Feminists are celebrating a viral social media post from a New York mom who revised her six-year-old daughter’s “sexist” homework assignment to better reflect modern life.
The assignment depicted a young girl, Lisa, experiencing sadness after her stay-at-home mom went back to work. This “outraged” Lynne Polvino, who edited the assignment to document a progressive fantasy of paid maternity and paternity leave, flex time, “state-of-the-art” public schools with low student-to-teacher ratios, and a society “free of gender bias and misogyny.”
You can read both posts in full here.
Polvino spoke with “TODAY” about her reaction to the assignment, recalling, “My shock and dismay quickly turned to outrage. I mean, what decade are we in, anyway? In this day and age, we’re going to tell kids that mothers working outside the home makes their children and families unhappy? That fathers don’t normally do things like cook and wash the dishes?”
“What message was this sending to them? What message was it sending to little girls who dream of having careers and families?” she continued. “And what about all the other working moms — did they feel, as I did, like they’d been punched in the gut when they read this?”
It’s a little difficult to defend the original assignment, mostly because the subject matter is inappropriate for a six-year-old’s homework. But Polvino’s revisions– and the subsequent celebrations of their sentiments– gloss over a serious component of working parenthood in the name of spiking the feminist football.
In the hypothetical scenario posed by the original assignment, Lisa’s mother had been staying home to take care of her since she was born. The assignment shows the family struggling to adjust to her mom’s first day back at work. Polvino’s version, on the other hand, begins by saying, “Lisa was happy. Her mom was back at work.”
Perhaps, in the fantasies of progressives, young children are mature enough to instantly comprehend the value of their moms (or dads) going back to work to pursue fulfilling careers (a perfectly acceptable decision, by the way). But that is not realistic at all. Why isn’t it okay for Lisa to be upset one day after her stay-at-home mom returns back to work? Lisa’s reaction does not necessarily have to serve as a commentary on her mother’s decision. Instead, it’s okay for it to reflect an expected and understandable obstacle that many parents face, and help young children understand that their feelings about such things do not make them crazy or dumb.
Again, I wouldn’t ask six-year-olds to confront this hypothetical in an English assignment. But the message the assignment sent, which is what Polvino objected to, is really not that objectionable. What’s wrong with acknowledging that working motherhood can be difficult for children sometimes? Children’s immediate needs do not always conveniently correspond to feminist ideology. The poor kids in this elementary school probably haven’t even taken women’s studies classes yet.
If the feminist movement wants to have a productive conversation about family life, it would be wise to honestly recognize the challenges people face, rather than carrying on as though children can easily be made to adapt to grown-up ideas.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
