Bettina Arndt, Julia Gillard, and too much advice from too many people about role models ...

(Above: a couple of Forum covers from way back when, as edited by Bettina Arndt BSc MPsych. Note the key question - is marriage a meal ticket?)

In the welter of silly commentary surrounding Julia Gillard's ascending the federal throne, could there be a more fatuous and sublimely stupid offering scribbled by anyone than the piece offered up by Bettina Arndt in Shacking up is hard to do: why Gillard may be leery of the Lodge?

It's hard to know where to begin, so Victorian and arcane are the stupidities on offer, but it's easy to see why the Herald loves rich ripe smelling tripe, since it had dragged in near 300 comments by mid morning, and the day is young.

Let's go no further than the opening par, which is a supposition built on a suggestion:

Julia Gillard doesn't want to move into the Lodge until she gets a democratic tick of approval. Or so she says. Maybe the real reason she is stalling is to test the waters about public reaction to moving her first bloke in there with her.

Yes, confronted with an obvious political reality - the sight of poor hapless former Chairman Rudd and his family being thrown out into the snow by a cruel redhead, close kissing cousin to the pale blonde witch in the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - Bettina Arndt naturally prefers a blindingly stupid interpretation because it suits her general thesis.

And what's her generally stupid thesis? Why it's the dangers of being a de facto couple, never mind the deceptive, relaxing, perfidious approach of the media or the actual way of life of actual Australians:

Most media commentators are relaxed about a de facto first couple. Why not, they say, everyone's doing it. What's the big deal about living together?

They are right about the fact cohabitation - what some call ''marriage lite'' - is changing the social map. Census figures show the proportion of adults in de facto relationships more than doubled between 1986 and 2006. With other countries showing similar shifts, many social scientists studying this trend conclude marriage lite is not a change for the better.

Oh you aberrant outrageous fools, don't you realise you're throwing the entire social structure of the universe into jeopardy!

It's fine for Gillard - a 48-year-old woman - to live with her bloke. Yet as a popular role model for women, her lifestyle choice may influence other women into making big mistakes about their lives.

Yes, a big mistake! You see, women need men, like bicycles need fish, and they need to be married, and they need to have children, and so, because they're helpless and hapless, they need breadwinners to look after them and their children, and whatever they do they shouldn't challenge the patriarchy or pretend they can do it all themselves. Think fluttering miss in a medieval pageant, while the knight in shining armour goes about the heavy lifting business:

Cohabitation produces two groups of losers among women and children. Most women want to have children - Gillard is an exception - and some miss out after wasting their primary reproductive years in a succession of live-in relationships which look hopeful but go nowhere, leaving them childless and partnerless as they hit 40.

Yes, shrews, dropkicks, people who can't become an individual because they couldn't become a couple, incomplete, a horde of veritable Muriel Sparks given to relationship failures. Not that we're trying to undermine women's sense of self-esteem, but if they can't score a child and a partner by the time they hit forty, why on earth do they exist? Why don't they just give up, or fall under a train (while taking care not to shock the driver or hurt the passengers with their wasted life).

What's that you say, they could lead their lives according to their desires and potentials and find happiness and fulfilment where they may?

Could someone shove a sock in the mouth of that feminist in the back row ... Bettina has more to say:

People often drift into living together - someone's lease runs out or they get sick of running home for fresh shirts and underwear. They slide rather than decide, and frequently fail to discuss their mutual expectations for the relationship.

It's the women who end up stranded when they spend years in a succession of de facto relationships waiting for Mr Not Ready or Mr Maybe to make up his mind.

Dear lord, or as we used to say in Tamworth, fuck me dead, and yes, ecstatic sex that brings an end to life would in fact be preferable to reading this fear mongering drivel. But on we go with the biological clock routine:

Women's tiny reproductive window means they pay a high price for wasting precious breeding time in such uncertain relationships.

While the de facto lifestyle leads some women to miss out on having children, others are taking the risk of becoming parents despite these unstable relationships. A growing proportion of children is now born to de facto couples - up from less than 3 per cent in 1975 to 12 per cent in 2000, according to data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics Survey.

Why then surely these bastard children herald the end of civilisation as we know it, even though the bastards I know - and I know quite a few - seem perfectly happy and untroubled by their bastardry. Oh we're a long way from Shakespeare's King John and the very spirit of Plantagent:

KING JOHN What is thy name?

BASTARD Philip, my liege, so is my name begun,
Philip, good old sir Robert's wife's eldest son.

KING JOHN From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bear'st:
Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great,
Arise sir Richard and Plantagenet.

BASTARD Brother by the mother's side, give me your hand:
My father gave me honour, yours gave land.
Now blessed by the hour, by night or day,
When I was got, sir Robert was away!

QUEEN ELINOR The very spirit of Plantagenet!
I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so.

BASTARD Madam, by chance but not by truth; what though?
Something about, a little from the right,
In at the window, or else o'er the hatch:
Who dares not stir by day must walk by night,
And have is have, however men do catch:
Near or far off, well won is still well shot,
And I am I, howe'er I was begot.

I am I? The defiant pup, the insolent cur.

Apologies for that short break, but even bad Shakespeare is infinitely better than the drivel delivered up by Arndt. But hey nonny no, on we go:

It is often assumed these children will provide the glue to keep de facto relationships together, but sadly this is not so. David de Vaus, a sociology professor from La Trobe University, found cohabiting couples who have children are more like to break up than married parents, increasing their risk of the negative impacts of family breakdown.

Yep, thank the lord divorce is no longer an issue in this lucky country, or the false assumption that children will keep marriages together, because sadly this is not so.

But stay, what's this, treachery and deception and base foppishness lurks, and is likely to lead normal happy people astray by thinking they must imitate the new redheaded queen:

If Gillard chooses to play house with Tim Mathieson in the Lodge, this choice sends a strong message to the huge numbers of women who rightly admire her and seek to follow her example. A lifestyle suited to her particular needs may be riskier for many women and their children.

Oh the caddess, to pay house with a partner, rather than a marriage founded on true love and ankle biters.

What message is this to send to fundamentalist Christians, and make them question a fundamentalist god who wiped life from the earth in the first holocaust, by way of a flood, but still couldn't eradicate shellfish and pigs as mortal temptations designed to lure us all to hell?

Why the harpy, the floozy is ... words can hardly contain my shock and horror, just like ... summon strength all you mortals, you will need all the strength you might have ... why she's just like Germaine Greer.

You there, gentlemen, pick up the dear sweet creature who swooned in the second row. Give her smelling salts, and take her home post haste so she can spend the rest of the week in bed, while others of stronger stomach read on:

As a Labor politician, Gillard is hardly likely to spell this out. Her brand of politician is too nervous of offending natural constituents to express concern about lifestyle choices. But it wasn't always like that.

In 1972, an intriguing discussion between Germaine Greer and Margaret Whitlam was published in The National Times. Whitlam, whose husband had just become prime minister, was outspoken in her criticism of ex-nuptial births, declaring it was irresponsible to produce children outside wedlock. When Greer confessed she was considering having a child on her own, Whitlam was forthright: ''Well, I think that's just a selfish thought.''

Later in the interview, she relented a little. ''It may be all right for people who are well known and who have position and who can organise themselves … but it's not OK for everybody,'' she said, questioning the impact of Greer's decision on her many fans.

Next thing you know gentle readers, the dire news that Gillard took an affirmation rather than an oath, suggesting she might even be an atheist, has sent shock waves rolling around the land. If she's an atheist and without children, what's the point of her living? What kind of a role model is she?

At the heart of this conversation was role models. People in the public eye, our influential leaders, need to think through whether others who don't share their circumstances will follow their example and get into trouble.

You see, like lemmings, we'll follow her over the cliff, trying to emulate her dubious Sydney push lifestyle, and the next thing you know we'll end up with the Bogle Chandler murder nee scandal. That's what happens when free wheeling hippies and dissolute swingers turn up at parties carrying drawings in the style of Picasso ...

Every day we see well-known Australians making dubious lifestyle decisions being lauded in the media - celebrities choosing to become single mothers, unwed fathers, parents dragging children through a succession of chaotic ''blended'' families.

Oh the shame, the unmitigated, sordid, shocking, tabloid laden shame. And what's worse, some of them are married! And yet you know, and strangely enough, we also see well-known Australians making dubious lifestyle decisions by scribbling drivel and getting it published in the media, and put online so all can read their fatuously stupid thought bubbles ...

Pat Rafter was made Australian of the Year just as he was about to become an unmarried father. What did that say to his many male fans about the importance of committed fathering?

And what does his unmarried status say about his capacity and ability as a father? Are his children unhappy? Is he a bad father? Was he uncommitted to fathering? Who knows, and of course Arndt can't go further, perhaps leery of defamation proceedings, but I wish she'd accused Rafter of bad fathering just so he could take her to court and sue the socks off her. Or the truth might emerge, because you see according to his wiki he's created his own charity organisation that raises funds for children's causes each year and in turn it celebrates the way he enjoys going to the beach with his young family. We can see through that kind of obvious smoke screen Mr. Rafter!

Never mind, that's how Arndt proceeds, by sly innuendo, and name dropping and sweeping generalisations which introduce a new level of meaninglessness into public discussion of social trends:

Politicians today rarely question social trends, even when all the evidence is they are having negative social consequences. John Howard was the rare exception, when he went into bat for a child's rights to a father in the debate over single mothers and IVF. But the actions of our role models speak louder than any words. The well-heeled tennis hero cheerfully embracing unmarried paternity, the feminist toying with sole parenthood, the prime minister living with her boyfriend - why wouldn't their many fans not seek to walk in their shoes?

And if there's no harm in it, where's the harm in that, except that it seems to offend Arndt's hopelessly distorted notion of social order and the natural way of things.

Meanwhile, I do so worry about Arndt's many fans. Are they aware that she began her career by becoming a part of the exciting new era of Masters and Johnson sex techniques, and by publishing Forum magazine, dedicated to everything sexual, and that she took up with a married man:

PETER THOMPSON: There's an interesting element here about openness in relationships, because initially, wasn't he far from open about the nature of his real circumstances?

BETTINA ARNDT: Yes, that he... Well, he was a married man and he didn't present himself as a married man.

PETER THOMPSON: He DIDN'T present himself as a married man.

BETTINA ARNDT: "We have this arrangement, my wife and I," you know. And of course, you know, a young woman in the '70s, you choose to believe what you want to hear, you know. That's what I wanted to hear, that this wasn't really a married man, and so I chose to see it was a very amicable, you know, semi-separation, and that wasn't the case at all.

PETER THOMPSON: Of course, we're all very good, in one way or another, at rationalising, aren't we?

BETTINA ARNDT: Absolutely, absolutely. And the big thing was that he had two very young children. I didn't think about children, I didn't know anything about children, and now I know what it did to those children and I take responsibility for that. (here).

And back then, the shoe was on the other foot, as she kept on blathering about sex:

WOMAN: Is that Bettina Arndt?

BETTINA ARNDT: Yes.

WOMAN: What you're doing is absolutely wrong. If my daughter were to hear this, I would be fuming! If you like sexuality, then keep it at home! Do your own thing, but leave the young ones alone to do their own thing and just mind your own business!

But now she can't help herself, and she keeps on blathering on about marriage and role models and poor old Pat Rafter, and what's he ever done to her, and Julia Gillard, who kept chairman Rudd in hearth and home, and feminists who might want a baby.

Cue drum roll:

PETER THOMPSON: Well, one of the things you have said is, you know, you're very concerned about the impact of divorce on kids, and yet you've gone through a divorce relatively recently yourself. So, how did you size all that up?

BETTINA ARNDT: Yes, I mean, it was a very difficult issue for me, and it has... I mean, I don't think what I've done is at all inconsistent because what I always said is you have to be very careful to do everything you can to stay together for the sake of the children unless you're in a very highly conflicted relationship which is bad for children, and that's only a minority. Most of us divorce from relatively low-conflict relationships where, luckily, we manage to protect children from the worst of it, you know. The fights go on behind the bedroom door rather than in the children's faces ...

Well there's an excellent role model for all of us, instead of Julia Gillard's living in sin atheism, and Pat Rafter's cheerful attitude to marriage and parenting ... a low conflict divorce! And keep those fights behind the bedroom doors ...

So there you have it, another day in the lives of the chattering commentariat class, and the brain cells of Australians deadened a little bit more ...

It's hard not to have some pity for politicians, whether they be Rudd, Gillard or Abbott, with the incessant desire to have them as role models, followed by the shocking discovery that they're human ...

But it's harder to have pity for those who blather about the importance of role models, and turn out, like the rest of us, to have feet of clay and be human ...

(Below: and since the intertubes seems short on visual material of the Forum kind, here as perhaps a world first are a couple more covers from the magazine, as edited by Bettina Arndt BSc MPsych, way back in 1978, a long time ago. Ah, memories and useless advice and analysis even back then).