A short time ago I complained because it seemed like there was a conspiracy going on. Dana rightly pointed out that there is a conspiracy ... just not a human one. I agree. This conspiracy is broad and despicable. One area that this conspiracy has gone nearly unchallenged is in the arena of "the woman's place". This is a diabolical conspiracy ... quite literally.
There is a pervasive view in America (and elsewhere, I'm sure) that the woman's place is not the home. This particular viewpoint is not "tolerant". It doesn't admit "A woman's place may be in the home." Instead, it shouts confidently that no woman could possibly be happy as a simple homemaker. No woman could be fulfilled and content raising children, tending to a household, and not working in a career. The belief instead is that those women who believe such nonsense are lying, overtly or covertly, and women really, really, really want to be "more".
Has anyone taken the time to think that thought process through? I spent a little time on it recently because it just wasn't making sense to me. Here's what you have to conclude if you surrender to this presupposition.
1. No woman is happy as a "stay at home mom", a "homemaker". Those who say they are cannot be telling the truth. Either they are lying to themselves or lying to you or both. It is not possible. All you "homeschoolers" and "stay at home" moms and such ... you're either idiots, liars, or suffering from extremely low self-esteem. Shame on you!
2. Making a home and raising children is an inferior task, a menial labor, beneath the dignity of women everywhere.
3. It has all been a male-driven conspiracy to keep women "barefoot and pregnant", to keep her "in her place". Men, after all, are the scum of the earth.
4. God has failed over time to provide women with the opportunity to be content. It wasn't until the 20th century that it finally happened that women could be happy in life. Before that all women were forced to surrender happiness to being homemakers, mothers, housewives, you know, that menial stuff. Thank God for the Women's Movement.
5. The Bible isn't really a reliable book. Well, mostly reliable, maybe, but that entire "Proverbs 31 wife" thing is a lie from the pit of Hell. Women are better than that.
Our world has reinforced these presuppositions. Think, for a moment, about the language of the "pro-choice" side of the abortion question. "Women," they shout, "have the right to make their own medical decisions." No Christian should disagree. But relegating "baby" to "medical condition" is problematic. Shifting "pregnancy" to "medical condition" is wrong. Still, we've done it. We have methods and pills to prevent this condition, treatments to fix it when it happens, and the certainty that children are a problem at best anyway. Someday, perhaps, she'll have them, but not until after she has done what she wants to do because children get in the way. Where does the Bible get off with language like "Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; the fruit of the womb is a reward" (Psa. 127:4)? Get real! Children are a nuisance, a hardship, something to be endured if necessary. Not a gift!
Do you think I'm being extreme? Then I would suggest you haven't been following current events over the last couple of decades. In 1980, the ratio of divorces was 600:1, where 600 men divorced their wives before 1 woman divorced her husband. In 1990 -- a mere decade -- the ratio was 12:1 ... in reverse. For every 1 man who divorced his wife, 12 women were divorcing their husbands. Not only that, but the number of women who are leaving the kids with their fathers has been growing by leaps and bounds. The so-called "motherly instinct" appears to be waning in many American mothers. It's much better to leave that lousy guy and those lousy kids and get out on your own where you can have fun than to try to take care of those little brats with or without him. So more and more mothers leave their kids, drown their kids, throw their babies in dumpsters, or just make sure they are never born.
I don't fall in the typical "male chauvinist" category. I don't argue "A woman's place is in the home." I suspect that there are a lot of women who can do a lot of things that are outside the home. But I also believe that probably the most thrilling, important, significant, difficult job on the face of this earth is the job of being a full-time mother and wife. The suggestion that there is "more" for women is ludicrous to me. I suspect that it is only the best women who are able to do that high calling. Making a home, forming the lives of future generations, domesticating a male, and propagating the race is not a menial task that should be relegated to the miserable few. It is a majestic task that should be embraced by far more women than our world has allowed. And too many women suffer from the lie that you cannot be happy being a full-time mother and wife. I wish I could fix that.
5 comments:
Very insightful, Stan, and shocking stats. Apparently feminism has made women much more miserable, probably because there is nothing feminine about it.
Hi, Stan.
I have a few comments. I'm sure you're not surprised. :)
**There is a pervasive view in America (and elsewhere, I'm sure) that the woman's place is not the home. This particular viewpoint is not "tolerant". It doesn't admit "A woman's place may be in the home." ** I don't see the viewpoint this way. I see it as "A woman's place is not only in the home. She has a choice between it being in the home, at work, or both." Now, are there elements that scream no woman would be happy as a stay-at-home mom, yes, and is crazy to do so. But I think part of the reaction to this is that being a wife and mother was used in the past as justification for why women shouldn't receive an education, or the right to vote, or even the right to keep her childre in case of a divorce. I think it's an incredibly high calling -- but how often has it been dismissed, by those in power, as "All she needs to learn is how to keep house, so an education is wasted on her." So much of it being seen as menial stuff was in relation to the men in power. I've seen studies that show that 30-50% of women who were stay-at-home moms wished they could've done otherwise.
** Before that all women were forced to surrender happiness to being homemakers, mothers, housewives, you know, that menial stuff. Thank God for the Women's Movement.** The Women's movement was in response to the saying, "All women are one divorce away from poverty." Has it gone too far in some ways, yes. But it was to give women a way of supporting themselves, so they weren't locked into a marriage, or locking their children into unheahlty conditions. It was to give women a say in who made the rules that affected them. It was to give women the option of having the same education as men. It was to give them a voice. What troubles me about this statement is that it's dismissing the horrific conditions women were trapped in for a lot of history.
**But I also believe that probably the most thrilling, important, significant, difficult job on the face of this earth is the job of being a full-time mother and wife. The suggestion that there is "more" for women is ludicrous to me** To me, it's not. Same for many other women I know and read about. It has to do with a sense of identiy, in a way. For many women, just being a full-time mother and wife means that their identity is wrapped up in someone else. They are seen as someone's mother, or someone's wife, not as Person A who happens to be a mother or wife.
There is a huge amount to say on this subject, but count me in as a Biblicist. A quick (to paste) quote from Chesterton:
when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely
difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question.
For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what
they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery,
all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word.
If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman
drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens
or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard
work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small
import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know
what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area,
deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley
within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes.
and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals,
manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might
exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.
How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about
the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children
about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing
to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's
function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it
is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task;
I will never pity her for its smallness.
But though the essential of the woman's task is universality,
this does not, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe
though largely wholesome prejudices. She has, on the whole,
been more conscious than man that she is only one half of humanity;
but she has expressed it (if one may say so of a lady) by getting her
teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for.
I would observe here in parenthesis that much of the recent
official trouble about women has arisen from the fact that they
transfer to things of doubt and reason that sacred stubbornness
only proper to the primary things which a woman was set to guard.
One's own children, one's own altar, ought to be a matter of principle--
or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the other hand,
who wrote Junius's Letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice,
it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent inquiry.
But take an energetic modern girl secretary to a league
to show that George III wrote Junius, and in three months she
will believe it, too, out of mere loyalty to her employers.
Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity.
They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop
a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm.
That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought
not to do it.
From 'Whats wrong with the world.'
Here's my point. "If God has called you to be a wife and mother, don't stoop to being President of the U.S."
(Thanks, Mom.)
I suggest that the women who are most likely to disagree will be the women who are trying to "have it all". I think it most likely that the women who are currently trying to be a Proverbs 31 wife and mother -- a full-time mother, wife, and homemaker -- will not disagree with anything I've written here. (Actually, I'd like to hear from them.)
Oh, and Heather, do a brief search on "have it all" and you'll find multiple articles and studies saying that it looks as if the myth that women can "have it all" doesn't work. Not my writings. ;)
It has to do with a sense of identiy, in a way. For many women, just being a full-time mother and wife means that their identity is wrapped up in someone else. They are seen as someone's mother, or someone's wife, not as Person A who happens to be a mother or wife.
This is very well put. And of course the Biblical answer is that what they are seeking to avoid is what we as Christians are to seek. We are Gods wife, body, children, servants, sheep... We are not 'Person A who happens to be a Christian'.
Similarly a wife is a helpmeet, wife, mother, etc.... not 'Person A who happens to be...'.
That IS who we ARE. We exist in relationship to God.
16My beloved is mine, and I am his:
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
6O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.
8But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
20Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
21Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
4The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.
And the LORD spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.
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