Graglia against Feminism: 6

A continuing series; see here for the introduction, and here for more on feminism in the Catholic Church in the UK.

From Domestic Tranquility pp84-85
When Charlotte Perkins Gilman derided the housewife as an economic parasite in 1898, most women probably remained blissfully unaware of her assault. Feminist derision, moreover, was refuted by President Theodore Roosevelt himself, declaring that a wife and mother "is not a parasite on society": "She is society. She is the one indispensable component part of society." Extolling the duties of a husband as the breadwinner and a wife as housewife and mother, Roosevelt observed that the man's work is not "as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children": "This does not mean inequality of function, but it does mean that normally there must be dissimilarity of function. On the whole, I think the duty of the woman the more important, the more difficult, and the more honorable of the two; on the whole, I respect the woman who does her duty even more than I respect the man who does his." But when accusations of parasitism were resurrected in the 1960s and hurled against homemakers, there was no refuge from the salvos. Unless one altogether avoided contemporary books, magazines, newspapers, television, theater, and movies, escape from feminism's assault was impossible.