Conservative commentator Erick Erickson earned himself a lot of detractors Wednesday night when, responding to the news that a record number of families rely on women’s income, he argued on Fox News that it was “natural” for men to take the “dominant role” and that women being the primary breadwinner for families is “hurting our children, and it’s going to have impact for generations to come.”
But Erickson stood by his comments on Thursday, first tweeting, “Husbands and wives should play complimentary roles w/ dad as breadwinner,” and then penning a longer piece on the site he edits, Red State, making the case for why women shouldn’t be the primary earner in a household. In it, he said that single mothers currently are able to handle parenting on their own solely because society “will subsidize their doing it all”:
In modern society we are not supposed to say such things about child rearing and families. In modern society we are not supposed to point out that children in a two-parent heterosexual nuclear household have a better chance at long term success in life than others. In modern society, we are supposed to applaud feminists who teach women they can have it all — that there is no gender identifying role and women can fulfill the role of husbands and fathers just as men do.
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Feminists and politicians on both sides of the aisle view these statements as insulting to single moms and antithetical to their support for gay marriage. What should be insulting to single moms is for society to tell them they can do it all and, in fact, will subsidize their doing it all. I know a number of wonderful, nurturing single mothers. They do as best they can. Most of them have wonderful children. But not one of them prefers to be a single mother.[...]
Actually, American society is far from subsidizing the lives of single mothers. In fact,compared to other wealthy nations, single mothers fare terribly in America. Twenty five percent of single parents hold low-wage jobs, and there is a huge wealth gapbetween dual parent and single parent homes. Single parents also suffer from the United States’ lack of paid parental leave, since when they are forced to leave the workforce to raise an infant, they lose their only source of income.
Erickson has a long history of making remarkably sexist, anti-woman remarks. Last year, he referred to an all-female line up of speakers at the Democratic National Convention as “The Vagina Monologues,” a comment that prompted over 100,000 people to call on CNN — where Erickson is a contributor — to fire him.
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