Germany's Neo-Housewives Spark Debate on Gender Roles

**Tyrael** · 19th-March-2007

RAGE AGAINST THE BABY MACHINES

Germany's Neo-Housewives Spark Debate on Gender Roles

March 15, 2007
By KhuÃª Pham in Berlin

A new wave of anti-feminism is taking hold of Germany. Former career women-turned-housewives are spreading the word about a "new femininity" which encourages women to stay at home and embrace motherhood.

The anonymous letter makes for heartbreaking reading. "Dragging myself from job to job, I used to feel so useless. I wanted to be special but didn't know how -- I was neither fish nor flesh." For this angst-ridden career woman, salvation finally came in the full-bellied shape of motherhood. "With my husband and daughter at my side, I'm so happy and free now," she proclaims.

What sounds like a scene out of a 1950s TV sitcom is in fact a letter written to Eva Herman, the German author of the controversial bestseller "The Eva Principle" ("Das Eva Prinzip"), sub-titled "Towards a New Femininity." The principle in question rests on a series of tenets so old-fashioned they seem almost revolutionary again: Motherhood instead of emancipation, child-rearing instead of career-climbing, devoted marriage instead of egoistic self-fulfillment.

The 262 pages behind the pink cover of "The Eva Principle" are full of anti-feminist anger. Herman feels that nothing less than the survival of the country is at stake -- Germans will "die out" if women don't change their behavior, she says. She sees herself as courageously breaking a "taboo" by criticizing women's liberation.

"Let's just say it loud," Herman writes. "We women have overburdened ourselves -- we allowed ourselves to be too easily seduced by career opportunities." She recommends women exchange the cold sphere of work for the "colorful world of children" and discover their "destiny of nurturing the home environment."

Herman, a good-looking blonde with blue eyes and a toothpaste smile, certainly makes an attractive figurehead for the new gender revolution. Her well-groomed appearance is no coincidence -- the 49-year-old used to be a newsreader and talk show host on German national television.
With the birth of her son ten years ago, the three-times divorcee transformed herself into a devoted wife and wannabe mother of the nation. Since then she's been spreading her new-found wisdom in literary oeuvres like "The Joy of Breastfeeding" (2003) or "My Child Sleeps Through The Night" (2005).

Last year Herman graduated from child-rearing to sociology with "The Eva Principle" -- and became the target of scorn from all sides of the political spectrum. Critics accused her of sending women back to the 1950s and said that she, as someone who successfully combines her career with child-rearing, was guilty of hypocrisy. Several German women have written their own books in response, damning Herman's thesis.

Now the Ã¼ber-Hausfrau has published a sequel in an attempt to rebuke her critics. "Dear Eva Herman," which came out last month, is a collection of positive readers' letters or, as she likes to put it, proof that "ordinary people" agree with her. "The fact you've been criticized as being a traitor towards women shows just what sort of femi-fascism we have to live under nowadays," writes one reader in an expression of solidarity.

Another case of career woman-turned-outspoken-housewife is Christa MÃ¼ller, the wife of the left-wing former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine. Just five years ago, the economist and left-wing politician lectured the public that she was unsuited for the role of the ornamental wife. But now she, like Herman, has radically changed her mind.

As mother and homemaker, she devotes her remaining political energy to the rhetorical elevation of housewives to professionals. A book is already in the making, with the promising title of "Careful, Housewife Ahead!" ("Achtung, Hausfrau!") sub-titled "A Career with Prospects." She is also campaigning to introduce welfare payments which will compensate housewives for their domestic labor.

Baby machines

On the political level, too, the role of women has moved into center stage. Germany's controversial Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen, who belongs to the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, has sparked a political discussion which has polarized not only the general public but also her own party. The underlying question is: Do young children suffer from psychological damage if they go to nursery rather than stay at home?

Leyen doesn't think so. She is currently proposing that the government increases the number of nursery places for children below the age of three to 750,000 by 2013, three times more than at the moment. Her argument is that better childcare provisions make it easier for mothers to return to work -- as well as encouraging German women to have more children. The country, which has the lowest reproduction rate in Europe -- the national average is 1.3 children per woman -- is urgently looking for a solution to its looming demographic crisis as the population gets older and threatens to shrink.

Opponents compare Leyen's proposal to the ideology of the former East Germany. The Communist state offered comprehensive childcare provision with the result that almost 92 percent of women worked. But, say critics, the intervention of the state into the sacred sphere of the family is harmful.

"Von der Leyen's proposal is destructive for children and families", Catholic bishop Walter Mixa said two weeks ago. Women, too should be worried, he feels: "Those who entice women to give their children into state care shortly after birth degrade them to baby machines."

Some of Leyen's (male) party colleagues such as the Baden-WÃ¼rttemberg politician Stefan Mappus and Saxony's culture minister Steffen Flath have also expressed sharp criticism: They call Leyen's policies a destruction of fundamental values and state-sponsored displacement of children.

But many Germans feel the whole debate is ridiculous. "Only the Germans think that public care equals child abuse", says Karin Deckenbach, a Washington-based political scientist and author of "What Happened, Eva?" which she wrote in response to "The Eva Principle." Elsewhere in Europe or in the USA, women -- and men -- are used to leaving their young children in care so that the mothers can return to work, she argues.

"The Eva Principle is not the solution but the problem", she says. "German women already have the choice to stay at home and look after their children if they want to." They are not, however, given the choice of combining children with a career.

Subsidizing gender inequality

In Deckenbach's opinion, the new wave of idealising the nuclear family, complete with gender stereotypes, is an anachronistic leftover from the 1950s. Legislation dating from that time -- and which is still on Germany's books -- "subsidizes the maintenance of gender inequality," she feels. She cites the examples of tax benefits calculated on the basis of the combined income of a married couple -- making it financially unattractive for wives of high-earning men to take low-wage jobs -- or child support payments which go to all parents, irrespective of their income.

But it appears that German women's reluctance to have children is not because of a lack of financial investment on the part of the government -- far from it. The German government spends more than Â€60 billion ($78.6 billion) per year on family policies. At 3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), that's significantly higher than the European Union average of 2 percent. About 70 percent of that money goes directly to the family, with only Â€8 billion ($10.5 billion) being spent on public childcare.

However there is evidence that the money being spent is not having the desired effect. Researchers from the Berlin Institute for Population and Development compared reproductive rates in several European countries and found that Germany still lags behind other EU countries in reproductive rates.

Denmark has a reproductive rate of 1.8 children per woman, even though it adopts the opposite strategy from Germany regarding spending on family policy, with 30 percent of funds going directly to the family and 70 percent being spent on state services. And France, where almost 80 percent of women work, is the European baby champion with an average of two children per woman.

The researchers' conclusion was that the reproductive rate is highest in countries where more women work, where the divorce rate is higher, and where there is a high degree of equality between men and women. It's not exactly an argument in favor of women becoming stay-at-home earth mothers.

There are many Germans -- both male and female -- who would like their country to become more progressive in terms of child care provision. Leyen's proposals are supported by the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left party and some progressive conservatives.

Angela Merkel -- Germany's first female chancellor -- is one of them. At the recent 20th anniversary of the Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, she emphasized that not only women, but also men, need to become more emancipated: "Equality can't happen until men change their behaviour." The guests -- who included several female ministers as well as Leyen -- issued a collective call for "active fathers" who contribute more to the family than just their paychecks and a goodnight kiss.

And this is, in fact, what many German men would like to do, according to a new study by the State Institute for Family Research at the University of Bamberg. The report found that 20 percent of fathers would like to spend more time with their children but don't do so because they fear negative repercussions at the workplace.

Maybe it's time for German men to work towards a new masculinity. Expect to see "The Adam Principle" in a book store near you soon.

Link to the news article.

Do young children suffer from psychological damage if they go to nursery rather than stay at home?

The answer is yes.

**chevalier** · 19th-March-2007

Another feel good post. I think that a woman who can be a stay at home mom and feel that it doesn't make her less of a woman or unequal to men you just gotta admire these women. If a woman wants a career I think she should do that but if she wants equal respect in the workplace she should earn it. Respect isn't something you can force especially from men.

**Timocrat** · 20th-March-2007

About time! The question is can they turn the tide before their population becomes too small to mean anything. I like how the fembot uses group think and lies about couples in other countries liking day care. Most would prrefer to have more time with their kids, and a noticable amount are teaching at home (which the Germans don't allow). Two wage earners equal what one used to earn, this is why daycare is popular. And people are unlikely to say," yes I am treating my child badly putting in daycare." R-i-g-h-t! That is a strawman argument from a sheep following the fashion of feminism.

**TheSharpenedPen** · 20th-March-2007

First of all, this article is deliberately deceitful in its presentation of the facts: it mentions European countries where the birth rate is higher, with a higher percentage of working women (as opposed to lower), then proclaims that more working women, more divorce and more feminism are POSITIVE INFLUENCES.

There are a number of problems with this claim. First off, not one of these so called 'progressive' nations has a sustainable population based on their birth rate - NOT EVEN FRANCE. Second, there is no attempt at comparison to birth rates of the past in these nations (prior to feminism), and birth rates NOW. Third, France has always had a sort of xenophobic fear of the disappearence of French culture, and thus, has always encouraged a high birth rate to prevent the disappearence of French influence in the world - already much declined from its once grandiose vision and is therefore NOT a reasonable comparison with respect to the rest of Europe. Lastly, this notion that women fair better in formal child care arrangements than with their own parents is an obvious fallacy and statistically inaccurate - young children especially, have been shown to suffer harmful effects from having been seperated from their parents.

Compilation of Study data:
Summarising evidence from much research, including the multimillion dollar US study into the effects of childcare by the Early Child Care Network of the National Institute for Child Health and Development (NICHD), of which he is a founding member, Belsky observed that, regardless of the type and quality of daycare, research shows that the more time children spend in any kind ofnon-maternal daycare before they are 4 1/2 years old, the more truly aggressive and disobedient they are - not just more assertive or independent. This has adverse implications for parents, as well as for teachers and fellow-pupils, who are all disadvantaged by the disruption to learning which such children can cause in the classroom.

The security of an infant's attachment to his or her mother can be reliably assessed at around 15 to 18 months, and an insecure attachment in the first half of the second year is associated with a higher risk of adverse outcomes in later development, especially when the child confronts risks and challenges to his or her development. The NICHD study showed that risk of insecure attachment is increased for boys with more than 30 hours per week in non-maternal childcare, regardless of the quality of the care or other factors. Risk is also increased when a number of risk factors, such as low quality care, changes in care, and relatively insensitive mothering, occur together. For example, more than just 10 hours a week increases risk of insecure attachment if mothering is relatively insensitive, even if all other factors, such as quality of childcare, are favourable. Also, the more time children spend in childcare, irrespective of its quality, the less sensitive is the mother's mothering through the first 36 months of the child's life. An extended outline of this NICHD study may be found in my Early Child Care Â– Infants and Nations at Risk (1997).

Looking at birth rates, as I have in fact done, one would notice that worldwide, they did not rise with the advent of feminism, but in fact fell drastically. The notion that France's birthrate is robust is nonsense. 2.1 to 2.2 would indicate replacement values for France's population. 2.0 will represent a slow decline - as is the case with the U.S., which is far less feminized than France, but has a slightly higher birth rate - strangely enough.

I applaud this woman for her courage. It is very risky to take a stand against global depopulation via feminism and the dangers that this brings, or to stand up to feminism and offer women real choices. Such people are attacked strongly and openly, in both personal and public ways. The facts though remain the facts, no matter how clouded some try to make them - feminism is a baby killing machine, and western culture is in decline as a direct result.