Why is it that when a man leaves his wife and she retains custody of the kids we say, simply, "he is divorced?"
Yet when a woman, say Doris Lessing, leaves her husband and he retains custody of the kids we say "she abandoned her family?"
…just something to mull over as we read the New York Times tribute to Doris Lessing, the fabulous feminist writer and 87-year-old winner of the Nobel prize for Literature....Just something to consider, lest us feminists get too cocky and drift toward any you've-come-a-long-way-baby reflection on The Golden Notebook.
Karen Houppert
Why is it that when a man leaves his wife and she retains custody of the kids we say, simply, "he is divorced?"
Yet when a woman, say Doris Lessing, leaves her husband and he retains custody of the kids we say "she abandoned her family?"
…just something to mull over as we read the New York Times tribute to Doris Lessing, the fabulous feminist writer and 87-year-old winner of the Nobel prize for Literature….Just something to consider, lest us feminists get too cocky and drift toward any you’ve-come-a-long-way-baby reflection on The Golden Notebook.
Karen HouppertKaren Houppert is a Baltimore-based freelance journalist. Her book on indigent defense will be published by the New Press in March 2013 to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright.