Readers Write: At Vatican Colloquium on Gender Complementarity, Where Was the Socioeconomic Analysis of What It Takes to Sustain a Family?

Two very valuable pieces of commentary in the last two days by readers here, about who was in the control seat at the Vatican colloquium on male-female complementarity (despite reminders from those who were actually in the driver's seat about how it takes two to tango). Both of these pieces of commentary note that the analysis of the ideal family offered to us almost exclusively by men at the colloquium seems curiously to ignore the socioeconomic matrix within which real families live.

Here's cranefly commenting on this point:

It's a pat on the back for the lucky. Those with happy heterosexual marriages, born in a modern western culture with gendered division of labor, with a good job so only one person has to work, with safe pregnancies, and no fatal accidents or diseases. They do such a good job: being male and female, getting knocked up, not dying. That's all it really takes to be like God.

And here's Betty Clermont making a similar point: 

Excellent observation, Bill, that only men have made presentations at this meeting. Also, I might add, only white Republican males have been invited from the U.S. because in decrying the sexual revolution and other cultural "attacks" against "the family," none have noted that the biggest stressors on families are illness and poverty - both exacerbated by the GOP.

Both are absolutely right, I think.