She notes that women who have made raising their children their career look down on her for working, while she raves on and on demeaning their chosen profession and writing about how horrible their lives must be since they are stuck at home with no one but those ever boring children. "...many women have spent years studying and then working so that we would not have to do a job as menial as full-time motherhood." Webster's defines menial as "[something] lacking interest or dignity". While I'm sure that most full time mothers would tell you that it's not always fun to raise children, I'm also fairly sure that most would disagree that it lacks either interest or dignity. Admittedly, your dignity probably does drop a bit, especially when dealing with screaming kids while grocery shopping, but that hasn't seemed to deter any of the mothers that I know from having several kids.
She tries her very best to justify her boredom with her children by saying that her neglect of them will cause them to grow up to be well-adjusted adults because they have learned early on how to take care of themselves. She insists that stay at home parents smother their children and that this causes them to grow to be dependent and narcissistic. While I agree that totally smothering your children is bad for them, I would also say that not spending time with them is equally bad, if not worse for them.
On the plus side, if you ask her, her children have adjusted well and learned to cope with her lack of involvement.
"My children have got used to my disappearing to the gym when they're doing their prep (how boring to learn something you never wanted to learn in the first place).
They know better than to expect me to sit through a cricket match, and they've completely given up on expecting me to spend school holidays taking them to museums or enjoying the latest cinema block-buster alongside them. (I spent two hours texting friends throughout a screening of Pirates Of The Caribbean the other day)."
"They stopped asking me to take them to the park (how tedious) years ago. But now when I try to entertain them and say: 'Why don't we get out the Monopoly board?' they simply look at me woefully and sigh: 'Don't bother, Mum, you'll just get bored.'How right they are."
