Recently, Megyn Kelly announced she will be leaving Fox News, where she has now worked for 12 years, for a multi-year deal at NBC. In her Facebook post, Kelly said: “While I will greatly miss my colleagues at Fox, I am delighted to be joining the NBC News family and taking on a new challenge. I remain deeply grateful to Fox News, to Rupert, Lachlan and James Murdoch, and especially to all of the FNC viewers, who have taught me so much about what really matters.”
I believe there is a particular interest to the reason why she is leaving. According to Fox News., “As she talked about her decision, it became clear that a top priority was a schedule that would allow her to spend more time with her three young children, who went to bed before she returned home from her night-time program”.
Once more, this news spoke of the struggle between motherhood and career. It is evident that our society still needs to help women tackle this issue. Ridiculing or eliminating one of the options, out-rightly for the other, is not a solution.
Unfortunately, radical and modern feminism have taken the extreme position of being anti-motherhood. Their leaders speak of children as clogs in the progress of women’s professional careers. Helen Gurley Brown, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, summarized the anti-motherhood sentiments in these words: “Hard work and sex will set you free (as long as you don’t have children).” If you do happen to have, or even to want children, she says: “Never waste your time feeling guilty, never apologise too much, and have lots of paid help at home, and never, ever, let them interfere with the long climb to the top”.
Erroneously supporting her views, and interpreting them as a step towards equality of men and women, radical and modern feminists assume that equality means that men and women are equivalent and identical; therefore, they can and should do the same things. This wrong assumption has created an identity crisis and has given rise to an unhealthy and unnecessary competition between the sexes. Instead of freeing women, this competition has enslaved them.
I believe that female emancipation does not mean that a woman should clumsily imitate a man. Deep down, this apparent equality would be false and unjust, an implicit admission of female inferiority. True emancipation of women, instead, consists in the development, enrichment, and valuing of all that is properly feminine. What is proper to women very much includes pregnancy, and all its consequences: i.e., life.
I think that the origin of today’s gender problems still lies in the power of the anti-motherhood doctrine, which sneers at motherhood, calling it a waste of time, an economically worthless and socially disvalued enterprise, something which society should not welcome nor praise. Unfortunately, too many young ladies still believe in this lie. Motherhood, however, is not only a full time job, but it is a profession to be proud of. It is rather unique, in its dealing with a new human being.
We have seen several women achieve the “so called heights” of their careers, but then they look back, and they say that they miss their children and family.
A few years ago, Michele Flournoy stepped down as under-secretary of defence for policy, the third-highest job in the U.S department. She chose to spend more time at home, with her three children, two of whom were teenagers. Similarly, Karen Hughes left her position as counsellor to President George W. Bush. After spending a year and a half in Washington, DC, she decided to go home to Texas, for the sake of her family. Another woman, Mary Matalin, who spent two years as an assistant to Bush, and counsellor to Vice president Dick Cheney, also stepped down, to spend more time with her daughters. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the first woman director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department, resigned too, in order to take care of her son. The list could go on, and it would be quite long.
As a society we have a duty to help integrate motherhood with career. Ultimately, when circumstances arise, alternative choices have to be made, the family should win. This is true for women, as it is for men.
Megyn Kelly has recently made the right choice. For this reason, some of those who did not like her before may also change their minds.
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