When I hear that, the main thing I want to say is: Get real. Their actions leave little doubt what they really care about. Planned Parenthood, for example, performs abortions and doles out “emergency contraception” (often amounting to abortion) nearly 50 times as often as prenatal care and adoption referrals (numbers are in their Annual Report, page 6), and leaves it to pro-lifers to run the nation’s thousands of crisis pregnancy centers, which provide alternatives to abortion. Still more telling, PP has lobbied Congress to fund forced-abortion programs in China.

So much for “choice.” Still, feminist groups keep repeating that magic word like a mantra, knowing full well that it scores points with the public. No doubt beyond their leadership, at the grassroots level, many of their members chafe at this pose of neutrality, and long to be candid about what they really support. But it’s a rare day when you see that happen, at least in front of the general public.

Which brings us to the case of Gretchen Ritter, who runs the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Texas-Austin.

In June, Ritter’s local paper, the Austin American-Statesman, ran a guest editorial by one of the growing number of women who very consciously make a choice of their own: to stay home with their children. Who could object? Ritter could, and did — so strongly that she took to her keyboard to write a rebuttal for the July 6 edition. Her arguments are fascinating, less for their own merit than for what they reveal about the author and the mindset she shares with many other feminists.

For example, Ritter says “full-time mothering is … bad for children.” You see:

It teaches them that the world is divided by gender. This sends the wrong message to our sons and daughters. I do not want our girls to grow up thinking they must marry and have children to be successful, or that you can only be a good mother if you give up your work.

Ritter clearly wants to sound mainstream here, so she means readers to assume the problem is pressure on girls to follow a certain path. But this begs a rather obvious question: Why doesn’t Ritter also fret that girls whose mothers have careers outside the home will grow up thinking they “must” follow in their mothers’ footsteps? The answer is equally obvious. Ritter’s not worried that girls will feel they “must” follow a certain path when they grow up. She just wants to make sure it’s the path she favors — that of the professional career woman whose kids spend their days with someone else.

That same attitude comes out when she talks about the moms who are staying home themselves. She starts out sounding like she wants to let them make free choices, but by the end she’s making it clear that only a paid career outside the home is acceptable.

Women who stay home also lose out — they lose a chance to contribute as professionals and community activists. Parenting is an important social contribution. But we need women in law, medicine, educations, politics and the arts. It is not selfish to want to give your talents to the broader community — it is an important part of citizenship to do so, and it is something we should expect of everyone. [emphasis added]

Let’s pass over some of Ritter’s dubious assumptions, like her odd notion that women at home don’t “contribute” as “community activists.” (That’d come as news to anyone who works with volunteers.) It’s her last sentence that’s most revealing. Though she talks about what women “want” to do, she immediately makes clear that it’s not really about what women want: It’s about what “we” should “expect” of “everyone.”

That’s a striking phrase: Imagine feminist outrage if someone wrote that “we” should “expect” all women to have children, let alone stay home with them. Yet Ritter doesn’t hesitate to employ that same language on behalf of feminist priorities: “We” (enlightened, progressive folk) must tell women what is “expected” of them — and if some poor benighted fools don’t realize that they’re “missing out,” then “we” must straighten them out. Why, it’s for their own good, don’t you see?

Want more examples? Take this one:

The stay-at-home mother movement is bad for society. It tells employers that women who marry and have children are at risk of withdrawing from their careers, and that men who marry and have children will remain fully focused on their careers, regardless of family demands. Both lessons reinforce sex discrimination.

So women who value time with their children — to say nothing of the children themselves — have to sacrifice that time so employers don’t get a message feminists don’t like? Apparently so. And that’s not all:

This movement also privileges certain kinds of families, making it harder for others. The more stay-at-home mothers there are … the more professional mothers, single mothers, working-class mothers and lesbian mothers will feel judged for their failure to be in a traditional family and stay home with the children.

Ah, so now stay-at-home moms should get careers so others, including lesbians, won’t “feel judged.” I reckon the stay-at-home mom who read that might feel pretty “judged” herself. But then, it’s probably her own fault for failing to do what is “expected” of “everyone.”

By now there shouldn’t be much doubt: For all its claims of promoting freedom, feminism wants to impose a lot of very rigid roles — the very thing it claims to be fighting against. One could claim, of course, that Ritter isn’t a typical feminist. But really: If she delivered her remarks at a National Organization for Women convention, would she make anybody in that crowd mad? More likely she’d get a standing ovation.

I think this goes a long way toward explaining why feminists like Ritter find the women rejecting feminist roles so intensely aggravating. Their cherished mythology tells them the main reason women have stayed at home with their kids is that oppressive, chauvinist society has left no choice. But now, long after women have been freed to enter any career, large numbers still choose the home option, often at great financial sacrifice — and though they’re a minority, there are signs that number is growing. Still worse, many career women express strong regrets that they’re not with their children, and a goodly number of them say they’d be at home if they could afford it.

You can see why feminists would find this disturbing. When the modern feminist movement really got rolling in the 1970s, its acolytes trusted that, once “liberated,” women would make the choices feminists like: Once they tasted the rewards of office life, they’d never want to give them up. In short, feminists had faith that “choice” was all they needed to fulfill their vision of what society ought to be. Now their faith has been shaken, badly. (Older feminists now routinely grouse that younger women “don’t appreciate the gains of the women’s movement.”)

But where the feminist faith is floundering in the face of reality, the Christian faith finds affirmation. For the truth is that many of women’s social roles in traditional societies are anything but unwanted impositions invented by tyrannical males; rather, they’re expressions of women’s deep desires, instilled in them by the One who made men and women alike.

Christians recognize this as one of God’s blessings. It’s too bad feminists can only see it as a curse.