April 25, 1996

Take Your Daughter to Work (And Destroy Her Self-Esteem) Day

In one skit, her parents take her to a child psychologist. The psychologist asks Gilda to go to the toybox and bring back a doll representing mommy. Gilda brings back a Barbie. The psychologist then asks for a daddy dolly. Gilda retrieves Barbie's boyfriend Ken. When asked to find a dolly that represents herself, Gilda looks desperately through all the toys. Bypassing a number of baby dolls, Gilda comes back with a roll of Scotch tape.

Out of one side of their mouths, the Ms. Foundation would have you believe that women rule the world. Out of the other side, they want you to believe they're all just rolls of Scotch tape. While spouting off about all the terrible things that men have done to the world and how things would be different if they were in charge, they also sponsor this "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" (TYDTWD). The reason for this special day is to allow girls to see what the business world is all about. Hopefully this will whet their appetites for a Real Job instead of letting themselves be suckered into raising a family (at the hands of a "typical" wife-abusing drunken husband). By getting the girls away from the boys - who are constantly fighting, yelling and stealing the attention from the girls - they hope to influence them to this higher calling.

Meanwhile, the boys are kept in the classroom and subjected to a curriculum of how we need to be more tolerant of girls; that we can't keep holding them down; that down through the centuries men have kept women from achieving their full potential.

What TYDTWD Really Accomplishes

Last year I got in a big discussion of this topic on AOL with a number of teenagers in a "girls" forum sponsored by ABC. Most agreed with my point-of-view: TYDTWD destroys girls' self-esteem by telling them that they wouldn't be able to succeed unless we had special days and programs set aside for them. They'll never be able to compete with the boys unless we take the boys aside and tell them to "play nice." Most of the girls I talked to found the whole idea offensive.

In addition to destroying self-esteem, TYDTWD tells girls that their stay-at-home moms are lazy good-for-nothings who've been sucked into the barefoot-and-pregnant male view of oppressive marriage. Watch the news reports: You won't see any girls who chose to stay home for a day and find out from mom what's involved in grocery shopping, keeping the house in order, keeping everyone healthy, etc. Every career choice is OK for a girl as long as it's not following that higher calling of child-rearing and managing the home!

What Are The Alternatives?

Some companies (such as Parsons) promote "Take Your Child To Work Day." Thinking that they've worked around the obvious favoritism and unfairness inherent in this holiday, they open the company up to children of either (any?) gender. I contend that these companies are completely missing the point.

TYDTWD is a part of a deliberate effort to destroy women's self-esteem for the purpose of making them dependent on the government and on organizations such as the Ms Foundation and NOW. It furthermore shares NOW's goal of destroying the family by making women discontent with child-rearing. Any attempt to gloss over this fact is a denial of reality by the people and the companies involved.

The collapse of the family at the hands of these bitter women of the Ms. Foundation is the greatest challenge our nation faces. Weak families and strong public educational systems have brought us nothing but drug abuse, violence, ignorance, poverty and amorality.

What we really need is a "Take Your Child Out of Public School Day." By getting our kids out of the hands of the government brain-washers and into homes under loving parents, we do more to establish self-esteem and a proper view of the world than any lame holiday the NOW gang and their lackeys at the Ms. Foundation can muster.