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There has been a lot of discussion lately about the $80 million research project that reportedly concluded that children in day care are more aggressive than those with stay at home moms. Keep in mind that you should never learn about scientific research in the popular media. First of all, the report has not even been published yet, and all of the information available so far is based on a press conference and a press release.  Second, the report found that children in day care actually wound up doing better in school scholastically than those with stay at home moms. Finally, the findings of increased aggression are not even statistically significant and are within expected norms, especially when you consider the very loose definition of aggression that was apparently used.

So why the big deal? One of the researchers on the team, who was also the leading speaker at the press conference, has a long standing position that women should stay at home with their children. This is also an important position of the Christian Right.

After World War II, women lost their jobs and were forced back into domestic bliss.  The battles that got women back into the workplace through the 60’s and 70’s had as much to do with economics as with equal rights. Women were put into positions where they had to work, as it took two wage earners to adequately support a family. So if working is not optional for most women, why is there such emphasis placed on studies like this that encourage them to stay at home, even when staying at home is an unrealistic option?

The answer comes from the development of both property rights, early agrarian society, and a quirk of biology. Once men came to the conclusion that their semen was like planting a seed, they could reduce women to the role of a fertile field. Just like owning property, a woman’s womb could be owned by men for the purpose of continuing their genetic heritage.

There was one big fly in the ointment, though. Unlike women, who always know that the child they bear is genetically theirs, men cannot be certain (at least until very recently with the introduction of genetic testing). In order to maintain the integrity of their genetic property rights, men needed to keep women under control and inaccessible to other men.  Keeping them in the home was the best way to do this, and so it has been for thousands of years.

The logical part of the male mind knows that we can no longer keep women under our complete control, but the more primitive part of the mind sees things quite differently. The Christian Right provides a Biblical excuse for these desires for genetic control, and justification to force women to go along with it. This is why the Baptist church now demands that women be subservient to men. It also explains the anti-abortion movement, which was never really about protecting the unborn, but about keeping women under control. A woman's right to choose gives women power, but it takes power away from men when a woman can choose whether to have his child or not. (And yes, there are lots of women in the antiabortion movement, but men are the ones running things).

If they were seriously concerned about reducing the need for abortions, they would back contraceptive research and work to make contraception more readily available. That, of course, would give women more control over reproduction. Instead, they oppose everything that would give women more personal control, including sex education, contraception distribution, and contraception in general. Contraception takes control of reproduction out of men's hands.

This desire for control is burned into the genes of men, and few suspect how strongly it drives them, even on an unconscious level. Even now, as we have come so far in giving women greater rights, this deep down desire tugs at many men and drives them to act in irrational ways.

George W. Bush’s decision to eliminate contraceptives from Federal worker’s insurance programs is a typical part of the pattern. He nominated an Attorney General who feels that most forms of contraception should be outlawed, including the birth control pill. His elimination of funds from groups that provide contraception services around the world (even though he knows that no Federal money goes to abortions), will in fact increase unwanted pregnancies, and probably increase abortions as a form of last resort birth control. Its not really about abortions, though, its about control.

From a scientific researcher to the President of the United States, the primitive desire to keep women barefoot and pregnant to insure a man’s genetic purity controls many men in ways they undoubtedly do not understand on a conscious level. The inner primitive voices of thousands of years of evolution drive them to control and enslave, and our better selves will have to fight to keep us all free.
 

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