|An excerpt from:|
Germany devours its children Families today: Exploited and burned out, by Karin Jäckel
(German Title: Deutschland frisst seine Kinder Familien heute: Ausgebeuted ausgebrannt, Karin Jäckel, September 2000, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg, ISBN 3-499-60929-0)
Of the social value of families
. . . . Even the dumbest peasant feeds the cow he intends to milkWhile German family politics seem bent to try their fullest to destroy the families of the nation -- to liberate women from motherhood and the work of running a family, and to adulate the 'transcendental' power of a career as the golden calf of self-realization -- the ones with whom the socialist system already led to the collapse of the solidarity-community confoundedly shake their heads.
A good example is Mikhail Gorbachev, who in 1987 wrote in
his book "Perestroika" that the Soviet Union had neglected to pay sufficient attention to the special rights and needs of women that are connected with their role as mother and housewife and their indispensable function as educators. Today women are engaged as researchers. They work on construction sites, in manufacturing and in the service industry and are busy being creative and therefore have insufficient time to pursue their daily obligations at home -- the household, the upbringing of children and the creation of the familiar atmosphere. We recognized that many of our problems -- in the conduct of many children and youth, in our morals, culture and production -- are partially caused by the loosening of family ties and the neglect of familial responsibilities. That is a paradox consequence of our earnest and politically correct wish to put women on an equal footing with men in all sectors. Beginning with Perestroika we managed to overcome that shortcoming, too. For that reason we now ... hold heated debates regarding the securing of ever more rights for women -- although into the opposite direction. The theme is not the return of women into the family, rather the intensified deconstruction of the family. What is indicated is not the preservation of the family and the demand for a new appreciation of the work of running a family, but a new redistribution of the work of running the family to the man, in favour of liberating woman to pursue a career. And it is not enough to achieve equalization. It must be equalization of woman, to ensure at all costs that the man will indeed be shunted into the work of running the family.
|The family as milch-cow of the solidarity-community|
While someone like Gorbachev wants to revive the family as milch-cow of the solidarity-community, because he recognized the benefits of its survival, with us it is that we cart her to the slaughterhouse, and the wool is pulled over the eyes of the population to convince it that the good, old family system has come to an end and that its mercy-killing is unavoidable.
It seems of no interest that, in rare unity, the family is considered by 87 percent of West-Germans and 86 percent of East-Germans as a meaningful institution. (Federal Department of Families)
Of the social value of families
Insignificant, too, that the trend toward a family of one's own ranks with young people of both sexes in fifth place of things to acquire in the future, and thereby far ahead of 22nd place for the meaning of money and the thereby closely related professional career. (Youth Trends, --Focus magazine)
Not even the circumstance that the yearning for the security and comfort of one's own family and the rejection of the sole means of achieving bliss, Mammon, reflects the personal deficit that is experienced daily by many children and youth and their realization that man lives not from bread alone makes our political women's-liberation fanatics hesitate. .... (pp. 161-163)
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