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Here are a few of the topics that have been covered or reviewed in the New York Times during the past week: mothers of autistic children finding it difficult to date; brides resorting to gastric feeding tubes in order to lose weight before the wedding; mothers being too harsh on each other’s parenting techniques; mothers monopolizing the role of parenting, rendering fathers irrelevant; breast-feeding mothers relinquishing their sexuality to their maternal desires. It certainly seems that as women have risen to occupy the highest echelons of professional accomplishment, we are increasingly being force-fed a diet of whining and junk food for the mind. It used to be that these subjects were relegated to women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal or Ms, much as celebrity news was once confined to movie magazines or pulps like People, Us and their spinoffs. Today, even the Wall Street Journal has its equivalent of Page Six, not to mention its real estate porn page featuring the week’s most exorbitant sale.
Print newspapers used to be the last bastion of serious news or articles of significant general interest. Now in a desperate attempt to stay afloat, they have dumbed down their offerings and abetted the navel-gazing focus of a moribund feminist agenda. If we are to believe what we read, we live in times of great anxiety when it’s harder than ever to find a mate, sustain a relationship and raise children. Compared to when? The massive waves of immigration? The great flu epidemic? The depression? The Second World War? The polio epidemic? The cold war? Vietnam? Didn’t all of these epochs produce great hardship and stress for individuals and families?