Eva Herman sparks controversy in ’stay at home housewife’ comments
October 12, 2006 by andy
One of Germany’s top TV personalities, Eva Herman, has made some controversial comments about the role of women in society. She has suggested that they should be content to be stay-at-home housewives and mothers.
Whether this is just a big publicity stunt for her new book “Das Eva Prinzip” remains to be seen.
“Women simply cannot pursue a career and raise children properly at the same time,” she said in a news conference ahead of the book’s publication. “They can’t raise children properly and they can’t pursue a career properly. The two things simply don’t go together. And it is a grave mistake for women to miss out on raising children, which is their God-given duty.”
Not surprisingly there’s been a backlash:
“This is not the 19th century when women wore corsets and were not allowed out on the streets without chaperones,” said Regina Seidel, head of the German Businesswomen’s Association.
“This is the 21st century and this is Western Europe and we have the best-educated and most liberated women of all time. And a lot of them want to pursue careers and also raise families, and that is proving to be a very good development for humankind.”
An ex-husband (she’s been married four times) also joined the debate, writing a scathing retort in a German newspaper:
“Dear Eva,” wrote 55-year-old Werner Herman, “you were the one who always wanted to pursue a career and you were the one (not I) who did not want to have children.”
He added, “You didn’t do housework because we had a maid who took care of all the housework, except for flower arranging, which was your specialty.”
It’s an interesting debate, not so much because it’s fresh (it’s not) but because of who’s made the statements.
And, at the end of the day, every man and woman needs to work out for themselves what the best balance is between raising children and having a career. There are no absolute right or wrong answers. I’m sure not all of what Herman has said is wrong, and may have been taken out of context, but there’s no “one size fits all” approach to family, parenting, and work.
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I beg to disagree with what she said. I have friends who work and have a full blown career, yet able to perform their motherly AND wifely duties. It is a matter of time management and knowing how to use one’s “energy” efficiently to have enough for the family.
[…] But what’s interesting is that this lady, Eva Herman, has been crusading for a return to traditional values, by which ofcourse she means that women stay at home and forget about having a career. Does anyone see the irony of a popular TV host advocating this? I wonder what she has to say to President Angela Merkel. Its pathetic though, to see a successful woman deriding other women in this manner, suggesting that the only choice they can make is to limit themselves to marriage and motherhood. […]
I can’t see anything ‘out of place’ or untraditional with having a family life and a personal career at the same time.