Mothers are important! Let’s face the facts. You cannot have a father without a mother. Dads4Kids was founded in 2002 with the main purpose to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, committed and loving fathers. Whilst our main vision is to support fathers our broad vision has always been to empower families. A family is made up of a mother and a father.
Our primary goal is to support and help fathers, but we are equally passionate to support mothers as much as we can with the limited resources we have at hand. Fatherhood has been under attack for many years but motherhood has been under attack as well. As fathers we need to applaud and encourage mothers and motherhood. If we don’t stand up for mothers who will.
Bill Muehlenberg is a good friend and fellow defender of children, mothers and fathers on his very popular blog called Culturewatch. His article called War on Fatherhood is a must read for men who want to stay informed about the endangered state of the modern family. Bill’s article about “The Feminist War Against Motherhood” reprinted below tells the story well.
‘On March 21 hard-core feminist Sarrah Le Marquand wrote a shocker of a newspaper opinion piece entitled “It should be illegal to be a stay-at-home mum”. Yes you read that right. In this uber-feminist rant she said this: “Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed.”
I read it at the time, and shook my head in disbelief. Actually, it was all rather believable as this is standard feminist fare. But I let it go, hoping to later get back to it. Well it is later, so I have. You can read the piece for yourself. It is mind-boggling.
But as appalling as this is, it is nothing new, as mentioned. Marquand stands in a long line of radical feminists who have made clear their hatred of marriage and family, motherhood and childrearing. Indeed, the feminist movement has long warred against mothers, against homemaking, and against childrearing.
I have been collecting some of their more juicy and jaundiced quotes for quite some time now. Let me present just some of them for your enjoyment and edification:
“The heart of woman’s oppression is her childbearing and childrearing roles.” Shulamith Firestone
“The family has become a catch-all phrase for everything that we, as feminists, condemn in our society. Family equals oppression, patriarchy, psychosis, neurosis, domestic labour, role stereotyping, gender-specific definitions, stifling relationships, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, financial dependence, marriage, sexual repression, sexual activity, heterosexuality, growing up, living, dying, tradition, delinquency, love, hate, incest, violence, battering and bad eating habits.” Wendy Clark
The family is an “obscene bourgeois institution”. Simone de Beauvoir
“Even if a woman wants to have children, she must think very hard about the conditions in which she will have to bring them up, because child-rearing, at the moment, is real slavery.” Simone de Beauvoir
“No woman should be authorised to stay at home and raise her children . . . Women should not have the choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” Simone de Beauvior
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.” Mary Jo Bane
Homemaking women are prisoners in “comfortable concentration camps”. Betty Friedan
“Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.” Sheila Cronan
“The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.” Linda Gordon
Nice of them to spill the beans. It sure ain’t pretty. So Marquand has simply soaked up all this poison and hate and now regurgitates it as she rages against stay-at-home mums. What a pity people can become so frenzied in their animus against motherhood.
Unfortunately some people think it’s wrong for Dads4Kids to support and encourage mothers through our Thanks Mum TV Community Service Announcements (CSAs).
All of Dads4Kids ads are aired according to the kindness of the TV stations who, because of their inbuilt bias towards women, largely only play our mothers’ CSA ads and disregard our fathers’ CSAs. We have run Father’s Day ads for the last 16 years but only Mother’s Day ads for 4 years, the last time, besides this past year, being in 2007.
I find it is incredibly sad, as Bill has pointed out, that people do not understand that mothers need our support too. Here are some comments from both emails and Facebook to help you understand the vehemence of the attacks we face.
More men are committing Suicide over parental alienation per year than the road toll and terrorism combined in this country
I’m sure your ads and agenda have contributed.
Paul H
I was under the impression this organisation was Dads4kids? All your ads are about mums… you lot should be ashamed of yourselves.
Ash P
Dads for kids does nothing for the pain and suffering of fathers kept from spending time with their kids… use your funding to help fathers – not to say thanks to mums. What a joke!
Shane F
I am bewildered as to why you have allowed the women’s movement to hijack your ad campaign… But no, once again we have to bend to the women’s point of view and let them hijack one of the few forums men have.
Neil S
How a charitable organisation developed to promoting good male parenting has spent money doing the exact opposite by… advertising an anti-male i.e. ” thanks mum”… is no wonder men kill themselves when even you promote mums before the rights of dads.
Peter C
I have not put in the messages with crude language. Yes, the attacks are worse than this. It is tragic that our society allows gender ideologues on both sides to divide us. Mothers and fathers need to support each other, as both are under massive attack.
What is even more tragic is that Dads4Kids is one of the biggest voices for men and fathers in the public square in Australia and unthinking men begrudge the little support we have given to mothers, over the last 16 years. We wish we could do more for both fatherhood and motherhood in Australia.
A child is brought into the world by a mother and a father. Children deserve equal shared access to both parents at all times, as described in our groundbreaking 12Pt plan. As I have said before if fathers do not support motherhood who will?
Lovework
We need your practical help. We have had so many negative reviews/recommendations such as those above, that our Dads4kids Facebook has been unfairly marked down to 2.5 stars. So we are asking our supporters (YOU) who know our long term help for both Mums, Dads and children, without fear or favour, to please go to our review section of Dads4Kids Facebook page and post a positive recommendation. Your positive recommendation of Dads4Kids will count as a 5 Star review and will help us climb back to where we were before. Thanks for your help.
Yours for Supporting Mothers and Fathers
Warwick Marsh
PS: So that you can know we do get some really positive comments from people, here are a few below to encourage you with your 5 Star reviews on our Facebook Recommendation Page.
Omg I just saw the new ad thanking mums and started crying. I loved the dads ads you produced with the dads but how good is it to see one for the mums as well!
I was a single Mum for 16 years and am now married to a man who was a dad living away from his kids. We both did it hard in different ways.
Keep up the good work with those ads
Cheers
Cate
Congratulations on the Thanking Mums commercial. Well done. The Dads 4 Kids commercials always bring a tear to my eye and remind me of my father not being in my life through my teenage years due to family breakdown. I remember my father feeling judged by the “Care for Kids”
campaign in the 1980’s and wondered if mothers going through nasty break-ups now feel critical of the Dads 4 Kids commercials. This is why I find the Dads 4 Kids Thanking Mums commercial a great idea. Hopefully it will help raise some awareness that children need both their parents.
Thank you for all the great work you do.
Jennifer
Fantastic work! I support you… fully! Haters are gonna hate and we both know you can’t please all the people all of the time and that’s not the objective. Press on and many blessings.
Storm M
I just wanted to write my heartfelt thanks for your latest ‘Thanks Mum’ ads, as a mum sometimes there are so many jobs that you do, that you have to but with no thanks, this advertisement is very touching.
Jenny V
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