from Neman Online

Helen Clark’s call to get mothers out of the kitchen and back into the workplace failed to strike an empathetic note. As commentators were quick to point out, it had the ring of a communist clarion call. Socialists, of course, firmly believe that a woman’s place is at work and not in the home. They regard women as child-bearers, not child-rearers, and believe that the all-important role of raising children should be carried out by the state in government-controlled child-care centres.

Underpinning this socialist worldview is a realisation that once children are released from the protective embrace of nurturing parents into the arms of state institutions, there is nothing to save them from the brainwashing necessary to keep the socialist flame alive.

This strategy was highly successful in Communist Russia last century. By 1920, in some cities upwards of 90 percent of families were living in state hostels, eating in communal kitchens, and sleeping in segregated quarters. The role of parents was to bear the children, and the role of the state, to raise them.