How about if Michelle leads by example, Joseph?
“I don’t need to work and I shouldn’t work, because I’m middle class now. U jekk nahdem jirrifletti hazin fuq ir-ragel.”
While hengink out on Google, Joseph Muscat said that his government will be doing what it can to make sure that women work, because we can’t be having any more Little House on the Prairie families, with mummy staying home and daddy going out to work.
That’s right: Little House on the Prairie.
Why would be use that comparison? The show has been dead for years.
I belong to the generation who watched it as children, so you can imagine. And even I can’t remember what those people were called. But I do remember that the mother ruddy well worked: she was forever doing stuff in fields and repairing this or that. Women didn’t go to the office in the 19th-century Wild West.
I’m not going into the merits of the argument – I think far too many women do far too much of nothing productive for the majority of their lives and it’s not the detrimental effect on the economy that bothers me so much as the detrimental effect on themselves.
But I will go into the merits of leading by example. How about if Joseph Muscat leads the way by asking Michelle to do something other than get badly dolled up and give interviews about hair-rollers and the price of cabbages?
I would stay away from the magazine features and newspaper spreads, too. It’s pretty damned obvious from the few so far that if anyone wants to live the Little House on the Prairie dream (but in Burmarrad), it’s Michelle Muscat, with her ‘rukstik’ taste in decor, her frills and gewgaws all over the place, and her heaps of soft toys that are the latterday version of corn-dollies. And she probably has corn-dollies too.
Then there are all the gingerbread men baked for friends and Joseph’s favourite dishes which, she told her interviewer, she has ready hot in the oven for Joseph when he returns from the coal-face.
Cherie Blair held down a proper career, Michelle, and she didn’t only have a few children and a baby, but a husband who was prime minister of Britain, not leader of the Opposition of an island 17 miles by nine.
And Samantha Cameron works, too, despite having – until fairly recently – a severely disabled son.
The trouble, I suspect, is that Michelle’s idea of an aspirational lifestyle involves being like those ‘middle-class’ mothers who drive their children to school and then drive to tennis and coffee while fussing about the details of life.
By doing nothing, she thinks she’s arrived. How sad. And what a rotten example.
19 Comments Comment
Reply to Nicky Click here to cancel reply
The bit about ‘padre padrone’ is, to say the least, cheeky.
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=65569
Staying at home.caring for the babies is not a bad idea after all.
Who is going to take care of your children the way you do?
The first years are crucial.
I had four children aged between one and seven and when the time came, that is my youngest was seven, I went back to work.
It was very hectic for me. I was doing two full-time jobs, one at work and one at home because after all you cannot ignore your household duties. It was not easy, and very tiresome.
Now I am over sixty, enjoying my retirement, with a handsome pension. Being financially independent gives you power and a better living style.
“I’ve come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are (p. 331).”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift
I believe Michelle would prefer to be compared to other celebrities, Daphne.
Her local equivalent of a Chelsea tractor is a de rigueur accessory for a WAG. Others would prefer something less ostentatious.
So I believe we have a prattikament Maltese WAG queen, the Coleen Rooney of Maltese politics, married to a prattikament Prim Ministru.
Il-mara ta’ Gonzi x’taghmel? Just asking.
[Daphne – It’s irrelevant. Her husband doesn’t hector women about going to work. And that’s quite apart from the fact that she’s not in her 30s.]
Il-mara ta Dr Gonzi kienet ghalliema izda kienet waqqfet biss ilha hafna u hafna snin taghmel volontorjat kontinwu specjalment fis-settur tal-‘mental health’ u dan minghajr hafna trombi u xinxilli.
Plus she must be 62 or 63 by now.
The Little House on the Prairie lifestyle, as Joseph puts it, is actually the mittlekless life some hardcore-Labour supporters aspire to.
A few years ago, during the 2009 EP election campaign, as I was planning my BA dissertation at the time, I decided to try and see what the issues were in this election.
I clearly remember a bunch of women in Zejtun complaining that their husbands’ full-time and part-time jobs would not be enough to allow them to remain at home to take care of the house.
I clearly remember one of them saying “F*** ommu Gonzi ha jibaghtna nahdmu biex inlahqu” and the other one replying “ha jkissrilna il-familji. Jien r-ragel izzewigtu biex jittrattani ta’ regina u jmantnini.”
From that day on, I decided to never try and discuss political issues with such people again.
My thoughts exactly.
The majority of Little House on the Praire families vote Labour.
And in Little House on the Prairie, Aunt Harriet ran a store.
After Fifty Shades of Grey she would make a great pole dancer.
As the pole or the dancer?
People still expect to live in the 1960s. Really progressive.
I really don’t understand the mentality of not working.
As soon as I finished my O-levels, I started working part-time, which I continued to do up until I finished my final year exams at university.
For the last three years of university, I had two concomitant part-time jobs and I was part of the executive of one of the student associations.
Now I’ve been working full time for five years since I finished university. I am married, have a bank loan etc.
If I were to win a colossal sum of money tomorrow that would get rid of any expenses I may have, but I’d still go to work for one simple reason.
My mind would rot if I had to be a stay-at-home wife and mum.
I have never been able to just sit pretty and do nothing. So again, how lazy are these people? Have they no pride?
Are they just happy to exist rather than live and experience new things?
do you have kids? you felt the need to go to work, cause you could not handle raising kids as its a bloody difficult thing to do. It is so much easier to go to work for eight hours, and let nanna, nannu or childcare take care and raise your kids for you, while you work and socialise with adults. I have nothing against working mums. but for you to say that stay at home mums are lazy is very offensive. I am a stay at home mum and i am exhausted at the end of the day as i tend to my two kids all day long. I do things that a mother should be doing, and interacting with my kids, and playing with them, and teaching them. It is my choice to do it, in their first years of life, before they go to school, I want to be the one to teach them and take care of them. I had kids, to spend time with them, and not to after a month i put my baby in care so i go to work. me and my husband sacrifice a lot so I am able to stay at home and raise our kids, but we will not have it any other way. We want it like this, i want to be there for them all day and night, and i rather not go on a yearly family holiday in summer, but spend my time with the family all year. I do not want to work so i can do the kapricci. i am happy to sacrifice those material things for the sake of being there for my kids all the time.
So you saying your mind would rot if you stayed at home as a mum and wife, then i am very sorry for you, as you are not seeing the beauty of your kids, and the honour you have to raise them. its either you are working because you cannot manage with just one wage, or you are working for self gratification and because you cannot handle spending all day with your kids. which probably the latter is the reason since you believe your brain will rot…we all have different opinions of what is best for our families, some of us, want to instill in them that we are there for them anytime, and some of us want to be able to buy them whatever they want, and then there are some that go to work so they dont have to deal with the shananigans of raising their own children as they are scared their brains will rot. but unlike you, i do not point my finger to say you are doing a wrong thing. that is your way, and you should not call other mums lazy, we do the hardest but most rewarding job, with no monetary gain. there is no shame on a mother, that does her job of raising kids. the shame is on you for calling a mother that does her job, a lazy woman.
Michelle reading Fifty Shades of Grey, watching Little House on the Prairie vidjos, wearing her bonnet, sipping Earl Grey with her old friends, and nibbling on a gingerbread man (not the one she married): it seems like the start of a horror movie plot if it were not so real.
JM’s first policy was related to the living wage, so that the family could spend more time at home, meaning the wife does not need to work and the husband does not need to work overtime or part-time work.
Is that not contradictory? He does not want a Little House on the Prairie type of family.
Dear Toyger,
i worked throughout my years at university too, like you. I am married and worked for 7 years. I decided to stop when I had a baby.
You are of the opinion that “If I were to win a colossal sum of money tomorrow that would get rid of any expenses I may have, but I’d still go to work for one simple reason.
My mind would rot if I had to be a stay-at-home wife and mum.” Thats what I used to say before I had a child.
I was so disappointed to read “I have never been able to just sit pretty and do nothing.
So again, how lazy are these people? Have they no pride? ” You judged all non working women and you failed to see the bigger picture. You think we sit pretty at home?
You think we do nothing, are lazy, and have no pride. On the contrary, it seems as though you are sitting pretty at your desk for 8 hrs..you dont seem to have children, so please spare me.
You want to know about pride? Believe me, I have a lot of pride, pride in my degree, pride in my masters degree, and pride in having the strength to decide to leave my career to nuture my child without dumping him here and there just so I can fulfill my own needs.
And trust me, I LIVE and EXPERIENCE wonderful things on a daily basis and have no regrets of the choice I made.
Remember people have different values and priorities, mine were to invest my time and energy towards my child’s future. You do what you think is best, but please don’t judge and mock others who have different priorities.
@ Bonn
Well said!
@ toyger
Your comments were very offensive. People have different values and priorities. Do not judge!