The PBS "To the Contrary" host and contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report launched into a four-paragraph attack on the author and conservative radio host, and as usual, she not only breathed left-wing fire at a conservative target, she was factually inaccurate (paragraph breaks removed, emphasis mine):
Conservative mouthpiece Dr. Laura Schlessinger has a new book out called In Praise of Stay-At-Home Moms. She wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal online this week, glorifying her own ability to pursue a successful career and raise her child simultaneously, apparently never resorting to outside daycare.... I'd like to point out two things about Dr. Schlessinger's situation that makes her come off as more than somewhat of an elitist, and a hypocrite. First, she was not a stay-at-home mom. She apparently took care of her child part-time, very part-time.
Actually, Dr. Schlessinger has admitted to having tried day care, but that those trials were very short-lived and that she regretted it very much. What's more, as she's explained in her book, she was able to work a syndicated radio show while staying at home with her son (emphases mine):
In the years before he started kindergarten, we did try two preschool-like establishments to see if there was some benefit for him. One of them lasted one day. When I came at 4:00 PM to find that he hadn’t stopped crying, that was the end of that. The headmistress gave me the usual argument that he needed to adjust, but I saw no reason to torture my child with my absence until he accepted his loss. The second time was when we were financially desperate, and I needed to do some part-time radio fill-in for some extra money to survive. At first he liked the experience, but after a few weeks, the routine became boring, and he yearned to be with me doing all the stuff we’d do in a day: playing, reading, errands, dancing, artwork, words and spelling, cycling, hiking, and so forth. So that was the end of that.
I am grateful for every moment I’ve had as a mommy. I have great memories of twirling my son around in a shopping cart in a local Target store’s parking lot (a lot cheaper than Magic Mountain), or of us walking through a forest, pretending that we were being tracked by monsters, selecting sticks for swords and spears, and working together to get to safety. Now he’s a paratrooper in the U.S. Army!
My husband and I came to the practical conclusion that I needed to go back to radio work to be our family’s primary financial support, while he would manage my career, the home, and our finances. Nonetheless, I refused to take any job which would require me to be out of the home every day while our son was home or awake! I would take care of him all day and then go to work on radio, leaving the home at 9:00 PM after putting him to bed. Eventually, when he started kindergarten, I landed a daytime shift while he was in school.
In order to do the writing and necessary research, I would get up at 5:00 AM and work a few hours before I woke him up to get ready for school. I always worked my career around my family, never the other way around.
The first book I published, Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, required me to travel up and down the West Coast for interviews. I got all my son’s teachers to give me his work for the week and took him with me. He did his work and had a blast traveling, meeting people, and keeping me company. He did cost my publisher a pretty penny, eating all the goodies in the minibar. Then I found out about satellite interviews; I could do twenty-five local and national television shows in one early-morning session, I discovered, so I didn’t have to leave home to promote my book.
