Mothers In Combat

I ran across this longish essay this morning whilst perusing The Browser--a nice stop on the daily blog-scan. In it, Mary Eberstadt lays out an argument for making a distinction between the service of women in the armed forces and the service of mothers. I'm a bit torn on this one.

I have never considered it a mark of the advance of our civilization that we have enabled women to participate in the slaughter of war, either as practitioners or victims.

If we as a society have determined that gender equality demands the presence of women in the armed forces (including increasingly, combat), then it seems logical to assume that some of those women will become mothers. It seems to me that such a decision on their part (to become a mother) should not create a situation in which that female service member could not return to her pre-motherhood responsibilities after some appropriate length of time. If the service member cannot do so for whatever reason, she should be removed from service expeditiously under prejudicial terms (to include loss of benefits).

But there is in fact, an additional nuance to this discussion, and that is Ms. Eberstadt's failure to address the status of "fathers" serving in the military, including combat (except for a throwaway line in the last paragraph). It seems to me that if a special distinction is made to accommodate the service of "mothers", we begin a free-falling trip down the slippery slope to such accommodations for fathers. This occurs right about the same time that we decide to become a second rate power.