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On maternity leave in the Foobisphere.
Nov. 12th, 2013 01:31 amAs we all know, the sort of wailing and gnashing of teeth John is doing about Jean's upcoming resignation is predicated on a fairly retrograde understanding of How Things Work. As someone put it, John's idea of maternity leave is to tell the person "You're having a kid despite the work I put into training you? LEAVE!!!" No congratulations, no hopes for the future, just an arbitrary deadline to pack up and devote one's life to the child and nest like women are "supposed" to.
That being said, Jean does manage to come back in her new capacity of receptionist about a year or so from now. This, of course, after Elly had to sit John's stupid ass down and explain to him that his belief in the whole nesting thing is a load of old bollocks. As Jean puts it, it might cost a pretty penny to put her child in day care but it's worth every penny not to sit home and go insane dealing with a yowling, chaos-loving, mother-hating, fulfillment parasite who wants to eat the self-respect of the mother children are born hating.
We repeat this child-unfriendly theme a decade and a half later when Magic Ethnic Stereotype Lovey Saltzmann gives Deanna permission to flee from the horrible parasite child who willfully sought to destroy her poooooooooooooor mother out of the malice all children are born possessing. When we compare this with the noise and stupidity about how Anthony actually having to live up to the deal he made with Evil Career Woman to do the maternity leave thing and we get a few guiding principles about what maternity leave is. The first thing is that it isn't supposed to last too long. Were Deanna to have followed Evil Mira's Evil Advice, the end result of being enmeshed in Evil Mira's Evil Family Politics would have been Deanna's brains being liquified by excessive exposure to the useless, pointless, meaningless concerns of hateful children who won't admit that they're evil and selfish and ungrateful and WRONG to be born weak and helpless instead of immediately being able to contribute. Second, it's the children's fault that this must not last because they hatefully refused to come out of the womb ready to assume adult responsibilities and seeing the world from an adult perspective so that Mommy didn't have to waste her life raising them. Third, it's just for women.
That being said, Jean does manage to come back in her new capacity of receptionist about a year or so from now. This, of course, after Elly had to sit John's stupid ass down and explain to him that his belief in the whole nesting thing is a load of old bollocks. As Jean puts it, it might cost a pretty penny to put her child in day care but it's worth every penny not to sit home and go insane dealing with a yowling, chaos-loving, mother-hating, fulfillment parasite who wants to eat the self-respect of the mother children are born hating.
We repeat this child-unfriendly theme a decade and a half later when Magic Ethnic Stereotype Lovey Saltzmann gives Deanna permission to flee from the horrible parasite child who willfully sought to destroy her poooooooooooooor mother out of the malice all children are born possessing. When we compare this with the noise and stupidity about how Anthony actually having to live up to the deal he made with Evil Career Woman to do the maternity leave thing and we get a few guiding principles about what maternity leave is. The first thing is that it isn't supposed to last too long. Were Deanna to have followed Evil Mira's Evil Advice, the end result of being enmeshed in Evil Mira's Evil Family Politics would have been Deanna's brains being liquified by excessive exposure to the useless, pointless, meaningless concerns of hateful children who won't admit that they're evil and selfish and ungrateful and WRONG to be born weak and helpless instead of immediately being able to contribute. Second, it's the children's fault that this must not last because they hatefully refused to come out of the womb ready to assume adult responsibilities and seeing the world from an adult perspective so that Mommy didn't have to waste her life raising them. Third, it's just for women.
