Dear Letha,
When I go back and read our letters these past few weeks about parenting and gender roles, I realize again how difficult these topics are. This afternoon, I was researching well-known feminist Alice Walker and reading up on her complete estrangement from her daughter, Rebecca. When Rebecca Walker talks about how neglected she was growing up because her mom was away writing feminist books, my heart just sank.
It is not supposed to look like this, I kept thinking to myself. The point is not to sacrifice our children to our work, or deny the important responsibilities of motherhood. When I read about Rebecca’s story, I practically hear the smug voices of several well-known Christian patriarch’s saying, “I told you so.”
I cannot deny the importance of Alice Walker’s contributions to literature, racial equality, and women’s rights. I also cannot help but deeply grieve that her work seemed to be at the cost of her relationship with her own daughter. It should not be this way, I just kept thinking. I don’t want to believe that women are forced to choose their families or their work.
Reading about Alice, I started to wonder about the children of famous men we revere, who contributed so greatly to democratic society, and yet we would know little of whether they were good fathers. Were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington good dads? (I am not sure if that information is even recorded.) And would we really care for that matter? Probably not. It is taken for granted that men are valued for different purposes than for women. If they advanced the greater society, it does not really matter to the history books how many children they had with their slaves or how many mistresses they had in France.
Like you said in your last letter, it has been assumed that men (at least the ones with the economic resources) will live their lives according to their “particular potentialities and interests.” Women, on the other hand, tend to be socialized to find their self-fulfillment as mothers and wives. And, I think it is important here to say that I know women who choose to be home full-time, love their choice, and are fulfilled in their choice. They have made economic sacrifices, but it is worth it to them. Their job is as difficult (and likely more so) than any other job and yet rarely receives the honor and appreciation it deserves. (Except perhaps in some church cultures I know, where I have heard effusive praise for stay-at-home moms, as though this choice is clearly the ideal for all truly godly women. But that is another letter!)
I guess the point I am making here is that these choices in our lives about work and parenting should come from an understanding of one’s own sense of self, situation, and calling, not a predestined expectation based on one’s gender.
What Has to Change
As you said (and I fully agree), gender stereotypes harm both women and men. If men are not expected to be fully relational and nurturing beings, if women do not have more choice in their work and family lives, then both are denied something important about being human.
In your last letter, you got me thinking about how much would really have to change for men and women to co-parent in our society. If we are to create a culture where men and women are seen as equally capable of caring for children, businesses will have to better understand the importance of family life, the government will have to set laws for paternity leave, and most of us would have to change our attitudes about masculinity.
Letha, I loved that link you gave about the research being done in Denmark concerning the importance of gender equality and greater involvement of fathers in childcare. In the article “Men too are competent caregivers,” I found this excerpt particularly helpful:
“When it comes to long-term involvement in the lives of their children, men are confronted with the same contradictions between the demands of work and family life as women – men, however come at this issue “from the other side” so to speak, approaching the family from the perspective of the workplace. Here the man is met with a multitude of barriers: from society, from their workplace culture, and from traditional masculine culture. These obstacles are of an economic, cultural, and psychological nature.”
Rethinking Masculinity as a Key Next Step?
When I spend time thinking about this current historical moment, Letha, I often wonder what the next steps are for feminists. What is the unifying vision? (And should there be one?) Throughout the waves of feminism (and here I apply the term retroactively), women leaders have focused on the abolition of slavery, prison reform, suffrage, access to birth control and reproductive rights, equal pay, racial equality, domestic violence, rape crisis centers, Title IX, etc. But now in 2008, with so much left still to be done, I am not sure that 3rd wave feminists have a clear step laid out for what is next. This is a large question, and I would really like to take a whole other letter to go into more of my thoughts on it, but for now, I ask it alongside our current conversation on parenting and care-giving. I am coming to believe that rethinking parenting—asking for men to be more involved, and supporting them in that as an entire society—is a key next step for gender equality and the goals of feminists. I think that to assume that men are equally relational, and can therefore equally parent, actually touches on something even deeper in our understanding of men, women, and the effects of patriarchy.
A few years back, when I read Carol Gilligan’s book, The Birth of Pleasure, I was first introduced to the idea that patriarchy harms men by assaulting and dismissing the more relational, emotional, intuitive parts of a man. Patriarchy is about maintaining hierarchy and dominance, and when boys are “initiated” into it at a young age, a deep relational sacrifice is often made (or so Gilligan argues). She talks about her work with young boys who are sensitive and highly attuned to relational and emotional dynamics. Yet, when these same boys enter school, a kind of “patriarchal initiation” takes place. Emotional attunement is often seen as a sign of vulnerability and weakness for boys; they learn to stuff that part of themselves. But the really interesting thing about Gilligan’s research is her work with the fathers of these boys.
She writes of the joy the fathers initially have in their sons’ openness and relational capacities, but at the same time, these fathers also see the vulnerability in those qualities and want to protect them (pg. 71). She goes on to write this of the fathers:
“The pleasure they know with their sons evokes memories of themselves at time before a loss they experienced. Men’s conflicts around intimacies are tied to a history that these fathers are coming to remember as they see it repeating in front of their eyes, being played over again from the beginning….Closeness and tenderness with their sons will bring them back into association with parts of themselves that they have hidden. The pain of remembering is that it brings them face-to-face with a loss that was behind them but now is in front of them as they step into a river again with their sons.” (Gilligan, Carol. The Birth of Pleasure. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. p. 71.)
Being connected to their sons meant being connected to themselves, too. Watching their sons endure the pain of initiation into patriarchy was an opportunity for the fathers to grieve deep wounds in their own souls. But for many of these fathers, the memories and grieving of their own loss was too painful. Watching the vulnerability of their sons was also too painful. It seemed easier to “protect” their sons and teach them to fulfill the expectations of masculinity that require being emotionally “tough” and on-top and essentially disconnected from relationship.
I wonder what would happen in the healing of men’s hearts if they were given permission and expected to see themselves as equally capable of nurturing, emoting, care-giving, and parenting. Perhaps, there would be a profound invitation in that new expectation of masculinity. I think for feminism to continue to stay vital in my generation and foster truer partnerships, it must somehow communicate to men what is at stake— not just for women, but for the wholeness of their own lives, too.
Your friend,
Kimberly
Dear Kimberly,
It was great reading your personal “observational study” of fathers and children delighting in their time together! And thank you for sharing your honest inner struggles as you’ve been noticing how these warm, happy scenes contradict the more rigid gender-based trait assignments that you’ve heard about in sermons (namely that women are emotionally equipped for caring for children in a way men are not).
In some ways, I’m amazed to see these old issues of separate “spheres” or “roles” rising up again in the 21st century. You ended your last post by referring to the wise comments of one of our readers who enjoys being a stay-at-home-dad while his wife works in a profession she enjoys outside the home. He talked about how much he and his wife love each other and their children and said, “In the end that should be all that matters, not what gender is doing what.”
And he’s right. His remark reminded me of a story I heard a woman tell years ago. She said when she was a young child, their busy mother had asked her brother to help out by washing the dishes or some such chore he didn’t think the male sex should have to do. “I’m not doing that! That’s girls’ work!” he protested. Without missing a beat, their mother said, “Work doesn’t care who does it. It just needs to get done! Now get busy!”
Biologically Determined Destiny?
But in spite of the common sense idea that tasks just need to be taken care of and “work doesn’t know or care who does it,” there’s a kind of gender predestination that has often been assumed. Aileen S. Kraditor, in studying the history of American feminism, summarized the assumptions behind this notion:
Strictly speaking, men have never had a ‘proper sphere,’ since their sphere has been the world and all its activities. They have always been, accordingly, human beings who happened to be male. Women, on the contrary, have occupied sharply circumscribed spheres — the home, the church, the philanthropic society, or sewing circle — regardless of differences among individuals in talents and tastes, and have, accordingly been thought of as females who happen to be human.” (Italics added. Aileeen S. Kraditor, ed., Up from the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968, p. 10.)
Kraditor points out that it was taken for granted that what men would do with their lives depended on their particular potentialities and interests and could vary greatly. But what women would do with their lives was determined not by choice or talents but by by their gender alone. “Thus, it was proper for men to live for themselves — to achieve self-fulfillment by developing their individual talents — whereas women should live for others — to achieve self-fulfillment by caring for their husbands and children. Church and charity work was a logical extension of that role outside the home and hence was socially acceptable” (p.10).
Except that the church, too, has insisted on separate spheres for women and men! (You and I have already talked about that in our discussion of some pastors’ fears about “feminization of the church,” and I’m sure we’ll return to it again.) It’s no wonder a lot of people are confused!
The Nurturance Question
While women were expected to find their fulfillment in the home and denied it in the world at large, men were expected to find their fulfillment in the world at large and denied it in the home. Both genders get cheated in that way of thinking.
As you know, I like to keep all of this in historical perspective. We’ve already talked about the vast changes that occurred with the industrial revolution and later with World War II when women by necessity had to be both wage-earners and homemakers while so many men were away fighting in the war. But afterwards there was a great period of transition. War-related industries were no longer needed, factories were closing, and men were returning from military service and needed jobs. Historian William Chafe summed up the problem:
“The movement from a wartime to a peacetime economy threatened the advances women had made and raised directly the question of women’s future economic role. Would female workers return to the home, or would they stay on the job? More important, would the nation allow wives and mothers to continue working, if to do so posed a threat to employment for men just back from battle?”
(William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Role, 1920-1970, Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 175)
During this transition period, politicians, magazine writers, social scientists, preachers, and others began calling for a restoration of traditional gender patterns in the family structure. Fathers were expected to head households and support the family while mothers stayed home caring for the house and children.
Many women who had been in the labor force resisted, but they were swimming against a powerful tide. Discrimination was widespread, not only in wages but also in barriers erected. Chafe reports that in 1948, medical schools had a quota permitting women to make up no more than 5 per cent of students admitted. He also writes that “70 per cent of all hospitals refused to accept female interns; and medical associations like the New York Obstetrical Society barred women members” (pp. 184-85). The numbers of women aspiring to enter law and other professions declined.
To justify the sending of women back to the kitchen, biological arguments about women’s nature were brought forward, along with religious, psychological, and other arguments. That was the background of the 1950s that I wrote about in my last letter. It was a lonely time for a budding young feminist like me, since I was doing the same kind of questioning as you’re doing now, Kimberly, but with extremely little social support.
Then came the 1960s and 1970s when women with similar questions began speaking out and meeting each other. Traditional gender attitudes were being challenged as women listened to their own hearts and heads and insisted on their right to educational and occupational opportunities. And not surprisingly, the old biological arguments emerged again in a terrific backlash. (Actually they had never really gone away.) A political leader claimed women’s “raging storms of monthly hormonal imbalances” made them unfit for high government positions. If a woman wasn’t ecstatic about cooking, cleaning, and caring for her children and husband, with no other outlets for her intellect and energy, she was told that something was wrong with her psychologically.
Women’s physical makeup was said to uniquely fit them for childcare. The message came from all directions. As a young mother in the late 1950s, I had thought of Dr. Benjamin Spock as a very common sense sort of person. I still have a well worn 1957 edition of Baby and Child Care in which he starts out with the reassuring statement to parents: “You know more than you think you do. . . . Don’t take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don’t be overawed by what the experts say. Don’t be afraid to trust your own common sense.” And yet, I have in my files an old copy of an article he wrote in Redbook magazine in 1969 which contains this paragraph:
“Biologically and temperamentally, I believe, women were made to be concerned first and foremost with child care, husband care and home care (though of course they also are capable of taking on most of the other occupations and interests that have been men’s challenges). But education has interfered with women’s satisfaction . . . . It has persuaded many college-educated women –wrongly, I think — to respect only those occupations that require a university degree — and motherhood is not one of them. This has taken a lot of pride out of child rearing. Imagine how much more fun it was way back in the simple days, when to produce a baby was the greatest miracle any woman could perform — like discovering radium or writing a best seller today.” (Benjamin Spock, M.D., “Mothers Who Try to Be All Things,” Redbook, March, 1969, p. 60)
Dads and Nurturance
As you know, a lot of rethinking has gone on about gender roles in the nearly 40 years since Spock wrote that, but in view of sermons you’re hearing and conversations you’ve been having, I know you agree that we still have a long way to go. You’ve several times mentioned attachment theory and the mother-child studies that have been done. But more and more research has also been done since the studies you read about in your psychology classes, which brings me back to the topic of your September 15 post and your questions about fathers and nurturance.
For some excellent material on the topic, check out the online resources available through the Denmark-based European Fatherhood website, which is designed for researchers and professionals who are concerned with gender equality and greater involvement of fathers in childcare, including taking advantage of the paternity leaves offered in various European countries. You’ll especially enjoy reading “Men too are competent caregivers” by Svend Aage Madsen, Ph.D. who heads the project. Here is just a small sample of what he writes: “The historical and mythological image of the father as distant and absent and of men as unwilling or unable to care for their children is false. Current research has shown men to be just as capable as women at building close affectionate bonds with their infants and in providing the care needed for healthy psychological and social development in the child. Men’s potential as caregivers is strong, and studies have shown that infants’ attachment to a primary caregiver is gender neutral.” He goes on to discuss the barriers against developing this potential and points out the need for changes in attitudes about masculinity and the workplace culture.
It’s all about balance, Kimberly, for both men and women. Both the instrumental and expressive sides of life are important for all of us as human beings. Since both women and men are made in God’s image, I believe all of us should be reflecting both aspects of life — the love side and the work side, in whatever ways either is expressed. How we do it is a matter for individuals, couples, and families to decide.
Again, I’ve gone on for too long! I guess we both just have a lot to say. But now I’ll stop.
Your friend,
Letha
Dear Letha,
It is a very curious thing for me to sit back and try to look with a “beginner’s mind” at all these notions our society has about division of labor based on gender. Thank you for offering such a good overview of the historical context. It is so important to see oneself in a historical moment and understand the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the post-WWII era, etc. When I sit in sermons and hear a clear-cut theory of division of labor, I yearn for a historian or a sociologist to stand up and suddenly hijack the pulpit!
Equally Equipped to Nurture?
Letha, this week I have been doing less outside research and more quiet, internal reflection. I have been pausing to consider my own heart as I ask myself the question: “Can men nurture as well as women?”
I think this is a hidden question in some of the division of labor talk; I also think it is easy to assume that women are simply intended by nature to be better at nurturing children and therefore should be the one at home (at least in the context of a heterosexual parenting couple). Our society seems to promote those expectations, which in turn become their own circular arguments and self-fulfilling prophecies.
It seems to me that for biological reasons (i.e., breastfeeding), a mother might have more of a role in a baby’s early months. I know that for myself, I would hope I could spend more time at home when my children are very young, because of concerns around breastfeeding; but after that season of a child’s life, I am not sure why the parenting can’t be a more mutual effort. Even when a mother is breastfeeding, it still seems that this is an important time for both parents to bond with the child. (As I write this letter, I keep hearing the voices of psychology professors wanting to remind me that a child bonds to the mother as the primary caregiver first, and then will grow through the oedipal stage when he or she work out their relationship with both caregivers. But, as I said in my previous letter, I have never been impressed with that theory. It seems like a theory “perfect” for a post-Industrial Revolution society, and one that does not encompass the actual diversity of family life.)
Beginning to See More
You know how when you are pondering something, trying to tease out a knot in your thinking, life itself seems to become your own teacher? I have felt that way this past week as I have pondered my simple question, “Can men nurture as well as women?” The loveliest moments seems to keep presenting themselves to me.
Maybe it is because I am simply noticing more, maybe it is because I am looking for it, or maybe it is because the universe really wants to tell me something—but I keep seeing these small scenes of fathers with their young children. I have seen several dads out with strollers, some with another child attached to their other hand, trotting along beside them. This Saturday morning I couldn’t help but smile when I saw a dad and his elementary- aged daughter (both of them still in plaid pajamas and bathrobes and slippers) walking home from the neighborhood coffee shop, obviously enjoying their Saturday morning father-daughter stroll.
Then, my favorite moment this past week was in the middle of a workday when I was beginning to pen this very letter to you. I was sitting in the sun outside a Jamba Juice store and noticed a toddler and his father a few feet away from me. The father kept trying to coax the child to keep on walking beside him, but the young boy seemed to have his feet stuck to the pavement and his head looking at every bird in the sky. The young child was sort of absent-mindedly stubborn, and I wasn’t sure quite what the coaxing father would do.
Finally, the father walked away, with his child still planted there, and I was momentarily concerned that the dad was frustrated or being negligent with his son. I had nothing really to worry about—the father was just headed to a nearby garbage can to throw away some things he was carrying, so he could free his hands. He quickly returned to his son, knelt down, and ever so tenderly picked him up, snuggled with him, and walked off with his son bouncing along on his hip. I couldn’t help smiling at the scene. The dad looked over and saw me smiling, and explained with a sense of humor, “Now we can make a little more progress today.”
Noticing Unconscious Expectations
I write about this small, passing moment not because it can somehow give an answer to my question, but rather because the moment provided a mirror for my own expectations. I had found myself growing quite anxious as I watched the above scene unfold. I realized I was expecting the dad to be impatient, and I would not have felt the same way if the parent had been the mother. I had to admit to myself that because of conditioning deep within me, I don’t expect men to have the same tender caregiving capacity as women.
As the father embraced his son, I felt a pang of shame within me. It is not fair or right for me to hold such an unconscious attitude towards men, which is really quite marginalizing to half the human race. Then today, I saw the comment from J. Davidson, one of our readers, and was further challenged to imagine how some men must feel discriminated against. He primarily stays at home with his kids while his wife works full-time outside the home. He has this to say:
“It is interesting to me to watch the reactions of different people when they learn of our ‘roles’ at home. The worst reactions tend to come from the fundamentalist Christian folks and that is sad. My wife is a great person, she loves her family. I love my family. In the end that should be all that matters not what gender is doing what.”
He said it so well. (See his full comment in response to our September 10 post.) We need to love our families, bottom line. What is important is not “what each gender is doing” but that kids know they are treasured, prioritized, and loved. And there are so many more ways to do this than just following one so-called “traditional” formula (which may work well for some, but certainly not everyone). Women should not be seen as “selfish” for pursuing careers they love or simply working out of necessity, and men should not be seen as somehow lesser men for choosing to be at home to teach and nurture their kids. Both judgments are unfair, and are missing what really matters: that each couple decides how to best care for their families.
Thanks again for writing, Letha. I so enjoy thinking through these issues with you. (And to our readers, even though I am not able to respond to the comments right now, please know that I so appreciate the perspectives you bring!)
Your friend,
Kimberly
Dear Kimberly,
In my post last week, I promised to tell more of my own story and continue where I left off on July 30 when we began the discussion of our reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique from our different generational vantage points. But now, in view of the struggles you voiced in your last letter about the controversy over McCain’s choice of Palin as his vice-presidential choice and the questions raised about sexism and work-family balance, I’d like to talk a bit about your concerns first. Actually, it all fits together.
I’ll start by making some general comments and then go into some more history. I think it may help shed light on why these questions about work and family are coming up right now (which goes with what I was planning to write in my next letter anyway!).
Some General Comments
First, the general comments: Any time that two adults are raising children — whether they are a traditional husband and wife, or a grandmother and grandfather thrust by circumstances into responsibility for their grandchildren, or a gay male couple, or a lesbian couple, or even two friends sharing a home (such as some are doing while their spouses are away in military service) — they are going to have to work out some division of labor to keep the household running smoothly. It has to be something that works for them, for their individual situation — not dictated from the outside.
There are all sorts of needs to to consider in working out a suitable plan: economic needs, practical needs, nurturing/expressive needs, and social needs — just to name some of the main concerns that come to mind.
Economic needs mean one or both adults must work to earn the money — and to pay bills and manage the money earned. Practical needs mean someone has to take the trash out, shop for groceries, cook meals, do laundry, keep the house clean, arrange appointments with doctors and dentists, and so on.
Nurturing needs point to the importance of working out ways to assure that children are safe and cared for at all times. Nurturing also means finding ways to attend to everything from cuddling to potty training to providing listening ears, shoulders to cry on, kisses to plant on tearful faces and scraped knees. It means teaching children how to be strong, responsible, compassionate human beings who care about their world and grow up to contribute to it. For people of religious faith, there is also a spiritual dimension to child rearing.
Social needs mean recognizing the importance of children’s relationships outside the home and guiding children in their involvement with school, church, and community, their peers, the extended family of relatives, and any others who come into their lives over the years. There is also the larger outside world that comes to us through television, movies, printed materials, advertisements, and the Internet; and children need guidance in relating to all of these as well.
Working It All Out
Working out all these details in a particular household’s division of labor is never easy, Kimberly, and you and I are both aware that the workplace hasn’t helped much. Many employers have been reluctant to allow flexibility in work hours or telecommuting, or they insist on an employee’s availability for after-hours work or require travel on business with little advance notice. Finding excellent child care for times when a parent must leave children in the care of another is also hard to come by. And many employers do not provide adequate leave time for such situations as when children are home from school because of illness. If coupled parents have problems of this sort, the situation for single parents requires even greater heroism to keep the family going.
The important thing to remember is that until society remedies some of these problems, every couple must work out whatever works best for them. That may vary greatly from family to family. And from individual to individual. Temperaments, energy-levels, and personalities differ, too. Some parents are able to take on “super mom” or “super dad” roles at various times; others find it difficult if not impossible to “have it all” or “do it all” when it comes to balancing work and family.
There’s no reason to criticize or judge the couple who chooses to have one stay-at-home parent (it could be either one) while the other is in the paid workforce (though being a one-income family is increasingly difficult in this economy). Nor should we judge the couple who chooses to alternate each person’s work schedule so that one of them is always with the children, even though it may mean sacrificing much of their own time together. Nor should we criticize the couple who chooses day-care arrangements so that both can be employed. Similarly, we have no right to judge the couple who chooses to have no children at all. The choices are up to each individual couple.
The Problem of a Gender-Based Division of Labor
So why does this topic of work and family generate so many inner struggles and outer conflicts? Because outside forces have insisted on dictating the division of labor — and dictating that it be based on gender.
In my previous letter (Sept. 3 post), I wrote about the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially the Victorian era, when masculine identity required separating the “spheres” in which men and women functioned. Men claimed the public sphere and women were assigned the private sphere of the home.
To sell this idea, writes Betty DeBerg, men “sensed they must make domesticity look sweet in order to keep women within its confines,” and thus “they produced a sentimental, gushing exaltation of home, woman, and motherhood. Never before had women been praised so highly, nor had their day-to-day lives been described as being so worthy and vital. Women were given an important social role that only they could fill” (Betty DeBerg, Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism. Fortress Press, 1990, Fortress Press, p.23).
Being a Wife and Mother in the 1950s
During the 1950s, there was a revival of placing homemakers on a pedestal, with homemaking and child rearing being touted as a woman’s highest calling. The message was everywhere — from pulpits to politics. Television was coming into its own during that decade as more homes purchased TV sets; and programs like Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave It to Beaver were popular. The image projected on television and in magazines was one of a woman who, while her husband was off earning enough to support the family on his one income, stayed behind to make their suburban home a refuge to which her husband and school-age children returned late each day from the demanding world outside. She was always impeccably dressed as she spent her days cheerfully cleaning, cooking, and caring for their youngest children in a suburban home equipped with the latest appliances and household products. The corporate world which offered those products adored her.
The model housewife, in this 1950s view, lived to serve her family and keep her husband and children happy, meeting their every need. Any aspirations or needs she had for fulfillment of her own beyond this model were considered “selfish.”
“Some Day My Prince Will Come”
In 1956, Grace Kelley, the movie star, married Prince Ranier of Monaco in a lavish ceremony attended by the rich and famous and broadcast on television. It seemed all the world was starry-eyed about weddings that year as the media romanticized the couple’s courtship and marriage. Grace Kelley gave up her film career and was given the title, “Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco.”
Many young girls saw it as proof that fairy tales were real after all. They could hope that “someday their prince would come,” too, and they would live happily ever after, devoting their lives to pleasing a handsome husband and beautiful children — maybe not in a palace but at least in a lovely home in the suburbs. That was the prevailing ethos of the times. It was the middle-class dream, and virtually every aspect of society promoted it.
And that was the same year in which I was married.
Marrying Young
Women were expected to marry young (the average age at marriage for women in 1956 was 20.1 years) and they were expected not to delay childbearing. I fit the demographic well by marrying at 20.75 years. And by my 25th birthday was expecting my second child.
Between the Two “Glorification of Homemaking” Time Periods
But in between the Victorian idealization of the homemaking role as the be-all-end-all of a woman’s life and the revival of that image in the 1950s, a lot had been happening, including World War II. During that time, huge numbers of women had entered the workforce to fill essential jobs that had been left by the men sent off to war. Education was making a difference, too. Women were changing. They had become aware of other dimensions of life beyond the home, and they weren’t ready to accept the messages that told them being a wife, mother, and homemaker was a woman’s greatest achievement and that a woman should find satisfaction in that alone.
The backlash and efforts to keep women at home were tremendous, as Friedan pointed out in her book.
No one was saying that love and marriage and motherhood were not important. They just couldn’t be the whole of a woman’s existence! Of course, questions about a man’s role were also beginning to be raised. Balance, equality, and choice were what were being sought.
But this letter is already too long, Kim. In my next letter, I want to tell you how I started writing about these matters in my earliest articles in the 1960s, a time when questioning the role of women was highly unusual in the evangelical circles to which I belonged.
But I think I’ve said enough here to give you an idea of what it was like to be a homemaker at the time I was a young wife and mother and why the time was ripe for the second wave women’s movement.
And it’s really not too surprising to see questions about “women’s place” and balancing work and family back in the news today. What is surprising is to see where it’s coming from — especially from points along the religious and political spectrum where it was once said to be settled once and for all, often by simply quoting a Bible verse!
Your friend,
Letha
Letha,
I know this is a new direction from our letters this past week, but I need to talk to you about the election! Specifically, about sexism. My good friend Stacy came storming into my kitchen last night ready to explode after listening to CNN all day, and hearing the comments about whether a woman can be a mom and a Vice-President.
To give you a taste of her frustration, CNN’s John Roberts has recently mused about Sarah Palin’s relationship with her youngest child. He is quoted as saying, “Children with Down syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of vice president, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?”
Why oh why oh why are those questions not asked of fathers? Has anyone questioned Barack Obama about how he plans to balance being the president and not miss out on important years of his young daughters’ lives? Of course they don’t, because they assume Michelle Obama will take care of things.
I sat at the kitchen table with Stacy trying to process why these kinds of comments are fair game to throw at a female candidate, when a male candidate would not be addressed with them.
Balancing Work and Family
But to be honest, deep down I had to wonder if I had some of the same doubts in myself that I had seen in the media. For a moment, I had to wonder (again) how a woman really balances family and work: I had to ask myself if I really believed that mothers should have equal opportunities as fathers when it comes to pursuing work outside their families. I am not a mother, so I have to question myself in general when I make any claims about parenting. I do know that John Roberts is not the only person asking the question he voiced on TV, and it is important to talk about the assumptions he is making when he asks that question. It is so easy to look at a powerful, ambitious career woman with a young child and question her priorities, when most of us would never look at a man with that kind of suspicion. A woman looks “selfish” while a man looks successful.
My friend Stacy, who is a sister feminist and a specialist in early child development, became a good sounding board for my honest struggling. We had studied attachment theory together in our psychology grad program, so we had already talked quite a bit about how mothers are assumed to be the primary parent, and are so often the first person blamed when children are struggling. I peppered Stacy with my questions:
• Should mothers really have more of a role in parenting than fathers? Why?
• Are women innately built to be the primary caregiver or is that just something we have made-up?
• What about breastfeeding? How long in the baby’s early months should a mother be more available than a father because of breast-feeding? Biology has something to do with this conversation.
• Post the breast-feeding season in an infant’s life, why can’t fathers take over many of the day-to-day responsibilities that so often mothers are assumed to do? Why are so many child-rearing tasks given to women?
I have heard the answers from the perspective of attachment theory—I have studied that a child bonds to a primary caregiver (usually the mother) and that disrupting that bond is harmful. I am just not convinced the theory works across different times, cultures, and ways of parenting.
The more we talked and the more I went back to basic questions and assumptions, the more I questioned again how our society marginalizes the role of fathers, and assumes that women do the vast percentage of parenting. If men were simply expected to parent as well as and as much as women, might we find that they are equally capable of the task? On the other hand, even in the case of highly involved fathers, how do “normal” mothers (read mothers who don’t have as much money and resources) balance careers and young children, when so much of the typical work environment is not set up to accommodate the practical needs of family life?
“Supermom” Status
While the skeptical words from people like John Roberts bother me, I am getting equally perplexed by how others want to play up the allure of Palin’s “supermom” status. Since when does being a supermom equate to having the credentials to be Vice-President of the United States? Why is there so much focus on her role as a mother? While it is understandable to show appreciation for Palin’s role as a mother, what we should be talking about are issues like her position on global warming, health care, the war in Iraq, and the economy, not her baby or her daughter’s pregnancy. What a grande distraction from the real issues! These concerns would not be the focus if Palin was a man.
Even in the midst of all the Palin adoration at the Republic National Convention, I still sense she is not being treated as an equal at all, but as a token woman being used to rally emotions. And that frustrates me as much as the outright misogyny and pejorative language that assailed Hillary Rhodham Clinton. Michelle Obama, too, has had to contend with sexism – and racism as well.
Spotlight on Double Standards
What I both love and hate about gender issues in this presidential election is that the double standards are being held up under a very bright spotlight. Male and female candidates are not evaluated the same way, and there is not enough critical thinking as to why. Regardless of which candidates we would vote for in November, it seems clear that all of us who care about gender justice—whether voting Republican or Democrat— should be in conversation about the nature of sexism in this election.
Do you remember when John McCain laughed like nearly everyone else in the room when someone in an audience asked him, “How do we beat the bitch?” He actually smiled, made a joke, and then called the remark an “excellent question.” Would he dare have responded in such a cavalier way if someone had applied an equally derogatory and racial term to describe Obama? McCain’s response is a perfect picture of why sexism has not gone away: consciously or unconsciously, many people treat sexism not as a serious issue, but as something that can be dismissed or laughed at.
Different Kinds of Sexism
And yet, there are very different kinds of sexism at play in this election. Calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a “bitch” is one form; judging or lauding a potential Vice-President on the basis of her role as a mother is quite a different form, but it is still just as dangerous.
Whether a woman is being assailed or idealized on the basis of her sex, there really is little difference. In neither case is she being treated equally to a male candidate, who is not being evaluated based on his gender, how well he fits a gender role, or how well he parents. So, while the sexism at play with Hillary Rodhman Clinton might look completely different than the adoration given Palin by some enthusiastic voters, I would argue that there really is little difference at all. I had a psychopathology professor in grad school who always said that devaluation and idealization are essentially the same psychological defenses, and they always are packaged together. We humans are prone to loving and hating and setting up splits.
However one feels about the respective positions of John McCain or Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sarah Palin, it should be clear now that sexism is alive and well in this country, that it is insidious, and that it influences politics. If there is anything redeeming about the sexism at work in this current election, it is that what is so often hidden to many people’s eyes should now be quite visible.
So, Letha, those are my thoughts after following the election this week. I am curious what you are thinking as you observe the events unfold?
Your friend,
Kimberly
Dear Kimberly,
It’s hard to know where to begin in responding to your last letter — and especially the link to the video in which the pastor labeled sensitive, gentle, kind, caring, men as “chickified.”
What is it about these male supremacist guys and their preoccupation with chickens? When I lived in Indiana, I was listening to a Christian radio call-in program on March 21, 1967 when a woman called the program and asked why women couldn’t preach and teach in the church. The preacher hosting the program replied that ministry is for men only and that it’s for “a very good reason.” I expected him to argue from some Scripture verse, but no, his “very good reason” was this: “God made roosters to crow and hens to lay eggs.”
I’m not kidding! And he let it go at that — obviously not taking a sincere inquirer’s question seriously. I immediately wrote down the exchange to use in a book I was planning to write on Christian women in the home, church, and society. The anecdote became the epigraph for the chapter on “The Church’s Wasted Gifts” in All We’re Meant to Be, the book Nancy Hardesty and I coauthored a few years later — which was, of course the book that you read this past April and then contacted me for the first time.
Women Won’t Turn Back
I noticed that you ended your last post with a fear that because of warnings such as those on the “chickified” men video, “somehow all the work of women pioneers is going to be unwound, and the next generation of Christian women is going to inherit this harmful neo-fundamentalism.” No, Kimberly, I think you can relax. That’s not going to happen. Too much progress has been made in the advancement of women, and we aren’t going to reverse direction — although sadly, some women might reject not only the discriminatory teachings of some churches but will reject Christianity as a whole. But the exciting historical, psychological, sociological, and biblical/theological scholarship that took place under second wave feminism has made us women more aware than ever where we once were. And we don’t want to go there ever again.
A number of years ago, I read a statement claiming that the church is probably the only institution remaining where discrimination against women is elevated to the level of principle! But thoughtful, gifted, educated women have been and are continuing to reject second-class status in the church – no matter how loudly certain preachers use “separate but equal” language. Our country has already discarded that kind of reasoning regarding racial injustice, and such reasoning cannot be permitted to excuse gender injustice.
Warnings about “Feminization of the Church” Aren’t New
The emphasis on distinct gender roles to avoid the “the feminization of the church” is nothing new. Many historians have pointed out the vast changes that took place in Europe and America during the industrial revolution as movement from a rural economy to wage work in cities brought about vast social changes. Such changes — including gender expectations — brought fear of chaos and a yearning for order.
Historian and theology professor Betty DeBerg points out that the social upheaval made men unsure of how to prove their manliness. She writes, “Defining and experiencing manhood by relying on the traditional male prerogatives of land, skilled and physically demanding labor, and patriarchy became very difficult over the course of the industrial revolution”( Betty A.Deberg, Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism, Fortress Press, 1990, p.17).
One solution was to assign men and women entirely separate “spheres.” She quotes Barbara Berg’s statement that “Men may not have known who they were or what characteristics they had, but by insisting that women had all the weak and inferior traits, they at least knew what they were not” (Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism: The Woman and the City, 1800-1860, Oxford, 1978, p. 73).
Women’s participation in the economic and political world was limited at the same time women’s role in the home was being exalted. The “cult of domesticity” or the “cult of true womanhood” grew up. Home was a haven, and women were the keepers of morality and civility. Language about the business world as a jungle to be conquered or a battle to be fought provided a way for men to redefine their manliness, and they could take pride in their role as sole provider for their families. (Of course, this description applied only to privileged, white, middle-class families, who actually came to define success and achievement of middle-class status by a husband’s ability to be sole support of his family.)
DeBerg writes:
The stability of the economic warrior (or breadwinner) symbol depended on keeping women out of the male sphere of business, labor, politics, and government. Women were assigned to the home, where they would not jeopardize, symbolically or practically, the deep and unambiguous sense of manhood fostered in and dependent on an exclusively male workplace and public domain (p. 19).
The home came to be considered a refuge from the world of work, the “jungle” out there, and homemaking and motherhood came to be considered a full-time vocation. Along with this, says Deberg, “the church was relegated to the private domestic sphere and virtually conceded to women” (p. 21).
But by the 1880s, the influence of women in the churches was worrying the male clergy. DeBerg’s research convinced her that “at least one part of the fundamentalist agenda was to regain the church for men.” She continues:
To achieve that end, fundamentalist ministers, uncomfortable with a feminized institution, worked on two fronts. They attempted, first to diminish women’s influence and power by calling into question the legitimacy of women speaking and holding positions of authority within the church. Second, they replaced feminized Christianity with a language of virility, militarism, and Christian heroism. (p. 76)
Sound familiar?
A Promise to Answer Your Questions about My Own Feminist Journey
I realize I have gone through all this historical background of 19th century and early 20th century gender-role attitudes without answering your questions at the end of your last letter about my own mid-20th century feminist journey. You asked what life was life for me when I first started my work and how I compare those times to today. So rather than make this letter any longer, I am going to post an extra letter to tell you something about my own journey as a Christian feminist writer. I’ll take up where I left off in my July 30 post when we were discussing our thoughts about The Feminine Mystique.
Talk to you again soon!
Your friend,
Letha
Dear Letha,
As I sit down to write this letter, I find myself sipping tea, listening to Rachmaninoff, and surrounded by many piles of books and articles! I have been delighted this evening to have several hours to read, and I somehow ended up reading about inspiring Quaker women of the past including Margaret Fell, Lucretia Mott, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke. Once again, I am amazed by how little is new under the sun: all of these women suffered from the same kind of ridicule and prejudice that infects our churches today. All were criticized for speaking publicly, being leaders, and pushing the norms on the “role” of women. None quite fit the popular expectations of “femininity.” The more I read the inspiring words of these writers, the more I experienced a physical sensation of being thirsty for their stories.
Margaret Fell (the wife of George Fox) was a Quaker preacher and advocate for women’s rights in the church in the 1600s. She penned brilliant exegesis for the same Biblical passages that are still being used to keep women silent (I Corinthians 14:34-35 and I Timothy 2:11-12.) I love her passion when she writes, “And how are the men of this generation blinded, that they bring these Scriptures and pervert the Apostle’s Words, and corrupt his intent in speaking them?” She believed the oppression of women came from “The Spirit of Darkness,” and cites over and over the Biblical precedents for women having powerful and prophetic voices.
The Grimke sisters, who spoke publicly against slavery, were chided by a group of ministers for stepping out of a “woman’s proper sphere” in the course of their work as abolitionists. As you know, women were not expected to be so bold as to speak publicly to mixed company. In response to the ministers, Sarah then wrote the “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes.” Angelina also wrote a fascinating letter on “Human Rights Not Founded on Sex,” in which she talks about the “anti-Christian doctrine of masculine and feminine virtues.” Men, she says, have been “converted into the warrior and clothed with sternness” and women have been taught to be an “appendage of his being.” (I thought to myself how men are still being trained to be warriors to show their masculinity.) She also discusses how hierarchy between men and women brings out the worst traits in them both. Men grow dictatorial and selfish, and women are admired merely for their “personal charm,” and are “robbed of the right to think and speak and act on all great moral questions, just as men think and speak and act.”
Within Every Binary is Hierarchy
Reading these writers, I thought of your last post, Letha, when you talked about the carefully demarcated rules for “masculinity” and “femininity.” For hundreds of years women have been decrying these false, “anti-Christian doctrine[s] of masculine and feminine virtues.” (I love how Angelina Grimke says that!) As you noted, these virtues based on gender expectations are really in place to keep a hierarchy of traits—to keep in place male authority. One of my favorite writers, the psychoanalyst Muriel Dimen, says that within every binary exists a hierarchy. And that is certainly true of the way gender and gender roles are getting defined by many powerful, complementarian Christian leaders.
In your last post, you mentioned how some men (like Podles) fear “feminization.” That comment really got me quite worked up (as you already know because I called you almost immediately after reading your letter!) The reason I responded so strongly is because I hear many evangelical male leaders talk about the need for men to reject “femininity” and return to “masculine” traits. What they are really doing is teaching men to devalue aspects of themselves not considered masculine. And when they devalue the so-called feminine aspects of themselves, how will they not devalue those very traits when they see them in women? Of course this dogma of Christian manhood feeds not just on sexism but on homophobia, too; if men are taught that being a certain way makes them look “gay,” then of course their fear will drive them to shame and cut off parts of themselves that don’t fit the “warrior,” heterosexual model of manhood.
I was talking to a man just this week who shared with me some about his early initiation stories of boyhood. Crying “outed” him from the group and got him called a “girl.” When he did something considered weak, he was demoted to the other sex! It seems some of the playground bullies now occupy pulpits, because I have heard similar language coming from pastors, like Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church here in Seattle. (Only Mark doesn’t call these “weak” men “girls,” but instead likes to label them “chickified.” If you want to watch a 5-minute excerpt guaranteed to raise your blood pressure, watch this video of Driscoll’s teaching on the subject.)
How Far Have We Come?
Letha, when I hear pastors like Driscoll, I get frightened that somehow all the work of women pioneers is going to be unwound, and the next generation of Christian women is going to inherit this harmful neo-fundamentalism. How far do you think we have come? What was life like for you when you first started your work, and how do you compare those times to today?
Yours,
Kimberly
Dear Kimberly,
I loved your “Mr. and Mrs. Christian” wordplay on the “Mr. and Mrs. Human” title that I used for my previous post. Yes. sadly, many churches still teach that a woman finds her true identity in her relationship to a man — that he is the primary entity, complete as a human being, representing the family to the world as the head of the household. The woman is his “Mrs.” The two have become one, and the one is considered to be the husband, with the the family’s life centered around his career, his wishes, his life. Until fairly recently, U.S. laws and customs supported that idea in many different ways, and even the woman’s own name was likely to be lost, subsumed under that of her husband (”Mrs. John Doe”– or in the Bible, Lot’s wife). Una Stannard has written a fascinating and well-researched book with the title, Mrs Man, tracing the story of feminism through the history of married women’s names. Maybe that’s a topic we should discuss here sometime. But let’s save that for another time.
Those Female Submission Teachings Keep Recurring!
You mentioned that you were shocked recently to hear a pastor say that women are “submissive by nature” and that (according to that pastor’s interpretation of Ephesians 5 and other passages) female subordination teachings were about something more than hierarchical home governance in which the wife was considered responsible to submit only to her husband, as you had heard as a teenager. As you indicated, that teaching had been troublesome enough, but at least tolerable in the way your 16-year-old mind reasoned through it at the time.
Yes, sometimes these interpretations of Scripture are taken to extreme lengths! After I had spoken about gender issues at a college several years ago, a young woman came up to me and told of her first (and last!) date with a young man who told her that to be true to Scripture, she was responsible to submit to him simply because he was a man. She was indignant! “Submit to you! I’ve just gone out with you for the first time, and you think you have authority over me!” That was the end of that date. (It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the young man could have used that teaching to his own advantage!)
In the present time, these headship-subordination teachings are coming up all over again — if they ever left in the first place. There seems to be a backlash, particularly among some of the Christians you’ve been encountering from churches in the area where you live. But it shows up everywhere, including in numerous websites and blogs on the Internet!
Differences and Ranking
You said you wondered if some of the strict complementarians (those who believe women and men are equal in God’s sight but have been assigned different but complementary roles in life) are fearful that masculinity will cease to be distinguished from femininity. No doubt that is a big fear. And the anxiety any dominant group has about giving up power is also probably a big factor, as you expressed so well in your August 22 post. But there is something else going on, as Judith M. Bardwick and Elizabeth Douvan wrote around the time that second wave feminism was gaining impetus:
In spite of an egalitarian ideal in which the roles and contributions of the sexes are declared to be equal and complementary, both men and women esteem masculine qualities and achievements. . . .It is not only that the culture values masculine productivity more than feminine productivity. The essence of the derogation lies in the evolution of the masculine as the yardstick against which everything is measured. Since the sexes are different, women are defined as not-men and that means not good, inferior. It is important to understand that women in this culture, as members of the culture, have internalized these self-destructive values (Judith Bardwick and Elizabeth Douvan, “Ambivalence: The Socialization of Women,” Chapter 9 in Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, edited by Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran,Basic Books, 1971).
Fear of Feminization
You asked if I was familiar with Leon Podles’s book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. I haven’t read it, but yes, I have heard of it — and numerous other recent books issuing similar warnings. What do they want — the Church Militant? Have they read the Sermon on the Mount that turns upside down the world’s way of thinking about power?
In the Stephen Clark book I quoted in my post last week, he spells out what he means when he tells men not to hang around with their wives too much lest they become feminized. Clark writes: “A feminized male is a male who has learned to behave or react in ways that are more appropriate to women . . . . Compared to men who have not been feminized, he will place much higher emphasis and attention on how he feels and how other people feel. He will be much more gentle and handle situations in a ’soft’ way” (Man and Woman in Christ, Servant Books, 1980, p. 636).
In a world so filled with hatred, violence, and war, we need more men who know how to be “much more gentle and handle situations in a ’soft’ way.” The problem is that femaleness is associated with weakness in the minds of many people. I think about the Apostle Paul’s list of traits that should characterize all of us as Christian believers. I’m so glad he didn’t wrap them in pink and label them “for women only” so that men could feel free to ignore them! Jesus said that we will be known by the fruit that our lives bear. And Paul told us what that fruit should be. “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control” (Gal 5:22-23,NRSV).
Kimberly, you and I both know this has nothing to do with gender roles — even though in a different context some people would label most, if not all, of the characteristics Paul listed as feminine characteristics. Nor do those characteristics signify weakness. Somehow, we need to keep getting out that message and help men to see they have nothing to fear. Many Christian women need such assurance, too, especially if they attend churches that teach them that even their doubts and questions about gender roles is rebellion against God.
There is so much more to say about this, but I’m sure we’ll be discussing all these issues a lot more in our future posts!
Your friend,
Letha
Dear Letha,
Thanks for recommending the essays of Dorothy Sayers. I have not yet read them, but it’s time! I love the distinction her editor makes about male and female being adjectives to describe human, and that the “substantive governs the modifier.” And then when you brought up “Human and Mrs. Human” I think I laughed out loud. That is such an accurate description of what I see happening in several strains of Christianity, only I would say the category becomes “Christian and Mrs. Christian.”
When I discovered faith as a teenager, I remember well that I was not just learning to be a Christian; I was learning to be a “Christian woman.” It was as though Jesus had explained the kingdom of God in blue and pink instructions. If you were a girl Christian, you followed Jesus by being a “lady-in-waiting,” learning your submissive role, nurturing others, and having “a gentle and quiet spirit” (which always seemed to imply a gentle and quiet mouth!)
The timing of these messages was perfect for all of us young girls because we were searching for self-development and curious to understand both our Christianity and our sexuality. I don’t think my story is unique: for many young women today, the Gospel is still getting laced with gender roles that have a significant impact on self-development and self-image.
Gender and the New Fundamentalism
But, I have to admit, compared to what I have been hearing in my late-twenties, the messages of my teens were downright “liberal”!
Recently, I heard a sermon that explained how Christian women are to practice submission and respect what the minister claimed is the “God-given authority of men.” At least in the fundamentalist church I attended in my teens, the pastor explicitly stated that a woman is asked by Scripture to submit only to the headship of her husband—not to all men. (I recall perking up in my seat, thankful for this clarification. As a 16-year-old, I was still nervous about “submission,” but it seemed to me that if I just married a good man, things would be OK. Or at least, that is what I could hope for.)
But the pastor in this recent sermon wanted to emphasize not just a woman’s submission in marriage, but that the nature of femininity is to be submissive—period. I was shocked. He then went on to explain that while Jesus is the consummate male, his submission to the Father models what a women’s submission to male headship ought to look like. Later, I read on this pastor’s blog that he was leading a retreat to teach men to “reject femininity and recover a healthy dose of the masculine spirit in our Christianity.”
So, as you can see, Stephen B. Clark’s ideas that you mentioned in your last letter are alive and well! When you talked about Clark expressing concern that men were being “feminized” by their wives, I thought about the current and quite popular fear surrounding the “feminization” of the church. Have you read the book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by the Catholic writer Leon J. Podles?
I want to assure Podles not to worry so much—Christianity is still quite a ways from being emasculated. As long as its god remains male, and the category of people who get to speak about that god remains male, Christianity will bow to patriarchy, just as Podles and Clark would like it to. So, he needn’t be losing so much sleep over the “feminization” of the church.
Or perhaps he ought to be worried?
Maybe all those writers—Podles and Clark and all their compatriots—are really canaries in the mine, letting us know that patriarchy is not doing particularly well these days. Maybe we are coming up on a moment in history in which things must and will be changing. What do you think?
Maybe this raging debate still happening about gender roles in the church is a desperate effort to return to the “way we never were” as Stephanie Coontz writes about. Maybe in the midst of so much being redefined about men and women in the greater culture, the strategy of many Christians is to find an “issue” in which Christians can supposedly define themselves apart from the culture. I just wish they would pick something Jesus actually talked about. Teaching women that they follow Jesus inasmuch as they learn to cultivate submission in their femininity is a frightening distortion of the Gospel.
What is Behind the Theology?
I often try to figure out why people like Clark or Podles or Wayne Grudem (of the Biblical Council of Manhood and Womanhood) are so concerned with limiting the work and expression of someone based on his or her gender? What attitudes lie behind the fixation with gender roles? Of course, there is likely a cocktail of many reasons. In her work, Stiffed, the feminist writer Susan Faludi does a fascinating job analyzing masculinity in America this past century, and pointing out how the recent generations have been stripped of a clear sense of what masculinity is. I think some of the strict complementarians are frightened that masculinity will lose its distinction from femininity. And to some extent, I have an imagination to sympathize: I, too, think there are differences between men and women and don’t want those eradicated. But, all this language about men and women being “equal” but with “distinct roles” is so often just another effort to erect hierarchy, because within the roles lies a huge power differential.
And that is why I often think that rigid gender roles get promoted when those in power are scared of losing their power, even if they don’t know they are scared. What drives me crazy about so-called “complementarian” theology is that it pretends equality in the midst of an absurd differential of power, authority, voice, platform, etc. I don’t think the human hoarding of power is a rational or conscious process; it’s deeper. It’s Darwin’s survival of the fittest, if you go that route. Or perhaps it is just our sin. The privilege of power means that the status quo protects those on top from having to even acknowledge the imbalance of the system. If those in power were to open their eyes to acknowledge the harm of the power differential, then they will be in the rather awkward position of having to change and give something up.
Letha, I struggle with the last sentence I wrote, because it is exactly the tension I feel when my privilege gets pointed out, too. I like being able to get in my own car and conveniently use all the gas I like to go to a store I like so that I can buy the exact product I like from among the other 30 or so similar products, some likely made by the hand of a child working in a sweatshop or an adult getting paid awful wages— but the bottom line is I get what I want for $3.99. And I have the privilege of not having to think about how I got what I wanted for $3.99. Change that system of economics? Change that distribution of resources? I am not entirely sure I want that. It is so much easier not to let myself become aware of what I’ve got—and especially what others do not have, which is always the corollary.
And I think that principle is in part why we still have Human and Mrs. Human, Christian and Mrs. Christian. There is always a cost to living out actually equality, whether we are talking about sexism or the other host of “isms.” Real justice will disrupt the balance of power and resources: I suspect that behind all this language about “biblical gender roles,” men and women are both afraid of what it might cost to embrace true equality. I know that as a 27-year-old woman, I am still struggling to become who I am, not someone else’s version of who I ought to be.
I always feel like there is so much more to say in these conversations! But for now, I better finish up this letter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Your friend,
Kimberly
Dear Kimberly,
I thought I’d continue our dialogue about our respective readings of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique as we became familiar with it during two different time periods.
I liked the way you summed up the basic message of Friedan’s book in the previous post. I think it really boils down to these questions: What does it mean to be human? And are women human?”
Are Women Human?
There’s a little book titled, Are Women Human? It consists of two essays by the late British writer Dorothy Sayers (known as much for her detective novels about Lord Peter Wimsey as for her scholarly and theological works). The essays were originally part of a larger collection of essays published as Unpopular Opinions in 1947. But because of their common theme, they were separated from the larger collection and published by Eerdmans in 1971 under the title of the first essay, “Are Women Human?”an address Dorothy Sayers had given to a women’s society in 1938.
The book’s introduction was written by Mary McDermott Shideler, who has published numerous writings in theology and psychology. I love the way she describes why Sayers didn’t consider herself a feminist (even though Sayers certainly embraced full equality for women and men). She reasoned that there would be no need for such a movement if only women were recognized simply as part of the human race with the same needs and wants as the male part of the human race. “The liberation of women was not a cause she espoused,” writes Shideler, “but a way of life that she practised on the premises that male and female are adjectives qualifying the noun “human being,” and that the substantive governs the modifier” (p. 7, 1971 edition). Shideler continues her summary by saying that Sayers emphasized that “We are all equal in our creaturehood, whatever our sex, color, age, background, or abilities” and that “the primary work in living, for any human being, is to find and do the work for which he or she was created” (p. 10). Sayers did not think those qualities of age, sex, color, and the like should be the determining factor in the work for which a particular person — a human being — was created.
Human and Mrs. Human
When gender is used to determine one’s worth and destiny as a human being, women find themselves yearning for something more. In other words, they face the “problem that has no name” discussed in The Feminine Mystique. But apparently some religious leaders believe that women are somehow less than fully human.
Years ago, The Christian Century asked me to review a 753-page, heavily footnoted new book that was being used by many conservative theological seminaries. Written by Stephen B. Clark in 1980 and titled Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences, the book was praised by one endorser cited on the jacket as being “both an intellectual tour de force and a practical handbook for Christian survival in the twilight years of the twentieth century.” But what did I find in the book? More of the stereotypical thinking that lies at the root of so many problems experienced by both women and men and society in general.
Clark expressed some of the most extremist views I’ve seen anywhere, including the idea that when men spend too much time with their wives they are in danger of being “feminized.” He wrote that female subordination has been and always will be the will of God. And in commenting on Genesis, he emphasized that “it is the man who is called ‘Man’ or ‘Human’ and not the woman. . . .What we meet at the end of Genesis 4 is Human and his wife” (p. 25). (I wonder if he meant the end of Genesis 2 rather than 4 there? But I’m quoting it as it is in the book.)
When I used that quote in my Christian Century review (March 11, 1981), I added a parenthetical comment that these words reminded me of a letter Henry James once wrote to a friend in which he said, “We talk of you and Mrs. you.” Probably because of that, the Christian Century editors titled my book review, “Human and Mrs. Human.” I thought that was perfect!
Work and Love
If we answer Dorothy Sayers’ question, “Are Women Human?” with a resounding “Yes!’ we then need to ask another question: What does being human mean? Sigmund Freud wrote that “the communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love” (in Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930).
It makes sense then to think of both work and love as essential aspects of being human. Sociologists talk about the instrumental dimension of life (the aspect of life concerned with work and activity) and the expressive dimension (that aspect of life concerned with our feelings and relationships with others).
The problems that occur in attitudes toward both women and men have related to the way these two sides of life are perceived as being divided up, with men seen as concentrating on the doing (the instrumental or work side) and women being seen as providing emotional support and caring (the expressive or love side). Both women and men are then cheated. Work and love are needed by both.
You illustrated that so well in your August 14 post, Kimberly, when you told of what you were feeling in class as you listened to the professor’s theories about “the curse” in the Genesis story of the creation and fall. You said your desire to experience fulfillment in work was as much of an issue for you as the relationship side of life. Being a woman didn’t change that longing to use your talents and achieve. But at the same time you were sure there were men in the class who desired fulfillment in the love side of life and were finding that relating to others was as much of a concern to them as the work side of life. I think you’re so right! it’s balance that is important. And that was the point that Sayers and Friedan emphasized in the past and that others of us right now (you and I included) want to underscore as well.
When I wrote my post on “The Feminine Mystique — Then and Now, Part I,” I had planned to continue my 1963-1964 story in this new post, but I think I’ll save that for the next one. I’m looking forward to your further thoughts on what I’ve written this time.
Your friend,
Letha