Family

What if a man can’t lead?

Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships

I’m continuing my posts this week on the subject of mutuality. Today’s topic: Exceptions to the rule.

Whenever I hear the words “Biblical womanhood” I want to do several things: Throw something large, heavy, and preferably breakable; scream; hide until whoever said it goes away.

I understand that a certain kind of relationship is to be expected when you take a particular female personality type and a particular male personality type and put them together in a marriage. And you know what? That’s awesome for them that they have figured out how to make their marriage work, honoring their natural styles. But I’d rather they keep their opinions about my marriage to themselves, thanks. My marriage isn’t built on obeying a certain set of rules, goals, traits, or what have you.

Anyway, one thing that always concerns me is the number of people who are left out of the equation. I can handle it. I’m used to being a non-traditional woman among traditional Christians. Story of my life, for many, many years. No, I’m more frustrated by the traditional people left out in the cold by people hawking Biblical womanhood.

There are a lot of women who can’t fulfill this role even if they want to. As one friend put it, “I don’t like hearing all the time about how I’m supposed to submit to my husband. I don’t have a husband. Am I supposed to go find one so I can submit to him?” Another friend asked, “What am I supposed to do? I’m a single parent. I have to be both mom and dad to my kids. Who do I submit to?”

Last night, my husband and I generated a list of people who might have some difficulty with the typical conservative marriage expectations:

Women whose husbands have died or abandoned their family
Women who have never been married
Women whose husbands are ill or injured and unable to “lead” their families
Women whose husbands have left the Christian faith and cannot be the spiritual authority
Women who became Christians but their husbands did not (see above)
Women whose husbands are deep in addiction
Women whose husbands are abusive
Women whose husbands are doing things that are morally corrupt or illegal
Women whose husbands are incarcerated
Women whose husbands spend large amounts of time away from home (due to work or military service)

That’s an awful lot of exceptions to the rule.

I am sure that conservative people would have some snappy answer for all of it. Or else they might say that of course there are exceptions, this applies to “regular” people. That’s fascinating, but it doesn’t do much to help the people who are in the midst of those situations. It doesn’t help the woman who has lived her entire marriage being the kind of Biblical wife she believed she should be, and now finds herself without a spiritual rudder because her husband has Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t help the woman who suddenly finds herself a single mother of three because her husband has left her for another woman. It doesn’t help the woman who has given her whole life in service to others, believing her highest calling wasn’t marriage but the mission field. It doesn’t help the woman whose husband returns to her every night, blind drunk. It doesn’t help the woman whose husband has spent the better part of their marriage beating her and calling her names.

Instead of labeling those women “irregular” and “exceptions to the rule,” why not make a point of helping those women gain strength in Christ? I know there are support groups for people dealing with life issues. However, shouldn’t the church be another place they can turn? There are more women in these situations than you know. Instead of reminding them of the ways they are different from all the “normal” families, where Dad is the strong head of the household, can’t we do more to empower those people who don’t fit that mold?

If we really want to build healthy marriages and healthy families, we need to start by removing language that says or implies that proper, Biblical marriage is the pinnacle of existence. We need to talk more about how families can be strengthened in God-honoring and people-honoring ways that have less to do with gender roles and more to do with respecting each person’s needs within the home. When we can do that, we will bring hope and healing for all women, regardless of relationship status.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans. You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012. Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic. On Friday, I will highlight my favorites. Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.

What would happen if I didn’t submit to my husband?

Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships, Religion

I didn’t grow up in a family culture that promoted “Biblical womanhood.” My mother had been an evangelical Christian, and then spent many years as a non-believer/agnostic/possibly something else before returning to the church. My father is a non-religious Jew. Throughout my childhood, I attended a Unitarian church. In Sunday school, we drew pictures of what God might look like, watched secular kids’ movies, and ate popcorn. We didn’t learn much about what men and women are supposed to be like or how husbands and wives are supposed to make marriage work.

When I became a Christian at age 14, I had no idea what was in the Bible. My mother had a dusty, old King James Bible on her shelf, which I promptly took out and started to read. I began with the Psalms. At my church youth group, we were studying Revelation (our leaders did a fantastic job with it, by the way; a post for another time). I didn’t learn much about Biblical womanhood there, either.

The denomination my church belonged to, PCUSA (Presbyterian), allows women to be elders and pastors. I don’t recall much about Biblical womanhood or wives and husbands over my years there. Maybe I tuned it out, or maybe it didn’t make sense to me, but it didn’t register.

Until I found Ephesians 5.

I read these words:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

I didn’t understand them. So I asked some of the adults at church, “What does this mean, submit?” They mostly seemed uncomfortable, awkward, like they weren’t sure how to answer that question. I got everything from “respect your husband” to “do what he says” to “be the kind of wife and mother he wants to come home to” to the considerably more honest “I don’t really know.” One person said, “We take it to mean that when there is a major life decision, we go with his preference.”

I think I gave up. In fact, “submission” wasn’t even something my husband and I ever talked about. He was an avowed feminist, and I’m admittedly a pretty intense and opinionated person, so it never seemed to matter. We simply did what came very naturally for us: Talked about everything, worked things out when we disagreed, and based our relationship on mutual respect. The one time our pastor gave a (rather half-hearted) sermon on submission in marriage, my husband and I ended up talking about how no one ever seemed to be able to define that term clearly.

I have since been exposed to a heck of a lot of conservative teaching on this topic. Life has a way of doing that, I suppose. I’ve met a lot more people and read a lot more books since the early days of my Christian faith and my marriage. In fact, it seems like the older I get, the more I hear about the whole “wifely submission” thing. Guess what? No one seems any more clear on it than the people I spoke to at my first church or my college professors or my friends or my former pastor. It’s still murky.

These days, my big question isn’t “What is submission?” Instead, it’s “What will happen if I don’t?”

The message has been pretty clear that “bad things” will indeed happen if I don’t become the properly submissive wife I am Biblically meant to be. I’ve been told that my children will be unhappy due to lack of clear authority; my marriage will suffer and we will be miserable; my children will “turn gay” because they have a gentle, nurturing father and a strong-willed mother. Our lives will be out of control, because things run more “smoothly” if I show my husband proper (read: their version of) respect. Our home will be filled with tension and strife.

So far, none of those dire predictions have come true.

Do we have our share of tension? Sure. Want to know what my husband and I argue about most? Just take a wild guess. It’s none of the usual things couples fight about (money, kids, sex). Nope. Our biggest arguments are about differences of opinion on social/political topics. Not even Biblical interpretation or Christian doctrine—just stupid things. We’ve learned to work through it, though, and we’ve learned to mutually respect each other’s views.

If your natural personalities mesh with a more conservative view on marriage, and this works to create a loving, happy home, then that is wonderful. But if you’re like my husband and me, and your natural personalities don’t fit with the conservative view, you have nothing to be ashamed of. What’s more important is that you build in your home a culture of respect. There are a thousand—a million—ways to do this. Start by applying what Jesus called the Greatest Commandments: Love God, love others. All the rest will fall in place.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans. You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012. Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic. On Friday, I will highlight my favorites. Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.

Children’s Books Gone Wrong

Books, Parenting

I have a tendency to stick with children’s authors I know and trust these days. We’ve found a few new ones we like, of course, but I’ve become wary of what’s out there. Trust me on this, there is a whole lot of crap available to our kids.

My daughter picks out most of her own books. This is a very good thing, because she’s only discovered how much she likes to read in the last several months. Before that, if I handed her a book and told her to have some quiet time, you’d think I’d asked her to shovel manure out in the yard. She could read, yes, but she didn’t like to do it.

Anyway, I’m now in the habit of scanning her books to make sure there’s nothing in there I don’t like. I thought this was something only the most extreme religious fundamentalists did. And I’m not even looking for objectionable religious content! I just want to make sure that my kids aren’t reading urban legends disguised as “facts,” misogynistic fairy tales, or books glorifying aggression.

Now I have to look for books that send damaging messages about other things.

Two of the books we took out of the library last week required talking with my daughter about what the books are really saying. The first seemed okay when I glanced through it. But after reading it to her, we both went, “Huh?” It’s a cute story about eggs hatching into things and then laying more eggs, and babies growing up and having their own babies. Now, if you know anything at all about science, you know that only female birds lay eggs, only female butterflies lay eggs, only female polar bears give birth . . . you get the idea. At the end, there is a picture of a baby. It grows up to be . . . a boy. My daughter said at the end (no prompting from me), “Why isn’t it a girl baby?” Good question, kid. (For the record, I have no problem showing boys growing up to be fathers. My problem was a book filled with female animals concluding with a male baby. The baby should at least have been gender neutral, because the ending text is that the baby grows into a “boy, just like you.”)

The other story that bothered me was different. It was the story of a miniature dinosaur who feels ashamed of being little and gets picked on for his size. He does some heroic act and then everyone miraculously recognizes what an awesome dino he really is, becoming his best friends. Believe it or not, this one bugs me far more than my previous example.

This isn’t a good message for our kids. Think about it: Something is “wrong” with you (you’re not just like everyone else), so you get picked on (of course). You show everyone that you are brave, strong, and good (despite your obvious flaw). Suddenly, all the people who hated you now want to be your best friend.

First, this teaches three bad things about being “different.” One, being different is a Bad, Bad Thing. Your differences separate you from everyone else. Two, that if you don’t look or act just like everyone else, you might as well paint a giant target on your back. Because of course, no one different can be expected to make friends. Three, if you are “different,” you probably hate yourself because of it, as though no one could possibly feel confident unless he or she aligns perfectly with some mythical standard.

Second, it teaches that you only have value (especially if you are “different”) if you perform noble acts. You are required (again, especially if you’re “different”) to prove to others that you deserve respect and love. In fact, you only deserve it if you rescue the person who has been bullying you. (I love the way this is subverted in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Warning: Spoilers, highlight to read. Harry saves Draco Malfoy twice at the end, and then Ron Weasley punches him in the face from under the invisibility cloak. Message: “Sure, we’ll save you because we’re not heartless; but you’re still a major prick.”)

Third, it teaches kids that by being a Super Awesome Person, they will eventually get their enemies to adore them. Sorry, this isn’t the way things work. In fact, sometimes, bullies aren’t all that grateful for help. Sometimes, bullies still hate you. Sometimes, bullies grow up and they like you for you, whether you ever “rescued” them or not. Sometimes, bullies get to know you and like you because you’re fun and interesting. And sometimes they don’t. Being a hero isn’t the thing that changes relationships.

Thankfully, I have two bright kids who can read a story like that and understand that it doesn’t represent reality. The good news is, it leaves room for discussion. We have the opportunity to find out what our kids have seen and experienced in real life, and how they feel about the messages in the books.

Hm, I think I’ve changed my mind. Maybe instead of monitoring and rejecting, I’ll keep it all—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and take it as another chance to get to know my kids better.

Notable News, Week of May 12-18

Cool Stuff, Links, Music, News, Parenting, Women

TIME Magazine, celebrity feminism, and Donna Summer. It’s all in here!

1. TIME Magazine enrages us all

Even though the controversial issue of TIME Magazine came out last week, it’s still the center of the blogosphere. Tons of women have weighed in on it, from a variety of perspectives. What’s been awesome about the whole thing is that TIME intended to fan the flames of the Mommy Wars, but we moms (and women who aren’t moms, too) proved ourselves above such foolishness. We came together spectacularly to support each other in our parenting styles. Yeah, women!

Here are what I consider the best of the best in response to the TIME article:

Rachel Held Evans helps us laugh at ourselves and recognize that we are, indeed, enough just as we are.
Avital Norman Nathman gives us her take over at The Mamafesto. In her first post, “Are YOU ‘Mom Enough’?”, she explains the artificial battle line TIME has drawn. In the second, “Distraction”, she reminds us that we shouldn’t let TIME get away with distracting us from the very real parenting issues of post-natal leave, sick time, and health care for families.
The Radical Housewife encourages us to ponder the ways in which patriarchy has determined that none of us will ever be “mom enough.”
Over on Soulseeds, Meg Lawton tells us about her breastfeeding journey and why TIME’s sexualized image put her off.

2. The limitations of celebrity feminists

Check out this great article on the problems with women like Tina Fey who would limit our feminism “for our own good.” Long, but worth the read. It’s another take on the madonna/whore complex.

3. Donna Summer dies

She was only 63.

Bible Wars?

Family, Gender Roles

Last week’s TIME Magazine cover certainly stirred up a lot of debate (more on that tomorrow). Women weighed in on the issue from all angles. There was frustration over the media-generated “mommy wars,” over cashing in on parenting guilt, and the ways both men and women are culturally undermined by the message.

Some people’s reaction was more about the cover photo itself, a young, culturally attractive woman breastfeeding a preschooler. There was a lot of “Ew!” and “Ick!” (You know why? Because no woman ever, in the history of the world, has ever breastfed her kid by posing jauntily while he stood on a chair looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.)

Anyway, yesterday, Rachel Held Evans chimed in with her take on it. She came at it from a different angle, addressing the ever-present problem of the Proverbs 31 wife. (Ooh! Did you like my alliteration there?) Her excellent post gives a good dressing-down to the idea of being “good enough.”

I’m grateful for that post. See, here’s the thing. I have a whole heap o’ problems with how Ms 31 is usually handled. And it’s not what you think.

I’ve read dozens of blog posts, books, and articles about the ways this wife of noble character has been wrongly used as our standard for Biblical womanhood. Almost without fail, I have the same reaction to them: You missed the point. She isn’t the problem. We are.

Time and again, I hear the refrain of, “No woman can live up to this standard.” While this is true, the problem with that is that it sends the same message it’s railing against: There is an impossibly high standard, and you will never measure up. Don’t bother trying.”

The truth is, there is no impossibly high standard. Not being superwoman isn’t sin we need Jesus to rescue us from. Not being a combination of Martha Stewart and Supernanny isn’t morally wrong. Proverbs 31 is not a to-do list, some or all of which you must accomplish at some point to show you are a good, Biblical wife.

It could be a picture of the People of God. It could be urging men to look for women with qualities beyond physical beauty. It could mean that we all (men and women alike) should strive to protect, honor, and care for our families. But it’s definitely not an ideal standard of behavior.

Much like TIME Magazine’s article on attachment parenting.

See, just like the TIME editors, there are people who have used the idea of the Proverbs 31 wife to create an artificial battle between good, Biblical women and naughty women who ignore God’s directives. We’re supposed to believe that our choices are to be an appropriately submissive wife who stays home and bakes cookies, or we can be a man-hating feminist with delusions of penis envy. This is a completely fictitious war.

You know why? Because as long as within your family, you have determined the best way to work things out, you are doing what God desires for us. If you exclusively stay home, homeschool, sew all your own clothes, and bake homemade cupcakes with frosting from scratch, you are awesome. If you have a high-power career and spend 9 hours a day in your office and you hire someone else to cook and clean, you are awesome. If you do something somewhere in the middle between those, or some combination of those things, you are awesome. And guess what? Those things apply to men and women, singles and marrieds.

There isn’t some war raging between people who read the Bible one way and those who read it another. Both are good. Both are appropriate. This is not an essential teaching on which our salvation hinges. The important thing is whether what we do is loving to those around us, shows care and respect for those in our families, and honors God through obedience to Him in the way we best understand it. That kind of attitude is always the right one, no matter how it plays out in our lives.

I’m sure that some people have thought that my feminist ramblings were directed at them, as though I were saying that they should not want to live out the Scriptures as they interpret them. Not at all! All I want is not to be told that I need to change my personality or my skill set to fit an artificial cultural standard in order to be “in obedience” to the Bible. My husband and I should not need to radically shift ourselves just because he’s nurturing and I’m not, or because he’s better at keeping the family calendar than I am. And we shouldn’t be told that we have to change the way we study the Bible together or study the Bible with our children, especially if it’s leading our children to be faithful disciples. But neither should anyone else. If you are a Christian and God is being glorified in your home, then you are doing something right.

I’m not waging war on anyone, because there is no war to be waged.

The Very Best Wifey in the World

Christianese, Family, Gender Roles, Parenting, Relationships

Yesterday in church, our pastor read this to us:

Good Wife's Guide — The Good Wife’s Guide
Image collected from http://j-walk.com/other/goodwife/images/goodwifeguide.gif

The text reads:

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a dust cloth over the tables.

During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.

Be happy to see him.

Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.

Don’t complain if he’s late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.

Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife always knows her place.

I get it. I get the point that this is supposed to be humor, and that we’re supposed to realize how far we’ve come in the nearly 60 years since this “article” was published. Leaving aside the fact that this is probably a hoax, the problem I have is that for a lot of Christians, this is how they see men and women. Oh, I don’t mean that anyone really thinks that a woman should follow these steps to the letter. I mean that we have roughly the same expectations, just dressed up a little differently.

When women are challenged to be “godly, Biblical wives,” there is a certain reading of the text that leads some people to conclude that a good wife’s duty is to “manage the home.” To be honest, I’m not even sure that anyone knows what that means. I’ve heard it all—everything from being a stay-at-home mom to keeping things neat and clean to making sure that everyone’s relational needs are met. Time and again, we’re told that these are the things women are good at, because we are “different” from men. Being in possession of a vagina somehow magically makes us better at cooking, cleaning, and applying band-aids to scraped knees.

And never mind working wives and mothers. Work isn’t seen as something women should want to do. We’re not supposed to be powerful or have careers and try to advance them or feel passionate about our jobs. Working is just something some women do because they’re single parents or their families are financially insecure or they need something to pass the time while the kids are at school.

On top of that, we are supposed to be superwomen. We get compared to the Proverbs 31 wife all the time. She’s held up as some kind of ideal, the woman we’re supposed to admire and emulate. She feeds everyone, even the servants! She works! Her kids think she’s awesome! She does it all with a smile, in her pearls and high heels! (Okay, I made that last one up.) Even if we have jobs, even if we do volunteer work in the community (and maybe especially then, since it isn’t “real” work), we’re still supposed to make sure that the house runs smoothly, the kids get to bed on time, and everyone is taken care of. Sure, men can be asked to do some basic chores, or maybe make sure the lawn is mown and the trash is taken out to the curb. But it’s wifey’s job to make sure she stays on top of what needs to be done. After all, we can’t expect her powerful, manly husband to come home from his powerful, manly job and do it. If a woman works, it had better never interfere with her ability to care for her family.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that this isn’t just a problem for women. This hurts men, too. What if a woman is a corporate CEO, and her husband is a stay-at-home dad? What if both parents work, and both enjoy their jobs? What if a man is the one who is better at taking care of little one’s boo-boos and sniffles? What if mom is a slob and dad is a neat freak, so he takes care of the tidying and cleaning? What if the wife is good with power tools and the husband is a master chef? And what if it’s because she’s a mechanic and he’s a cook in a restaurant? Are they supposed to suddenly reverse roles in the home? And do any of those things make him less of a man?

I know that some people will say, “Well, of course there are exceptions. These are general principles.” But when the message we hear, week after week, is that a woman is good at _____ and a man is good at _____, it’s hard not to believe something may be wrong with you if it isn’t true. It’s especially upsetting when it’s treated as though these are things we can find in the Bible regarding proper male/female roles. When we don’t fit those roles, we wonder if it’s some kind of sin in our lives that we need to address.

My husband and I chose to have me stay home with our kids. But the reason we did it this way is that his salary was higher. We believed that one of us should stay home, at least while the kids were little. It could just as easily have been my husband taking care of the kids while I worked. Because I’m home, I tend to do more of the chores, although I certainly don’t do everything. My husband is usually the one to help with homework, partly because he’s a teacher and partly because the help required is usually with math (which I can do just fine, but I struggle to teach it). And he’s certainly the more sympathetic and nurturing parent. (Example: One of our kids falls down. Me: “Are you bleeding? No? Good. Go play.” My husband: “Oh no! Are you okay? Do you need a hug?”) So are we “traditional” or not?

The whole thing stems from the basic idea that our differing biology somehow makes us unequal to each other. Over and over and over we’re taught that we have societal roles to fill and that we should not deviate, because it’s not how we were made. We’re told that the Bible “clearly” says this. In fact, the Bible has far more to say about hospitality, social justice, mercy, brotherly love, forgiveness, kindness, and caring for one another than it does about male and female roles within society or the church. Yet we dwell on the latter rather than the former.

Church, is it any wonder that young people are leaving in droves?

What if a man can’t lead?

What would happen if I didn’t submit to my husband?

Children’s Books Gone Wrong

Notable News, Week of May 12-18

Bible Wars?

The Very Best Wifey in the World

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