A woman's place is in the home

Indeed, a touchy subject at the best of times

A report from Cambridge University has revealed "mounting concern" that women who work do so at the expense of family life.

Can women have it all? A career and family?

The anxiety surrounding women's roles is bordering on panic. The question is never asked of men, and the answer given to women is unvarying. No.

A sea change is afoot.

This report just confirms what many of us have recognised for some time, that we are witnessing a sharp reversal in attitudes toward professional women. We are a culture in retreat, clutching at the security blanket of archaic ideas about what women want.

"both men and women in Britain are having second thoughts about whether women should try to pursue both a career and a family life"

A post-feminist backlash is occurring.

Welcome to the wonderful world of post-feminism – otherwise known as the backlash – where double standards and double binds continue to reign supreme.

The developing message is that domesticity is the natural choice and not to get above your station.

We are free to choose in our brave new world: it's simply natural for women to choose domesticity.

The alternatives to domesticity play to their worst fears.

any other choice would be unnatural, unattractive, unbecoming, self-betraying, rendering us shrill, strident, cold and sterile

"Women and Power: How Much Do You Really Want?" The answer was implied in the question: not all that much, really. This is the post-feminist manoeuvre par excellence, insisting to women that – although they are free to choose! – they don't really want to be powerful.

applauded "career women" who rated their families as their greatest success ("I think all women need that"), and whose greatest fear was becoming "the ballsy Apprentice ... businesswoman, living life by some blokeish code".

The point is clear, and incessant: a happy woman is a wife and mother, and anatomy remains destiny.

The summary.

There's a recipe for contentment:

either you're unfulfilled but abnormal because you enjoy your career but are neglecting your children,

or you're unfulfilled and normal because you hate working but are neglecting your children.

(Women without a family don't, of course, exist. Never have.)

Some ensuing commentary wouldn't get any feminist votes on the matter.

There is only so much work. 600,000 vacancies and 5.1 million on benefits.

Women have neglected their role as homemakers and now we have the unhappiest kids in the Western world.

There's plenty of work to do at home. A lot of people could give up on some of lifes luxuries and trade the immoral, yes immoral, lifestyle of two parents working for one.

When two are working the kids lose out on attention and another family is left completely workless in poverty.

People need to reduce their expectations, share the limited work available in a equitable manner between families. If this makes feminists irate I'm sorry but the traditional is not always wrong.

My grandmother could teach the young ones of today how to survive a real economic depression because she did.

How are you planning to survive the coming slump feminists?

Yes indeed.