Megyn Kelly: Voice of reason?

I don’t spend much time watching Fox News. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I spend my days watching the exact opposite.

But Fox’s Megyn Kelly has been catching my clicks lately — and for good reason. The Fox anchor, who does not self-identify as a feminist, I feel I should point out, has been holding the men of her network accountable for their 1950′s fantasy points of views. Allow me to give you some context.

It all started with a Pew report that said moms are the sole, or primary, providers in 4 of 10 households in the U.S. So 40% of women are now their households breadwinners. I have some theories on why this is, but that’s for another time; for now I give you Lou Dobbs.

He actually started this whole thing before appearing on Kelly’s show when he began a . Juan Williams, another political analyst for the network, calls these stats a signal of the “disintegration of marriage” and “something going terribly wrong in American society.” The rest of the all-male panel discussing women’s role in the work place and home were similarly crazed by these numbers. Doug Schoen, Fox News contributor, brings the words “breakdown of the family structure” into a conversation about women working and then laments that no one on the “left, right, or center” is doing anything to fix it.

So, just to recap, something is going terribly wrong in America because women are, not just increasingly the breadwinners, but out of the home and in the workplace. Got it? Good. Let’s move forward.

Now,  onto the Megyn Kelly moment that has attracted so many clicks and conversations this week. Perhaps Lou Dobbs speaks best when he speaks for himself, but since he tends toward the long winded, you can just watch the clip – which I think you should do regardless because reading about it and seeing it is truly a different experience. Dobbs’ main assertion is that broken, “shattering” marriages in our society cannot be discussed without talking about women in the workplace. In other words, women working directly correlates to divorce rates and single-parent household numbers.

Working woman, and mom, Megyn Kelly isn’t into that.  And Dobbs calling her “oh dominant one” while trying to fight to finish a moot point definitely doesn’t help. Deep breath.

Now it’s Erick Erickson’s turn – and no, Lou, it’s not because he’s “more fun” than you. It’s because he’s the second male guest invited on to discuss women’s role as breadwinners. Erickson’s previous literature must be taken into account here. On May 30th he wrote “the truth” as he saw it about women breadwinners. Acknowledging that sometimes the circumstance of a single-parent household with a woman at the helm is born of necessity, he states: “We should not kid ourselves or scream so loudly in politically correct outrage to drown the truth — kids most likely will do best in households where they have a mom at home nurturing them while dad is out bringing home the bacon.”

Hm. Now this is when Kelly slam dunks these boys, pulling out years of research from respected institutions, then posing the question to her viewers: why should we believe Erick Erickson “science” over studies from experts? Then, pushing further: what’s unstable about having a working mother and a nurturing, loving, stay-at-home father? And nailing the coffin closed with a small history lesson about how “science” also used to show that children of mixed races were “biologically inferior” to white children. “They said it was science, they said it was fact, if you were the child of a black father and a white mother or vice-versa, you were inferior and you were not set up for success. Tell that to Barack Obama.” And we know how much this crowd loves to be reminded of the success of Barack Obama. She may as well drop the mic right there.

Now, admittedly, the silver lining here is the wistful look on Lou Dobbs’ face as he watches his fellow-guest try to scramble on the issue. But the fact that this discussion is being carried out on a major cable network in 2013 is really troubling. Reading the following on Erickson’s blog is kind of surreal to me: “Men can behave like women, women can behave like men, they can raise their kids, if they have them, in any way they see fit, and everything will turn out fine in the liberal fantasy world. Except in the real world it does not work out that way.”

Why, if I decide to work and succeed and push myself, should that be detrimental to my children if my husband decides that he wants to stay home and nurture them while they grow up? Why are working women being blamed for the crumbling nature of society on Fox News? And why does it seem like these panels of men are not-so-subtly suggesting that I get back in the kitchen and make them a sandwich?

Look, Fox said it, but I know they’re not the only ones thinking this way. Just the other day billionaire Paul Tudor Jones called babies a career “killer” for women. “As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it,” were his exact words. All these male opinions on how women should be handling their home lives, their work lives, their baby lives, their ovaries, I’m pretty much over it.

I also know I’m coming to this Fox conversation late, and I’m not the first voice – or even most qualified voice – to try to draw attention to these antiquated lines of thought, but it’s important that people know these schools of thought still exist. This 50s mind warp wasn’t just some election year talking point.

Bottom line: I love my friends who want to go all in on their careers, and I love my friends who want to go all in on their husbands, wives, and kids. But I don’t love when one of those decisions is heralded as one of the horseman of the American society apocalypse.

We live in an age where women are working, thriving, and trying to navigate a way to have it all and do it all. It can be done – ask my mom, or maybe Liz Lemon – but like journalist Sharyn Alfonsi said, it can’t all necessarily be done at once.

Guys, I get it: superheroes are intimidating. But honestly? Get over it.

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