Some mean Democrat woman insulted Ann Romney last week by saying she (Mrs. Romney) had never worked a day in her life. The barb was intended to rain down contempt upon the policies of Mitt Romney. The sinning Romney had earlier said that he consulted his beloved on issues of importance to women, and gained insight for his policy positions from her counsel. You see, Mrs. Romney has not attained the required pedigree for appeasing the feminist elite, and so her counsel is, to them, not really representative of a real woman.
As Larry Munson would say, “Get the picture”: A feminist is criticizing a prominent politician because he listened to his wife’s counsel. Sip and ponder.
This is one more rumble along one of the deeper cultural fault lines. Gender role issues are not the exclusive province of the political right or left, because almost all segments of our society have adopted the feminist proposition as true, to varying degrees. As with so many other cultural issues, those who identify themselves as “conservative” are really just slower in their adoption of the left’s positions.
The nineteenth century Southern Presbyterian theologian, Robert Lewis Dabney, prophetically wrote:
It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent: Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always, when about to enter a protest, very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now serves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that, too, shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.
from “Women’s Rights” Discussions, vol. 4. My emphases.
(Where have all the good theologians gone?)
Witness: the candidacy of Mitt Romney. That’s another story.
A recent New York Times blog post about motherhood took up this issue when the blog author, KJ Dell’Antonia, reviewed the book, The Conflict, by Elizabeth Badinter. Dell’Antonia wrote in the context of the insult to Mrs. Romney. The subtitle to the book is, “How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women.” I have not read the book, so my information depends on Dell’Antonia’s account of it.
Dell’Antonia herself does not seem sold on the book’s main points, and even questions whether Badinter is not belittling the women for whose liberation she allegedly labors. She does, however, think that the book is worthwhile enough to discuss whether mothers should do something to counteract the awful influence that being a mother might have on our daughters. It might make them want to do things like…be mothers. And (aaaagh! NO!) wives! In fairness, her blog does treat the book even-handedly to an extent, though without questioning the basic feminist presuppositions.
In the book itself, Badinter argues that mothers who stay at home have been deceived by the “natural parenting movement” to live up to its ideal for motherhood. The result of this deception is that women are eschewing their place of power in the workforce and returning to the dismal shackles of family and home. They think they are making their own choice, but really infants and men are forcing them into submission all over again.
This is particularly disheartening to Badinter, because Western women were just on the verge of throwing off their Masters (husbands and fathers), and finally gaining in the public sphere their rightful place. But now their own children are dragging them back to the dreaded yoke of home and family.
The “natural parenting movement” is a reaction against the harsh industrialized, assembly-line model of child-rearing which told mothers that formula in a bottle was better than the God-given product of their own bodies, and various other nonsense. The movement, in my opinion, tends to the extreme in its sort of “do whatever baby wants” vibe. Overall, however, the move to a more natural (as determined by readily observable behavior patterns and biological design) is, I think, a positive thing.
Of course, the industrialized, assembly-line model is a very male-dominated approach to mothering, based ostensibly on “Science.” Mmmmm. Taste the irony? Badinter prefers that boneheaded male notion to what all mothers know is really best for their children. I am sure that Ms. Badinter did not slam natural parenting because of the sizable portion of her fortune closely tied to Nestle, the world’s largest formula producer. It is pure disinterested principle, I am sure.
For Badinter, “best for their children” implies voluntary servitude, and that is a bad thing. Badinter’s highest ideal is for Mama to think about Mama first and foremost, to the detriment of, yes, her own children. She wants to influence (I would say “deceive”) women to think that it is their highest ideal, too. But, she doesn’t want women to be influenced by foolish movements, like ones that tell them to act like loving mothers and enjoy doing it.
That cooing baby doesn’t yet realize that it is merely one more means to Mama’s happiness, and that it must balance its needs with Mama’s desire for satisfaction in a career. Mama likes the way it feels to be able to slap backs with the big boys, and have important letters behind her name. Baby must be taught that Mama has a committee meeting to get to and an election campaign to run, and adjust its expectations accordingly. The political left and right are not too different in this belief.
The baby must balance its needs with Mama’s needs, because we all now live in the United World of Egalitaria, where we are all the same, but for the unfortunate circumstance of genitalia, which can also be changed if whim so dictates.
In the U.W.E., newborn babes are tyrants to be resisted much as the bloodthirsty kings (and queens) of yore once were. Now, we house the old kind of tyrant in a white palace in New York City and give them armies of baby blue helmets. But, I digress. “Children = Chains” might be a political slogan in the U.W.E., because children are, as we know, selfish, meaning they have an irritating tendency to need things they can’t get on their own, and tyrannically expect their mothers to provide.
Mothering a child, as all mothers know the child needs to be mothered, amounts to oppression of Mama in Badinter’s universe, and accordingly must be resisted. Never mind that Mama had more to do with the existence of child than child did…
Mama must be in the workplace or “public arena” or else risk relegation to the dungeon of hearth and home, forever relinquishing the “power” she craves. Such is the force of argument propounded in The Conflict.
The problem is that Mama isn’t what Billionaire Badinter thinks she is. Of the many frauds perpetrated on human society by the patently wicked, the feminist lie is one of the most destructive of women. We were all made to serve our fellow human beings. Voluntary servitude is a path to happiness for us all, men and women. Why? Because for that we were made. All of us. Roles differ, but service to one another, particularly when done with the knowledge that the subjects of our service are image-bearers of our Creator and Savior rather than accidental grandchildren of the baboon, is what satisfies our souls’ deepest longings, next to relationship with the Creator Himself.
The feminist has a hard time fighting against design, and convincing the water to burn like fire instead of quenching and cleansing. Incidentally, this is one of my main problems with objectivist/libertarian thought, aside from its atheistic tendencies. I watched “Atlas Shrugged” last night with my wife. But, that’s another story, too.
Granted, there is no human institution or relationship beyond the reach of human sin. Civil government, church, family, workplace, friendships, marriages; they are all tainted, and they are all subject to the abuse and perversion of sinful human hearts. But the problem is sin, not the existence of those various institutions.
That feminism has gained ascendancy is proof that men have sinfully failed in their duties towards the women and children in their lives. We have allowed the serpent to deceive, rather than whacking its bloody head off, like we should have. We men have had that problem for a while, now.
The fact that men sin in their God-given role as the heads of their homes does not mean that the family institution should be eliminated, or turned upside down, as is the unequivocal feminist goal. Rather, continued reformation is the right response.
Abuses of relationships, and abuses of authority, in particularly, are especially heinous. But the culprit is not the existence of authority itself. Authority and submission exist even within the Trinity, where each person is absolutely co-equal in power, substance and glory with the others.
I pray that someday I can be half the husband to my wife that she deserves. She is my hero for a catalog of reasons. None have to do with career–and she has talent and smarts enough to write her ticket anywhere she chooses in the “workforce.” Her chosen field, thank God, is our family and home, where the real, lasting power she wields in the lives of 5 other souls will never be matched by anything any woman does in the “workforce” or public arena.
That she does so in the face of widespread cultural contempt and pathetic insults from weak and insecure women like Rosen and Badinter only elevates her status. To suggest that her service has no significant effect on the outcome of world history is pure blindness.
She laughs at the puerile playground taunts of deluded women like Rosen and Badinter, and feels bad for the empty lives they must lead.
Then she gets back to work rocking cradles and ruling a world gone mad.
For my part, I dream of a world filled with homes lovingly tended to by the wisdom and skill that can only come from such powerful women.
