that each partner is equally committed to making the marriage work. Instead of asking, “what’s in it for me?” they could ask, “how can I help?” Instead of keeping score and aiming for a fifty-fifty division of labor, they could aim for giving one hundred percent of themselves. Equality could mean, “I do all I can for him, and he does all he can for me,” knowing full well that we aren’t each going to do the exact same thing for each other.

The modern feminist movement drew its appeal from the ingrained American sense of fairplay and sympathy with the underdog. But that movement always had wide streaks of irrationality. The feminist mainstream treats every debatable proposition, every testable hypothesis as if they were assumptions. Now someone has debated those propositions and tested those hypotheses. The facts are in. Men and women are different in socially important ways. It takes a lot of faith to believe that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. It is time for our laws and culture to Take Sex Differences Seriously, without apology.

Stepford Wives

Original film Stepford Wives became a cult classic after it's 1975 debut.

"The original 1975 picture resonated powerfully with the times in which it was set, when there was a growing male backlash against so-called "women-libbers".
Back then it proved highly effective social commentary to present men so threatened by feminism that they would trade in their wives for compliant, husband-worshipping, robots."

Stepford Wives 2004 remake exchanges chills for chuckles.

"The remake is … how can I put this? A desecration? A travesty? Certainly, it's a slapdash sendup. The writer, Paul Rudnick, appears to have concluded that since 1974 we've had so many '50s parodies, horror movies, and even serious deconstructions like Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven (2002) that only a raving lunatic could long for the way we supposedly were. This Stepford Wives, directed by Frank Oz, is not just making fun of '50s nostalgia; it's making fun of making fun of '50s nostalgia. It says you can't even take those fantasies seriously enough to critique anymore."

Stepford Feminists

The orthodoxy of gender feminism became so rigid that it qualified as a Stepford category of its own.

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.

Betty Friedan
speech, New York City
January 20, 1974

This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.

Gloria Steinem

The New Feminism

"What does it mean when a woman says, "I am not a feminist, but . . ."?
The short answer, according to historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (who describes herself as a feminist), is that most women perceive "official" feminism as indifferent to their deepest concerns. In particular, they are put off by the movement's negative attitude toward marriage and motherhood, its intolerance for dissent from its most controversial positions, its attacks on men, and its inattention to the practical problems of balancing work and family on a day-to-day basis.

"Nevertheless, a new, more responsive feminism does seem to be gaining ground. Unlike its predecessor, the emerging feminism of the nineties attends to the real-life needs and aspirations of a wide range of women. It wrestles with harmonizing family life and employment in a world where a balance struck either way is risky. It sees women and men as partners rather than antagonists in the quest for better ways to love and work. The new feminism is inclusive rather than polarizing; open-minded rather than dogmatic. It recognizes that the fates of men, women, and children, privileged and poor alike, are inextricably intertwined. On the basis of her current book, it seems safe to say that Fox-Genovese will be one of the most important architects of that new feminism."

Elizabeth Fox Genovese

Will Sudan Become Another Rwanda?

As the world’s attention is riveted on the events in Iraq and the targeting of civilians by terrorists, the world’s worst humanaitarian crisis is unfolding with scant notice by the press. Dozens of aid agencies are mobilizing in the Darfur region of Western Sudan where at least 10,000 people have been killed and more than a million are fleeing their homes in response to what the UN characterizes as “ethnic cleansing” of black Africans by the Janjaweed Arab militia.

"On a recent trip to the region the NYT reports that Colin Powell did not use the term “genocide” but stated, 'I'm not prepared to say what is the correct legal term for what's happening,' he said. 'All I know is that there are at least a million people who are desperately in need, and many of them will die if we can't get the international community mobilized and if we can't get the Sudanese to cooperate with the international community. And it won't make a whole lot of difference after the fact what you've called it.'"

Responses to: The Importance of Fathers this Father's Day

I'd like to respond to a particular part of your message about the importance of fathers. In the second paragraph, you mention "so many children been voluntarily abandoned by their fathers". While this is a major problem and the point of much of the rest of the article, I'd like you to consider the case of fathers who have been forcible removed from their children's lives.

The divorce laws in many states are far too liberal and far too weighted on the side of women. In many places, it takes two to get married, but only one to get divorced. So called no-fault divorces are very common and one party can send the other packing, thus removing them from their own and their children's lives, with no recourse for the respondent. No fault, no reason, no recourse. And worse yet, the law assumes the father to be at fault, or at the very least a bad parent. The mother is assumed to receive custody - and the father has to fight an uphill battle to gain an equal footing in the proceedings. Many states also grant the mother a default garnishment order - even before the father has started paying child support, because the law assumes fathers to be deadbeats.

I have a daughter who doesn't spend but a few hours each week with me. Her mother divorced me eight years ago while I was in seminary. She filed the month she discovered she was pregnant with her boyfriend's baby. She spent the next couple of years keeping my contact with my daughter at a legal minimum, while telling her that her step father was her real daddy.

The media (public and religious) like to portray men as "dead beat." It is very rare that you see characters or hear stories about the divorced dads doing everything they can to be active in their children's lives - some of whom have to literally do battle just to accomplish that. I have not missed a child-support payment in eight years. (I missed quite a few meals to make sure I made those payments, though.) I have not missed a visit with my daughter unless I called ahead to reschedule. It would have been easier to have been a deadbeat.

Maybe if the law would treat marriage as it does any other contract, with consequences for violating it ... Maybe if the law would give men a fair shake when a marriage does fail ... Maybe if the media and church would stop telling men we're all deadbeats and start lifting up the heroes who have loved and cared for their children the best they could under difficult circumstances ... Maybe if fatherhood was as cherished by this culture as apple pie, baseball and mom ... Maybe then we'd see a new day of fathers rising to the challenges and fulfilling our responsibilities.

At the very least, include in your rhetoric the idea that some fathers did not abandon their children and are not deadbeat.   M. W.

It doesn't require that a man be a biological father to bring fathering energy and wisdom to the next generation. This should be nowhere more evident than in the church, where a whole class of ordained men has been addressed as "Father," and for good reason. Biological fatherhood is a result of the meeting of sperm and egg. Ongoing, effective fatherhood requires much, much more, and delivers a wealth of result.

Gay men are good fathers. Sterile men are good fathers. Unmarried men are good fathers. Celibate men are good fathers. Grandfathers, uncles, and brothers are good fathers. I would far rather a boy be raised by a competent single man than in an abusive household of husband and wife.

Yes, we have a crisis of lack of fatherhood. But let's not look to the nuclear family of mother-father-child to be the answer. The answer lies in men, like you and me, who are willing to be coaches, mentors, foster parents, pastors, teachers, and otherwise advocates for children.   S. N.

Father's Day is widely sussed in the UK as a commercial exercise from the USA successfully promoting capitalism. I am a father, grandfather and capitalist but question the need for Father's Day - Mothering Sunday is enough to celebrate parenthood. However, I was taken to a Mothers' Union branch meeting last evening here at which the speaker, the MU President of the Canterbury diocese, spoke entirely about HOW the MU works and nothing at all about WHAT it does or WHY. Please emphasise what Father's Day is FOR transparently. Celebrate parenthood of either gender and normal family life. Our new Dean Very Revd Jeffrey John does as a pastor nonpareil.    M. J.

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