Apparently, Pryor should just quit her whining and get on with raising her kids.
Latham’s piece, in the Australian Financial Review, starts like this:
“Last Saturday, I broke the habit of a lifetime and read the agony-aunt pages of The Sydney Morning Herald.
It nearly knocked me off my chair … The inner-Sydney writer Lisa Pryor said the only way in which she can cope with ‘raising two small children while studying medicine full-time” is through “caffeine and anti-depressants’.”
Pryor did in fact write a column last week in which she said that she took medication to deal with her depression, which in turn enabled her shake off the black dog and enjoy her work and home life.
Latham interpreted this as standard, inner-city feminist whine about how horrible it is to have to stay home and raise their own children. He said:
Why do people like this have children in the first place? How will the children feel when they grow up and learn that they pushed their mother onto anti-depressants?
He added:
You know the refrain: men have rigged the rules of society by dominating the workforce, while women are left with the agony of domestic duties, the nightmare of raising kids.
Latham then says – and this really is the kicker – that when he quit politics (in truth, Australians had a taste and spat him out) he became the primary carer of his three children and has never been happier, saying:
What is Pryor going on about?
I’m sure I’m just as busy as her: looking after a huge native garden at home, cooking gourmet meals for my family, pursuing a few business interests, writing books and The Australian Financial Review columns and, most crucially, preserving time for my children’s homework, conversation and love.
When I explain this reality to my male friends, they are incredibly envious. Each of them wants to swap places.
But here’s the thing: Mark Latham may well be the primary carer of his children but, as he says, he is also a columnist for The Australian Financial Review, an author of at least three books, and he has ‘other business interests.’
He also collects a pension, for having once been the leader of the Opposition, and will do so for life.
To put this another way: Mark Latham has satisfying, meaningful employment, and true economic freedom.
He just happens to work from home.
He has nothing whatsoever in common with the women of talent and ambition who, to use just one example, automatically got fired from their jobs when they got pregnant in the 1960s.
His position is luxurious.
Yet there he is, sticking the boot into women who might want some of the same freedoms – the same wonderful luxury of work and time at home – for themselves.
There’s a word for that, and we all know what it is.
Meanwhile, kudos to Lisa Pryor. She has depression, a debilitating condition that has claimed the lives of many thousands of Australians. She sought help and takes medication, which enables her live a full life as a Mum and medical student. She tried hard to make light of it in her column, and got a boot in the back for it. Ah well, onward and upward.
It’s the only way.
