While I've never read anything by Ann Coulter, and probably won't just because I think she's so annoying in her interviews, I was struck by her comment that "single motherhood is a recipe for disaster", whether or not I agree with it.
A friend of mine who used to be a single mother and I were discussing the topic and she fully agreed with the statement. She said that raising her son for those years before she met her now-husband was the hardest time in her life. "I now know why God makes a mom and a dad." She also told me she has even asked her son, who is now 16, what he'd be like had she still been a single mom. He told her he was sure he would be walking all over her and that she wouldn't have control over him.
Hmm. Interesting.
Why is it that there's such a stereotype that we moms are not the disciplinarians when it comes to parenting, and why is it that Ann Coulter can completely blame us for what can be wrong in America? And even if she's right, why does she have to be so blatantly so?
Harry Smith of CBS said it best in his interview with her -- "that she's so goofy, it's hard to take her serious", and another journalist was quoted as saying: "The deeper you get with Ann, the less sense she makes."
It's as if she's stating that single mothers are to blame for most of the problems in America -- rapists, prisoners, the crime rate, illegitimacy?
Why put the blame on single motherhood?
I'm not trying to redirect the blame, I'm just trying to understand it, and figure out why this one woman thinks she's got the answers to everything? Given the fact that she's never been married or had a child, where does she get the know-it-all?
My opinion (and I guess I'm entitled just as much as she is, right?) is that she probably was a lonely child and didn't get much attention growing up so she seeks it out today as an adult. She sure is getting the attention these days, getting cut from the Today Show and then rescheduled. She bashes the media in her new book, Guilty, yet she's a crafty one, because she knows they all want her on their shows to amp up their ratings. Her Wikipedia entry describes her as a polemicist, someone who "stirs up the pot" and that she does! In every single interview, she rants about her opinions -- as if they're gold -- and barely lets the interviewer get a word in.
Her defensiveness does make me wonder if she really is angry or if it's all just a media stunt, to get more attention, to sell more books, to get America hyped up about what she's writing? People call her a whiner. Harry Smith told her she should be wearing a cross. Whatever the case, she's making her point and I'm sure this book will be on the New York Times bestseller list in no time at all. Go Ann.
Visit Stephanie Elliot at manicmommy.blogspot.com or stephanieelliot.com.