It only took a few days and now the first conservative columnist has sounded the alarm bell: parents, lock up your daughters. We have a Prime Minister who is living in sin and she’s going to corrupt the kiddies.
Really?
Author of The Sex Diaries, Bettina Arndt (who used to be very progressive in the 70s and 80s but has become waaaaay conservative since then) wrote the following in the Fairfax press today that has been republished here with full permission. My thoughts are throughout in blue. Bettina writes….
Julia and her partner Tim Matheison
Most media commentators are relaxed about a de facto first couple. Why not, they say, everyone’s doing it. What’s the big deal about living together?
It’s fine for Gillard – a 48-year-old woman – to live with her bloke. Yet as a popular role model for women, her lifestyle choice may influence other women into making big mistakes about their lives.
Cohabitation produces two groups of losers among women and children. Most women want to have children – Gillard is an exception – and some miss out after wasting their primary reproductive years in a succession of live-in relationships which look hopeful but go nowhere, leaving them childless and partnerless as they hit 40. [There is some truth in this.]
People often drift into living together – someone’s lease runs out or they get sick of running home for fresh shirts and underwear. They slide rather than decide, and frequently fail to discuss their mutual expectations for the relationship. [ABSOLUTEY – I agree with this.]
It’s the women who end up stranded when they spend years in a succession of de facto relationships waiting for Mr Not Ready or Mr Maybe to make up his mind.
Women’s tiny reproductive window means they pay a high price for wasting precious breeding time in such uncertain relationships. [This is assuming all women want to have children which I don’t believe is the case]
While the de facto lifestyle leads some women to miss out on having children, others are taking the risk of becoming parents despite these unstable relationships. A growing proportion of children is now born to de facto couples – up from less than 3 per cent in 1975 to 12 per cent in 2000, according to data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics Survey. [My first child was born to defacto parents – he seems remarkably unscathed].
It is often assumed these children will provide the glue to keep de facto relationships together, but sadly this is not so. David de Vaus, a sociology professor from La Trobe University, found cohabiting couples who have children are more like to break up than married parents, increasing their risk of the negative impacts of family breakdown.
If Gillard chooses to play house with Tim Mathieson in the Lodge, this choice sends a strong message to the huge numbers of women who rightly admire her and seek to follow her example. A lifestyle suited to her particular needs may be riskier for many women and their children.
At the heart of this conversation [is] role models. People in the public eye, our influential leaders, need to think through whether others who don’t share their circumstances will follow their example and get into trouble.
[I’m confused about the logical end point of this spurious argument. Should Julia marry her partner to ‘protect’ some women from….what? Missing out on having kids?]
Every day we see well-known Australians making dubious lifestyle decisions being lauded in the media – celebrities choosing to become single mothers, unwed fathers, parents dragging children through a succession of chaotic ”blended” families.
Pat Rafter. Bad father because he was in a defacto relationship when his first child was born?!
Pat Rafter was made Australian of the Year just as he was about to become an unmarried father. What did that say to his many male fans about the importance of committed fathering? [Ugh. Come on Bettina. If you’re going to look for an example to illustrate your point, try harder. Pat Rafter has by all accounts been an involved and exemplary father. Committed fathering has NOTHING to do with a marriage certificate filed in a drawer. To perpetuate this myth is preposterous and does a huge disservice to all the fathers who are doing an excellent job of co-parenting without being technically married to the mother of their children.]
Politicians today rarely question social trends, even when all the evidence is they are having negative social consequences. John Howard was the rare exception, when he went into bat for a child’s rights to a father in the debate over single mothers and IVF. [No, John Howard didn’t go into ‘bat’ for anyone. Children who don’t yet exist and who will never exist if single mothers are denied access to IVF? Come on. John Howard’s old school brand of morals simply doesn’t value non traditional families. What about gay families? What about single parents? John Howard only went into bat for his out-dated and prejudice views of what a family should be]
But the actions of our role models speak louder than any words. The well-heeled tennis hero cheerfully embracing unmarried paternity, the feminist toying with sole parenthood, the prime minister living with her boyfriend – why wouldn’t their many fans not seek to walk in their shoes?
[And if they do? Surely that is their choice. I’m yet to meet someone who has done something of such magnitude as having a baby based on being influenced by a politician or a tennis player.]
Do you think defacto relationships are a bad thing for women? For men? For children – real or future? Does a marriage certificate provide security for a relationship to stay together in 2010? And do you believe women will be ‘influenced’ by Julia to shack up without getting married? Is that even a bad thing?
PS – Oh, and by the way Bettina, if marriage is such a guarantee of good parenting and a secure relationship, might you also be advocating for the right of gay couples to get married?
I didn’t think so……
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Says it all really
Does Bettina honestly believe that Australians have no brains or that we are merely sheep? Are we not living in an era by which we are taught to make up our own minds and not to follow the trends? I believe that we are all taught to engaged in the activities and circumstances that suit ourselves, not those of our idols. When individuality and original ideas are praised, how is it that people in the public eye should be held accountable for our actions? There was a rise in de facto relationship and children born out of wedlock before most of the population were aware of who Julia Gillard was and the influence she could potentially have. When we reach the age that politics becomes of interest, we have already developed our own opinions. Could you not then argue that Julia Gillard would reach the younger population because she understands and has lived in a de facto relationship, as have many younger people?I believe that celebrity influence is a cop out. Do you see teenagers wanting to go to jail because Paris Hilton was sent there? Besides, marriage has been commercialise, as have many other special events, so where is the significance place on getting married these days?