Why married women in the military is not a good idea.

I'm all for women's lib. Any woman who does the same job as a man as well as he does it should receive equal pay and benefits. What I am not for is downgrading standards so women can get the jobs. If a woman can't carry enough weight to meet firefighter standards, I'll take the man rescuing me, thank you very much.

What brought this to mind was an article on mothers at war. There are more than 100,000 mothers who have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spc. Jaymie Holschlag is one of them. She is griping because she was deployed for 12 months. She says that when she returned, her children had changed so much she didn't know them. Jaymie was not drafted. Jaymie already had her children when she joined.

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, director of the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University, says, "The Army's challenge, but also the military's challenge, is to help service members feel they don't have to choose between family life and their military career." I disagree. The military's challenge is to train up soldiers who are dependable on the battlefield, who can defend our country at all costs. It's not to cater to whiney woman who're unhappy with the choices they made.

"Mothers at war can create a conflict at home." The Dallas Morning News; September 27, 2009; p. 10A.