The unpaid wife and mother
Submitted by Wayne on Thu, 2008-01-31 07:06.
Home Life | Marriage | Parenting
My daughter has been talking recently about how unfair it is (a favorite word of children, is it not?) that Mom doesn't get paid for all she does. From an ungodly worldview, she may be right. Mom puts out a lot of effort for no income. Without the salary, it would seem this effort is wasted. However, from a Biblical point of view, salary is not a valid measurement of worth. Given the magnitude of the Lord's sacrifice on our behalf--His only begotten Son--I'd say our worth is immeasurably high.
In a Biblical marriage, there aren't just two individuals pooling their collective resources, sharing duties, and living together. A Godly husband and Godly wife act as one. Whenever one of them benefits, so does the other. When one hurts, so does the other. To be sure, this "one flesh" is a far cry from the perfect union we'll have with our Lord in the hereafter, but it is a foreshadowing of it. While the Godly husband provides the worldly means of meeting the family's physical needs, the Godly wife and mother tends to the less mundane needs of her husband and their children. (Of course, the husband is also responsible for meeting the less mundane needs of his wife and children, else he's nothing but a paycheck.)
Women are naturally, by God's design, more nurturing and tender. They are more focused on and aware of relationships and the countless nuances therein. They can appear to be less rational at times (from a coldly logical perspective) but that's because they are intent on improving the relationships that are important to them. As humans are largely irrational, a focus on humanity will appear so, too. When a child falls and hurts himself, Mom is far more likely to express empathy and meet the child's emotional needs than Dad. Now that we know the enormous importance of sound emotional development during childhood, it makes sense that Mom, gifted in this area, be ever present to nurture the children.
Men, by their God-given nature, tend to be colder, even emotionally stunted by comparison. This makes them better gifted at those tasks requiring emotional distance, or even a complete lack of emotion or empathy. Doing what must be done, however unpleasant and revolting, is a common matra for a reason: "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Sometimes, this is necessary to earn that useful income to provide for the family. After all, it's not called work for no reason; and how many men would continue doing their jobs as they do if they weren't bribed (paid) to do so? A job is not always a pleasant thing, yet it's known to be necessary in some form or other to provide the means of meeting physical needs. This gift for emotional detachment, unfortunately, also makes fatherhood and marriage more challenging for them than for women and more so than men's outside-the-home duties.
Men and women are different. Anyone denying this fundamental truth is a stupid fool. God designed us differently on purpose. We complement each other. Our natural talents fit together to complete us as we are meant to be. Our called roles are different; one is not superior to the other. One is better suited at bringing home the bacon while the other is better at frying it up (if you'll pardon the not-so-kosher metaphor). In no way is the worth of a wife and mother diminished because she is not directly paid for her efforts. Likewise, a man's worth is not superior because he is paid. (Note, too, that he is only paid for a very small amount of his effort, his job. All the effort he makes in society and the community--excepting the dishonorable job of State employee--and especially within his family, is similarly unpaid in money.) For the ungodly, who measure worth with funds, a wife and mother should indeed be paid for her efforts. For the Godly, though, money is no measurement of worth at all, but merely a necessary means of fulfilling but one of a man's Godly duties.
A woman need not be paid for her work as a Godly wife and mother any more than a man is paid for his work as a Godly husband and father. All that is his is hers, including his income, and vice versa. Just as Ruth inherited all the promises and blessings of the Jews by her choice to forever join God's people, so a woman inherits all that is the man's when she joins her life to his. I should close with this especially Good News: when we choose to forever join our lives to the Lord's through His atoning Son, we will also inherit the glory that is His.
Trackback URL for this post:
http://tuscanycircle.net/trackback/896
The price of disobedience
Submitted by Wayne on Thu, 2008-01-31 08:11.
For the ungodly, who measure worth with funds, a wife and mother should indeed be paid for her efforts.
I believe there is a causation between disobedience to God and women heading into the workplace. When women fail to see their worth through God's eyes, choosing instead to see themselves through the eyes of Mammon, they see inequity between themselves and their husbands. To rectify this inequity (perceived as such only because they completely fail to understand Biblical marriage), they head out into the workplace to earn their worth. In so doing, women necessarily abandon their Godly roles as wives and mothers to serve the idol Mammon.
I think there is also causation between women earning income and financial depression. Not only are their jobs hurting their families for all but losing a wife and mother, but also financially in the long run by increasing the workforce supply, thereby lowering the price for labor (wages). Once again, we can see how evil is eventually self-destructive. By disobeying God and leaving their families to earn an income, women eventually shoot themselves in the financial foot by reducing real wages for everybody. These foolish women get what they deserve; it's just unfortunate their families must suffer for it, not to mention everybody else whose wages they've effectively lowered.
The real tragedy is the effect on the Godly. Those who choose to embrace their Godly calling with a stay-at-home wife and mother* must suffer for having their single income, that of the husband, be so depressed by the flooding of the labor supply** with ungodly women. Even though the Godly family's income is so diminished*** by the ungodly, the value of having his wife and mother of his children at home is still immense.
*How cumbersome is "stay-at-home wife and mother". When did "housewife" become so vilified? "Housewife" is a title of great honor and represents a Godly woman.
**It is this basic law of supply and demand that today's economists cannot seem to grasp, excepting the "Austrians", of course.
***For example, the real worth of my income is far less than half that of my father's a generation ago. With such a depression of real wages, even two incomes today don't approximate a single income just twenty years ago.
ungodly wives
Submitted by Wayne on Thu, 2008-01-31 09:14.
There's more than just one reason why I call working wives ungodly. As noted above, there's most often an a priori abandonment of the Biblical worldview that leads women to stupidly measure their worth monetarily. Such worship of Mammon is ungodly, to be sure, but is not the only possible symptom.
I also wrote about the calling of women as wives and mothers. Without even appealing to a Divine calling, it's plain to see these roles as commitments to responsibility. (If taking on a pet implies responsibility toward it, so much more so is willfully taking on a husband and children.) As a wife, a woman's commitment is to her husband. As a mother, her commitment is to their children. Neither commitment is taken on accidentally. If a woman is going to sign up to be a wife, she willfully accepts the responsibilities thereof. Likewise for motherhood.
Why do these responsibilities preclude a job? It's basic math, another skill largely lost on the masses and the experts. Any housewife will tell you her work is never done. Just keeping the house (e.g., vacuuming, dusting, etc.) can be a full-time job. Then there's preparing meals. We all know preparing almost any meal--well, any meal worth eating--takes far longer than eating it. If this only included dinners, it would still be a significant task (and art!). If it also includes breakfast and lunch, then this, too, can be a full-time job. If there are no children, the wife could already have two full-time jobs just in the daily mechanics of the home. Add childrearing and homeschooling, and then there's four full-time jobs. In truth, none of these can be done to the fullest satisfaction of a good wife and mother. Each takes too much time to be fully done with all the rest. Any woman choosing to go to work everyday will necessarily be very subpar at all her other responsibilities. The required hours add up much faster than the available hours.
It's tough enough to keep up with all the chores of life when you're only taking care of yourself. When there are others involved (a family), it's even tougher. A division of labor, so to speak, works to the advantage of all; but a duplication of effort (i.e., two working parents) works to the detriment of all.
One could argue that many of these responsibilities could be hired out: maid, cook, chauffeur, laundromat, nanny, tutors, and prostitutes. (Biblically, sex is also a Godly responsibility in a marriage even if simultaneously pleasurable.) Other than the independently wealthy (and thus not needing a second income), nobody could afford all these service providers. This means any income brought in will be more than lost by hiring others to perform her housewife duties. Hiring all these people also costs the wife and mother the very people for whom she works to provide, her husband and children. All she would be providing them is money. The mother to the children will be their nanny and tutors. The wife to her husband will the prostitutes, maid, and cook (and possibly the nanny, too!). She will not be working to live, as she originally desired, but living merely to work.
The only way I can see justifying working wives is if we were to remove God from the equation. If she does not serve God, then there is no Godly service in marriage. There is no Godly responsibility to her family. Remove responsibility and there is no sin. Methinks this is the true goal of working wives, to deny the very sins they commit by denying the Lawgiver. No Lawgiver, no law, no foul, no responsibilities.
All this was without appeal to a Divine calling. However, this is not reality. By marrying and bearing children, a woman explicitly accepts a Divine calling (as do men, of course). What fool would give up a great, fulfilling gift from God to chase after a vacuous one from Mammon? A housewife is richly blessed by her Maker for being so. Don't be a fool and deny that blessing and disobey the Lord in the process.
working wives
Submitted by Wayne on Wed, 2008-09-10 11:21.
In this context, when I speak of working wives, I'm talking about career women. It's not that I think women cannot have jobs at all. Some jobs are well suited to dovetailing neatly into their roles as wives and mothers. In today's online world, there are more such opportunities than ever before, too. Of course, any of these can also become a symptom of disobedience if it is pursued with a disobedient heart.
Commuting away from family, working a 40-hour work-week, building a career--all these are generally wrong for those whose first priorities must be nurturing their families. However, having met all the needs of her family, a wife and mother can work outside the home, even. (Nannies, day-care, and schools are not Godly substitutes for parenting, by the way.) Children may be taken along or the husband/father can take over as primary care-giver for a time. (By the way, dads, it ain't "babysitting" to be a father!) Many women's jobs can be educational opportunities for the children, too (i.e., homeschooling) Being natural nurturers, women are well suited for many jobs at which men would struggle.
First and foremost, meet the needs of your immediate family. This true for men and women alike. When there is not "an a priori abandonment of the Biblical worldview", then employment is not inherently disobedient--again, for men and women alike.
Submission
I won't dwell on the concept of submission, but I will mention it here. Just as a man must submit to the authority of his boss, even though the boss is by no means a superior man, so a wife is called by the Lord to submit to her husband. These roles are not about superiority or inferiority. If you experience them as such, you're doing them wrongly. The buck must stop somewhere, and God ordained that to be the husband in a family. Of course, the husband is not free to lead as he wishes; he must lead as Christ leads the church, self-sacrificially and obediently. As the wife submits to the husband, so the husband submits to the Lord (a greater difficulty if done properly).