Eng 112 - a Critique of Hekker Paradise Lost

Rob Long

Stephanie Marker

ENG 112

February 10, 2009

Paradise Squandered

Many children of the 1990’s have built a great relationship with their mothers. This is mostly due to the fact that before grade school, kids stayed home with their mom all day, every day. Children nowadays rarely get this experience. The norm now is both parents heading off to work, leaving the children with a babysitter. Terry Hekker has a strong opinion on this matter. Hekker, a former stay-at-home mom, wrote an article called “The Satisfactions of Housewifery and Motherhood” and in it she stated that she enjoyed her role of a stay-at-home mom, and it was as challenging and rewarding as a monetary employment. She was happy to be a homemaker. This 1977 article is not the focus of this critique, however. It is an article written nearly thirty years later by Hekker that provides a much more interesting perspective of the subject.

In the article, entitled “Paradise Lost”, Hekker reflects on that article she wrote thirty years ago. Some circumstances forced her to change her stance completely. Hekker informs her readers that on her fortieth wedding anniversary, her husband left her. After the divorce, she starts to question her previous views and feels tossed aside, like an old microwave. She also lacked any skills to get a legitimate job at her age. Hekker says the main point of her article is that times have changed and women must prepare for life after marriage. While it has a good message for perspective mothers, the article itself is flawed and ineffective, because of its poor quality of information, bias, and generalizations.

Hekker’s quality of information throughout Paradise Lost is low, to say the least. Although she has a strong opinion about her topic, she goes too far in injecting her own opinion into the article. For example, when she is talking about her divorce, Hekker says “Our husbands sought sleeker models with features we lacked…” (247). This type of opinion has no place in her article. She could be much more effective by leaving out her opinion and focusing on informing her audience. Hekker also presents no factual information within the article. Hekker had a great opportunity to inform women but loses a lot of credibility by not presenting something concrete and factual. Instead of saying “…the fragility of modern marriage suggests that at least half of (women) may not…” (248), Hekker could say ‘studies show that nearly half of marriages end up in divorce”. Using factual information instead of opinions can go a long way to persuading readers.

The countless opinions that Hekker used throughout Paradise Lost leads to an unmistakable bias in her article that takes away so much from her message. The fact that she resents