8. Patriotic Women Should Focus on Raising Sons
Texas Democratic Congressman Martin Dies said: “I still adhere to the old-fashioned belief that the hand that rocks the cradle wields a better and a stronger influence upon the Nation than the hand that writes the ballot. A nation that has good mothers to mold the boys will never want for good men to make the ballots.”
Unfortunately, this self-assured, composed, arrogant congressman made some pretty ludicrous errors of logic in his statement. The first is, of course, that the son will always vote in the best interest of the mother. No, the son will probably vote in the best interest of the son and convince himself that he is doing so in the best interest of his mother.
The second is that he disregards women who give birth to and raise daughters. Plenty of couples have four, five, six, or more daughters and no sons. I suppose that women who give birth to daughters must not be patriotic, whether they believed they were or not. That news might be devastating if they should find out.
The third is that he distinguishes between the hand that rocks the cradle and the hand that writes the ballot, with the implicit assumption that the same hand cannot do both. Fortunately, several generations of voting women have proved that they can. This quote comes from Congressional Record: The Proceedings and Debates, 1915.