Maria Shriver on marriage and choice

The marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver has broken up after Schwarzenegger told his wife of a child he had fathered with another woman. My own wife is very sympathetic to the plight of Maria Shriver; I would be more so if Maria Shriver believed in a stable family life. Instead, she has taken delight in her feminist writings in the decline in marriage, believing that it opens up choices for women:

In 2009, women have more choices than they did 40 years ago. They can choose to have kids with a partner, in a traditional marriage or not. They can choose to stay childless, live as single parents, or choose a same-sex partner. They can be like the single mothers who raised a president of the United States and a brand-new Supreme Court justice. They can be like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. They can be like Diane Sawyer, Michelle Obama, Sandra Day O’Connor, or like Nancy Pelosi, who spent the first half of her life staying home to raise five children and then went on to become the first female Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Or anything else they can imagine.

If being able to choose anything you want is progress, then did Arnie have the right to choose whatever he wanted? Is that progress for men? Or are men supposed to do the right thing, whilst their feminist wives promote family breakdown?

Seriously, Maria Shriver was married with children. She should not have been celebrating the decline of marriage as a step toward choice and progress. Her feminism was not at all in her own interests or that of her children.