Why Should Difference Make Any Difference?

Dear Kimberly,

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my October 11 letter about how gender roles become straitjackets. I’m glad you watched the trailers of the films I mentioned. And I was delighted to hear that you are also familiar with the Dar Williams song, “When I Was a Boy” and even used it as a part of your recent conference workshop!  (The P.S. you added this past week was interesting, too; and it is so good to hear about the special event you and your friends are planning in Seattle to encourage women to exercise their right to vote.)

You made such important points in your October 15  letter, and there’s so much I’d like to reply to; but I’m going to limit myself to two things that especially stood out:  (a) your description of gender fundamentalism and (b) the impact of remembering our childhoods.  Even at that, this will be a long letter since it’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote.

Resurgence of Gender Fundamentalism

First, I was struck by your term, “resurgence of gender fundamentalism,” in describing what some influential pastors are teaching about distinct roles for women and men.  It’s the old “separate spheres’” arguments from earlier times all over again. (Of course, “separate spheres” teachings and customs have never entirely disappeared and are rampant and much more extreme in many other cultures.)

But from what you’ve been hearing from certain pulpits, it seems some 21st century Christian leaders are turning up the volume on such teachings.  They’re loudly insisting that girls and women should not pursue their interests and dreams if they don’t fit with stereotypical notions of femininity (as these pastors define the term).  Otherwise, say these fundamentalist preachers, women are being rebellious against God and subject to God’s judgment.

We need to help people distinguish between femaleness (a biological fact) and femininity (a construct or expected role that societies assign to persons born female and which varies from culture to culture and in different times over history). Because of its link to societal approval, the concept of “femininity” can be used as a weapon to keep strong women from achieving their full potential by calling them “unfeminine” if they refuse to let themselves be fitted into a predefined box (or Procrustean bed, as we discussed in our recent posts).

Kathleen Hall Jamieson says that we women often find ourselves in any one of at least five “double binds” that she lists  in her book, Beyond the Double Bind (Oxford University Press, 1995). One of the double binds is this:  “Women who are considered feminine will be judged incompetent, and women who are competent, unfeminine.” Another double bind suggests that “women who speak out are immodest and will be shamed, while women who are silent will be ignored or dismissed” (p. 16).

A Recent Political Dilemma for Christians Who Take a Patriarchal Approach to Scripture

As we both know so well, conservative Christians who hold strong traditional gender-role views have long insisted that devoted Christian women should be “keepers at home’ and “obedient to their own husbands” (Titus 2: 4-5).  Those who hold these views believe that such instructions are universal principles for all times and cultures and not specific to the situations and cultures at the time they were written.  As a result (as we’ve been discussing in these 72-27 posts), many church leaders continue to tell women their purpose in life is to devote themselves entirely to marriage, housekeeping, and motherhood and to find fulfillment in that alone.  Women who have aspirations for careers in the world beyond the home or who wish to be ordained as clergy for service in the church are told such notions are contrary to their true feminine nature and an indication that they have been influenced by what these pastors like to call “the feminist agenda.”  To such preachers the issue is settled: Men were destined by God to be the leaders, and women to be followers and supporters of the leaders.

Then something unexpected happened during the presidential race of 2008. Along came a socially conservative Christian female vice-presidential candidate who was at the same time a mother with teenagers and young children at home, including a baby with a disability.  Yet, her social and political ideology lined up with those of these pastors and other spokespersons for their viewpoint, and so they were elated to have her on the ticket of their preferred party, even though they had long proclaimed that a woman’s place was in the home.  For some people, that posed a dilemma.

The argument that women may lead a country but may not lead in the home or church

Suddenly, spokespersons for the conservative Christian movement seemed to be scrambling to answer charges of hypocrisy for supporting her candidacy.  The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, Jr., tried to answer such charges in a Washington Post article (Sept. 5, 2008).  He said a woman could be permitted to lead a country and still be Scriptural, even though at the same time she could not be obedient to Scripture if she were to lead a church congregation or claim equal authority to that of her husband in the home.

On a similar note, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), which teaches that God designed men and women to be equal in worth but complementary in roles (the separate-sphere argument again)  has posted on its website a four-part series to answer the question of whether Sarah Palin’s candidacy poses a dilemma for complementarians.  The author of the series reached a conclusion much like Mohler’s — it’s OK for a woman to lead a country but not OK to lead in a church or home.

It’s fascinating to see these discussions taking place among those who were so quick to judge feminism and to claim that if a woman pursued career aspirations outside the home it meant she was negative toward motherhood and not fulfilling her true calling.   Now Christian social conservatives are trying hard to say something quite different in the case of Sarah Palin and yet not sound inconsistent.

The argument that women should not lead anywhere at all!

However, I have also come across the writings of still another minister who believes the views expressed by CBMW and Mahlor don’t go far enough in limiting a woman’s right to hold leadership positions.  Representing an ultra-restrictive approach to the question, this minister said that not only is a woman not permitted to exercise spiritual leadership in the church or home; she is not permitted to lead a city, state, or country either. And  to support his argument, this author even dragged out a quotation from the 16th century reformer John Knox who said,  “To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely [insulting or contemptible] to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice. ”

I immediately recognized the quotation as being from Knox’s angry tract, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which he composed out of the intense loathing he felt toward England’s Mary (”Bloody” Mary)  and Scotland’s Marie de Guise (Mary of Guise), the mother of Mary Queen of Scots, whom Knox later had to deal with as well.

Knox’s loud blast was part of intense political and religious conflict. It was basically not a tract about gender roles per se, but Knox knew that an appeal to the Bible on questions of women’s place would provide a convenient argument to condemn the rule of these particular women.  He understandably despised them because of their power in persecuting Protestant reformers (”Bloody Mary” got her nickname from putting 300 Protestants to death on charges of heresy).  But Knox was condemning women as a group, not certain individuals who were misusing power as individuals.  In any case, Knox felt it was his duty to sound what he called “the first blast to awaken women degenerate.” He  wrote, “‘I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age, that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman shall reign and have empire above man.”

Well, I won’t go on about that any further, Kimberly; it just surprised me to see someone referring to this 16th century treatise to argue that it would be contrary to God’s will for women in the 21st century to aspire to high government positions.

More about Remembering Our Childhoods

In reading your last letter, a second thing that especially struck me was the way you elaborated further on the gender freedom of childhood.  I appreciated your sharing the feelings generated by remembering that period and also how the memories of childhood touched such a deep emotional core among both women and men who attended your workshop.

What you said fits so well with what I was saying last time about how I resonated with the 10-year-old girl in Beth Brickell’s drama, Summer’s End. The energetic free spirit and outdoor activities of the little girl in the film reminded me so much of my own childhood in a tiny Pennsylvania town. And the story took place around the same time period.  I turned 10 in 1945, and the picture on the right was taken shortly before my 10th birthday.  I didn’t have to face the prospect of having my pigtails cut off or permed as Kath did in Summer’s End, but I was becoming uneasy about what it would mean to grow into a young woman and leave behind the carefree, adventurous days of childhood.  I already sensed that whether I wanted to or not, I would be expected to conform to an image that I didn’t think would be the real me.  Would I dare defy those expectations?

“The Girl Within”

In her book, The Girl Within, Emily Hancock writes about the adult women she studied for her doctoral research at Harvard.  Her findings correspond to my own remembered feelings and those that you and your workshop participants also remembered, Kim, even though we’re of different generations. The feelings also match those that were expressed in both Summer’s  End and in the Dar Williams Song, “When I was A Boy.”

Hancock wrote:

It was through the process of telling me about their experiences as adults that women stumbled almost by chance on the girl they had long ago left behind. They themselves were distressed to find that they had lost her — a disturbing insight that often came to them unbidden when they confronted the contrived self that had stolen in to take her place. They were unprepared to find that the task of a woman’s lifetime boils down to reclaiming the authentic identity she’d embodied as a girl. (The Girl Within, Ballantine Books, Fawcett Columbine imprint, 1989, p. 4)

Hancock says that the women in her study at Harvard, along with the scores of women she has talked with since then, have each expressed a similar sense of loss. They couldn’t name what they had lost but they knew something was missing, and they were especially aware of it when they remembered what they had been like at age 9.

There was melancholy and sadness as each woman Hancock spoke with “realized that she had early put this girl aside, replacing her vitality with feminine compliance.” She goes on to describe the women’s composite picture of the 8- to 10-year-old girl as “one who pulls on her blue jeans, packs her own lunch, and gets on her bike to ride to her best friend’s house to build a fort or a tree house. Liberated from the confines of the family, she is proud of her newfound ability to order and direct her life” (p.7).  She collects things — stamps, coins, bugs, stuffed animals, rocks, sea shells.  She may aspire to be a scientist or detective or writer or athlete.  She has confidence, and “no matter what her particular bent, this independent and adventurous girl has many capabilities. . . . Heady with the power that comes from genuine competence, she brims with initiative” (p. 8).

But then something happens. “Suddenly, well before puberty, along comes the culture with the pruning shears, ruthlessly trimming back her spirit” (p. 18).

“Reviving Ophelia”

A similar picture emerges in psychologist Mary Pipher’s best-selling book, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Grosset/Putnam, 1994).  She speaks of our culture as “girl-poisoning.”  Pipher was writing her book more than ten years ago.

In light of how she defined the characteristics of a girl-poisoning culture, I’d say the problem is magnified today.  Her book was based on her observations of what was happening in the lives of young adolescent girls who came to her for therapy with eating disorders, self-mutilation, and suicidal thoughts, as well as less dangerous problems that were nevertheless serious and puzzling.

Pipher writes, “Girls between seven and eleven rarely come to therapy. They don’t need it. I can count on my fingers the girls this age whom I have seen.”  She points out that “most preadolescent girls are marvelous company because they are interested in everything — sports, nature, people, music and books.”  She goes on:

They can be androgynous, having the ability to act actively in any situation regardless of gender role constraints. An androgynous person can comfort a baby or change a tire, cook a meal or chair a meeting. Research has shown that, since they are free to act without worrying if their behavior is feminine or masculine, androgynous adults are the most well adjusted. (p. 18)

Androgyny as Simply Being Human: A Biographical Note

I think Pipher’s comment in that paragraph brings us full circle to what Dorothy Sayers said in Are Women Human, which you and I discussed in our posts for August 18 and 22.   If we could just be, rather than feeling we must act in ways that society considers “feminine” or “masculine — in other words, if we could just be human and develop all that being human means in terms of our potential as individual persons — how much better we’d all feel.  Both males and females could be spared a lot of anguish. Why do differences in biology have to make a difference in who we are and how we want to live in this world?  What difference does difference have to make?

Speaking personally, I think it was that kind of questioning — and a resolve not to be straitjacketed by traditional gender roles — that helped me avoid the hazards of adolescence and make my teenage years quite happy. True, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I did not have to face the particular kind of “girl poisoning” environment that Mary Pipher observed forty years later, but there were plenty of toxins in the gender constructs and societal messages during the time period when I was a teen, too.  As you know from our earliest posts in July and August, Kimberly, that historical period was the time that laid the groundwork for the “problem that has no name” that Betty Friedan wrote about in the early 1960s.

What I think made the difference for me rather than anything else during my teen years was my music.  When I was 12  years old, I began playing the trombone and it became the love of my life.  I practiced hours and hours and excelled.  And I rather liked the fact that the trombone was not considered a stereotypical “feminine” instrument. (Yes, research has shown that gender stereotypes even affect how musical instruments are perceived.  Brass instruments, for example, have been perceived as masculine, and flutes and violins considered feminine.)

Of course gender has nothing to do with musicianship or choice of instruments, but it has remained a perception nevertheless and has affected the choices of both male and female children as they choose instruments, though perhaps a bit less so now than when I was growing up.

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy being a girl.  I did.  But I wanted to be my own kind of girl.  I didn’t want notions about limited opportunities for girls to keep me from being all I could be. I believed girls and women should be able to achieve anything that boys and men could achieve, and my trombone would be one way of demonstrating that.

I had my own band, which I called the “the Swing Teens,” with kids from four different high schools. I entered contests and would always be the only girl in the regional and state trombone competitions. When I gave solo performances, I usually wore an evening gown, leading one of my high school teachers to tell my parents admiringly that she considered me to be a “tomboy-lady.”

How “Gender Fundamentalism” Clips Wings

Like you, Kimberly, I dedicated my life to Christ when I was a teenager.  It didn’t happen in a church but through reading a book on my own.  I didn’t tell anyone about it at first.  I went on as planned to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY and studied under the world-famous trombone teacher, Emory Remington, who encouraged me by telling me about one symphony orchestra that hired a woman as first chair trombonist.

It was only after I transferred from Eastman to major in sacred music at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago that I first ran into a systematic promotion of what you call “gender fundamentalism” and was told that God had created women and men to fulfill distinct roles. Women were designed to be helpers and to subordinate their interests to those of men. I heard that women couldn’t be ordained as pastors because it would be usurping authority over men. They could, however, be missionaries when there were no men to do the job. I was told that women couldn’t be entrusted with doctrine because women were last to be created and first to fall into sin.

I knew the Bible verses some of my teachers were using to teach these things, but it did not make sense to me, though I said nothing at the time. It just didn’t sound at all like something that the God I loved and served would do!  Why would God create females with brains and talents and abilities and yearnings to serve and advance the good news of the gospel and then say, “No thanks, I don’t need or want your service”?

It is painful to have one’s wings clipped. I tried to follow the gender hierarchy that I was taught, but down deep the seeds of what would later be called Christian feminism were taking root.

Kimberly, I feel so sad when you tell me that you ran into the same kind of teachings in your teen years more than four decades after mine.   And I’m sadder still that the liberating message of the Christian faith, which means so much to both you and me, is today still being commandeered by some preachers and teachers who use Christianity to clip women’s wings rather than helping them to fly.

Your friend,
Letha

Hi Letha,

I know this is sort of unusual for our exchange of letters, but I realized that I wanted to let you and our readers know about a “day of remembering” happening the weekend before the election throughout cities in America. A few friends and I up here in Seattle have been planning and promoting an idea to encourage women to think about the history of women’s suffrage. We think knowing that history will underscore the importance of exercising our right to vote come election day. I’ve pasted a short article/announcemet below that we have been sending out to women all around the country, hoping that others will want to pick up on our idea and join us in “remembering” by gathering together in small or large groups to watch a remarkable film together.

Here’s the article, which anyone can feel free to copy onto other blogs/websites as well:

In the early 1900s a group of courageous, risky, amazing women dared to push the boundaries of political protest, convention, and even their own personal health and safety to secure women’s voting rights. The inspiring HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hilary Swank and Frances O’Conner, recounts the struggle behind the passage of the 19th Amendment. The film invites women to a poignant and informative look at our own history and compels us into a future we are yet to write and influence. You can watch the trailer and read a synopsis on this website: http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/

On Saturday, Nov. 1, just days before an important election, we are inviting women from all political parties in cities all over the country to gather together and watch and reflect on this compelling film. We are encouraging a day where collectively we dwell in gratitude for those women who have gone before us to secure our freedoms, as well as consider what the contribution of our own generation will be. Regardless of who we choose to vote for on election day, we can all agree on how grateful we are to have that right. In the midst of so much division in our national politics, we can come together and remember a shared and important history.

This movement to watch Iron Jawed Angels began in Seattle, WA, when after first discovering this film, a small group of independent, bi-partisan, and passionate women decided to organize a large gathering of women to watch this movie on Nov. 1.* Please join them by gathering some women together in your own cities! And feel free to pass this information on to other blogs.

And after Nov. 1, if you want to share about your event, there will be a place to do that on womenimagine.blogspot.

*Please note this is a grassroots effort with no affiliation to a political party or HBO. Also, we (in Seattle) received written permission from HB0 for a one-time showing in a public venue.  If you have any questions about copyright issues, please contact HBO’s James-John Kerigan, media specialist at HBO. (His email is: James.Kerigan at hbo.com. His email here is written “spamproofed” for the internet, so you will need to translate the “at” to the usual “@” sign in an email address, and take out the extra spaces when you type it into  your email.)  We, unfortunately, are not able to advise on copyright issues. Thanks so much!

Hi Letha,

I just finished watching the trailers of the movies you mentioned in your last letter, and I look forward to watching the actual films. Just the short excerpts were haunting. The image of that little girl on the baseball field, and the ensuing scenes with her distraught mom, speak perhaps more than any explanation of what it means to be socialized into a gender construct.

Debating versus Remembering

As pastors (like the one in my last letter) contribute to this resurgence of gender fundamentalism, it is all too easy for me to start debating these issues. I often find myself trying to find the right angle of argument to convince people of the harm and absurdity of what that man is doing from the pulpit. And yet, when I watch those trailers of the movies you suggested, I realize that all of us (whatever camp we may find ourselves in) would greatly benefit not from debating but rather from remembering.

Remembering ourselves as young people—boys and girls with natural and individual spirits who too soon had to learn how to conform. Those often forgotten memories of our childhoods give us access to where our wounds are—and what redemption might look like, too.

As I think about my own past, I am grateful that in my own family, I did not have to endure such limiting messages on being a girl. (As we talked about in earlier letters, most of the harmful messages I heard came when I had my own personal conversion experience as a teenager and started attending church.) Growing up, I was raised by a mom who broke all the stereotypes. Sure, she would sew my sisters and me matching polka dot Easter dresses and bake us cinnamon rolls on rainy days, but she also was the only mom in the neighborhood who built a backyard deck, laid linoleum, and even knocked down walls in our house, all activities she managed when she wasn’t working her nursing job at the hospital! I grew up with a model of doing anything you put your mind to—a model that has greatly shaped the woman I am today.

And yet, I know that during my teenager years (and this is certainly not just the fault of the church) I grew more hesitant in who I was. The world is not an easy place for young people; there are so many pressures to quickly find an image or a group of friends, because living too much into your own particularity means you will stand out. And by all means you don’t want to stand out. As the mother says bitterly in “Summer’s End,” something is wrong with her daughter because “she does not fit in.”

I remember when I was quite young my mother gave me this still lingering piece of advice: she told me that people who seemed “weird” to me were just not conforming as much as everyone else. It was like she let me in on a secret—most people tacitly agree to play this game of conforming. Those who don’t succeed, or don’t want to, are the ones the rest of us can point out. And yet, the real question is why the rest of us are succeeding at the game. 

The Procrustean Bed

I am glad you mentioned this ancient fable of the robber who lays his victims out on a bed and saws off their limbs or stretches them mercilessly if they don’t fit. As I was writing my last letter to you, I just kept thinking about the violence of gender stereotypes, but was afraid such a word would sound like hyperbolic description. But, I don’t think it is too strong. I know too many stories of women and men who have heard those messages and then cut off pieces of their own heart or dreams or passions. Particularly when spiritual demagogues are making decrees about how men and women must conform themselves, regardless of “their own personalities, interests, and preferences” as you said, such messages are violent—a form of spiritual abuse.

Spiritual abuse controls people by shaming them, and by convincing them that any “rebellion” is going against God’s will. In the sermon I referenced last week, the I Timothy 5:8 verse about men who don’t provide for their families “being worse than unbelievers” was applied to men who stayed at home providing for their kids! As my friend Stacy pointed out immediately to me, that verse has nothing to do with gender roles. It’s about how to best care for widows in the church, and the importance of caring for vulnerable people in your own family. But, the pastor hijacked it to uphold his view of gender, and shamed stay-at-home dads as being “worse than unbelievers!” I was so angry on multiple levels.

Shame is such a powerful tool of spiritual demagogues. It keeps us fearful and un-free. Deep within us we internalize very harmful, very controlling messages. And I don’t think we can “debate” our way out of it as a Christian community. Debate will only take us so far, because what we really need to do is have the courage to grieve.

“When I Was a Boy”

I am glad you mentioned the song by Dar Williams, “When I Was a Boy.” I discovered that song almost a year ago on my 27^th birthday. I had asked friends to share songs, poems, or passages of books that had gifted their journey, and one man and his wife brought that song. All the contributions were special, but something about “When I Was a Boy” seemed to invite every person in the room to open up. It was like we all got permission for 4 minutes and 47 seconds to remember being children again, and there was a communal space of grief and acknowledgment at what had been lost.

It’s funny you happened to mention the song when you did, because I had just used it this past weekend for a 1-hour workshop I taught on gender. After I gave my lecture and helped lead some conversation, I realized the tendency for most of us—and in particular, many of the men— to talk about gender in abstraction or theory and from a so-called rational framework. But I had hoped to be talking about it from the level of our lives. When I finally played “When I was a Boy,” something opened up in the room.

We grieved together. Some of us wept. And none of us really knew what to do in the tenderness and discomfort. But, I truly believe it is important for men and women to find safe spaces to be seen in their grief and to long for something more whole together.

OK, I better go, even though there always seems much more to say on this topic. I look forward to hearing from you.

Your friend,

Kimberly

Dear Kimberly,

I’ve been concerned that some of our recent conversations might strike our readers as irrelevant during this current economic crisis.  It’s one thing for us to talk theoretically about whether or not women should make a career of caring for the home and children while men earn income in the workforce; it’s quite another to face up to the realities of today’s marketplace where such choices may not even be possible.

The percentage of women in the workplace has fallen in recent years.   Noticing the trend, some writers have claimed that more and more women have chosen to opt out of paid employment to devote themselves to homemaking instead.

Not so, say recent government data.   True, many women are leaving jobs, but so too are many men.  As Louis Uchitelle, an economics reporter for the New York Times, has written:

“After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while. . . .While men are rarely thought of as dropping out to run the household, that is often the assumption when women pull out.” (”Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy,” New York Times, July 22, 2008)

Maybe instead of saying women are leaving jobs, we should be saying that jobs are leaving women — and men.  And in these troubled times, finding new jobs of any kind, much less at comparable pay, has become extremely difficult.

Out of Touch Pastors

And yet, in spite of all the economic woes, some preachers (such as the one whose sermon you described) insist on telling wives that God doesn’t permit them to shoulder part of the economic load by earning income — and telling husbands they are less than men if they shoulder part of the household load, especially if it involves staying home to care for the home and children.

How couples divide up these respective responsibilities is up to them, not some judgmental preacher who knows nothing about their situation.  Furthermore, what a couple decides may vary at different periods of life as determined by variable circumstances, different preferences, and the growing maturity of children as they move toward the time they will be independent.  There’s no one-size-fits-all pattern for marriage and parenthood.

I was appalled to hear that the preacher you mentioned indicated that couples who mutually work out an arrangement in which the husband stays home to care for children while the wife works at her career (regardless of reasons) may be considered candidates for church discipline — perhaps even excommunication! For a pastor to claim such dictatorial power over people’s everyday lives and personal decision-making smacks more of cult-like authoritarianism than it  conjures up an image of a loving community of believers representative of Christ’s body, the church — a community in which the pastor nurtures and guides and steers clear of issuing orders and threats.

I once heard a pastor say that if a wife works outside the home, it means that the couple is “living beyond their God-intended means.”  Again, it shows a pastor out of touch with reality.  His comment is based on the assumption that work is done only to make money, with no hint of understanding that a woman might want to contribute her knowledge and abilities to make the world a better place, or because she loves her profession — or wants to fulfill her dreams, as you have often expressed it in your letters.  Such a statement about “God-intended means” also assumes that all two-earner families are spending their money extravagantly and that one earner could be expected to be paid adequate income to provide for a family in these times of income freezes, pay cuts, and constantly rising costs — even for such essentials as housing, food, clothing, health insurance, transportation, and a college education.  With few exceptions, such a living wage just isn’t happening in today’s economy.

Those who insist that gender roles are ordained by God for all times and places — and that such roles are rigid and unchanging — are robbing couples of the freedom for which Christ has set us free and are imposing a legalistic interpretation of Scripture.  Couples should not be made to feel guilty for trying to find what works best for them in their particular situation.

What Heterosexual Couples Can Learn from Gay and Lesbian Couples

As I write this column, the Connecticut Supreme Court has just overturned a ban on same-sex marriage, making Connecticut the third state to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples. (The other two states are Massachusetts and California.)  As legalization of same-sex committed relationships occurs more often, whether through civil unions in some states or marriages in others, social scientists are studying how these couples are handling the everyday details of their lives together. On the basis of the evidence in thus far, some scholars are concluding that heterosexual couples may have much to learn from these same-sex couples who are legally committed to each other.

A same-sex couple, just like a heterosexual couple, must work out issues in their relationships, including how they deal with power issues, personal conflicts, and how they handle various household, child-care, and income-earning responsibilities.  Studies are showing that since such couples cannot automatically fall back on prescribed husband-wife roles and  a traditional division of labor based on gender, they by necessity have to make arrangements that work for their personal situation. And as a result, same-sex relationships tend to be more egalitarian. These couples have also been found to handle conflict more satisfactorily than heterosexual couples who are governed by traditional gender-role and power expectations.

Rigid Gender Roles as a Procrustean Bed

According to an ancient fable, the robber Procrustes engaged in a cruel practice toward those who had the misfortune of becoming his victims.  He placed them on a bed of a certain size and forced them to fit its dimensions either by stretching them mercilessly or sawing off their limbs.   An insistence on inflexible gender roles to which all persons must conform, regardless of their own personalities, interests, and preferences, can feel very much like a Procrustean Bed.

That was what I meant in my last post (September 30) in which I said I wanted to talk more in this current letter about your remarks about the loss persons can feel when they begin to experience society’s messages about how they should feel, act, and be on the basis of gender.  You were talking about a study in which fathers were reminded of their own loss as they watched their sons enter a school environment where their previous tenderness was expected to be hidden under an exterior of toughness — even though it was hard. The quivering lip and misting eyes must be held in check, since “big boys don’t cry.”

Dar Williams’s Song, “When I Was Boy”

In her concerts, contemporary folk singer Dar Williams often includes a song she wrote titled,”When I Was a Boy.” It captures the sense of  freedom and openness to adventure that both girls and boys experience as young children but which boys are permitted to retain throughout life. Young girls, however, are expected (or required ) to give up such freedom as they move into young womanhood.

So in her song, Dar looks back on her childhood days, fondly remembering them as the time when she, too, enjoyed  exhilarating freedom and daring adventures and, in essence, “was a boy.”   She could fly high in her imagination, fight, climb trees, imagine she was a pirate, ride her bike fearlessly (even topless, until a neighbor says she must put on her shirt), and go out at night to catch fireflies.

But as she grows to be a young woman, she begins feeling the loss of who she has always been.  In a clothing store, she gets the message that her body is supposed to objectified by dressing for the eyes of men rather than for her own comfort and activities. And as she is leaving an event with some friends one night, she is told it’s not safe unless she has a man to protect her.  So she tells her male companion about her early life “as a boy” and concedes the war of the sexes, admitting that he, being male, has won the contest to be his true self and enjoy a status superior to that of females.

But he surprises her with his “Oh no, no, no.”  He tells her that when he “was a girl,” he and his mother had enjoyed their long talks and time together. And he liked to pick flowers.  And he had felt free to cry and to be tender and kind.  The song ends with his saying he and she are just like each other.  In other words, they had both lost something because of society’s gender constructs.  (Dar recorded “When I Was a Boy” on her album, The Honesty Room, and the song is also available in MP3 format for purchase as a single online.)

“Summer’s End”

Years ago, I saw an award-winning television drama on a similar theme when it was broadcast on PBS.  Titled, “Summer’s End,” and written by Beth Brickell, it has also been broadcast on Showtime, A & E, and Nickelodean and shown at numerous film festivals, garnering honors all along the way.  I had been trying to find it again for years, because I had so identified with the 10-year-old girl featured in it.  The drama depicts one day in the child’s life.  It takes place in a small town shortly after the end of World War II — another reason I identified with it because I was that same age around the same time, and my childhood activities were much like hers.  I mention it here, Kimberly, because it makes the same point as Dar Williams’s song made.

In “Summer’s End,” a mother has made an appointment with a beautician to rid her “tomboy” daughter of her pigtails  (I had pigtails, too) and give her a permanent wave so that she can be acceptable to other girls and their mothers as she enters the sixth grade at summer’s end.  The mother, who accepts and abides by traditional gender roles without question, believes that by making the girl more ladylike, she will be shielding the child from social ridicule.   But instead she breaks the little girl’s heart. The child just wants to be herself and follow her own interests, curiosity, and activities.  It is clear that the mother’s message is not about hairstyles but about gender-role conformity. It is the girl’s father who understands and comforts her as he tells her that “being a boy isn’t so easy either.”

I was recently able to view this drama again after an Internet search showed me that “Summer’s End,” along with another of Beth Brickell’s short dramas, “A Rainy Day,” are now combined on a DVD called Mothers & Daughters: Sometimes a Difficult Relationship.   Try to watch the DVD sometime if you have a chance.

(The other story on the DVD fits with our recent discussions, too, and shows how a child can be harmed by a mother who makes housekeeping and parenthood her total career and gives her child too much attention, discouraging the little girl’s independence. The mothering becomes smothering.  You can watch the trailer for both short films here.

Well, I guess I should move from Summer’s End” to “letter’s end” and bring this to a close! I think we’re talking about topics that touch a nerve for a lot of people, and it’s always so good to hear the comments that our readers add to the conversation, as you said in your last letter.  I’ll sign off now and look forward to your next post.

Your friend,
Letha

Dear Letha,

Two things strike me after listening to the NPR segment you mentioned between Alice and Nina Rossi, as well as the humorous song you referenced (“Daughters of Feminists”), and the grievous story of Rebecca and Alice Walker’s estrangement.

The first is that the process of differentiating from one’s mother is complicated for anyone, as you said. Add to that a mother who does not fit gender norms, or a mother who has neglected you for her work, and the process of differentiation might look a lot like rebellion. Grown children will understandably need to process their anger. From the perspective of the 4-year-old, it does not matter the importance of the work the mother is doing; what matters is that the child felt alone, and just might carry those insecurities his/her whole life. Rebecca Walker’s honest words clearly show the deep pain and neglect she experienced, though I think it is not fair for her to apply her experience across the board.

The second issue that arises for me as I read your letter is a reiteration of a thought I posted in my last letter to you: where are the fathers in these discussions of failed parenting? Why is the expectation seemingly only on the mothers? (In fact, Alice addresses this very question with her daughter Nina.)

Even as I heard the stories about Rebecca Walker and Nina Rossi, I am reminded again that we cannot live in an either/or world. The options must not be either we go back to the 1950’s “traditional” (and, yes, very middle class) view of parenting, or we neglect and harm our children. We have too much creativity as men and women to not work for a more balanced view of partnerships, families, and work.

But, I am not really sure at this point in my life how anyone—man or woman— balances caring well for their families with their desire to work for social justice or beautiful art or medical advancement. (And again, I know there are many moms who don’t have the privilege of not going to work, and who may not go to work to carry out their dreams but to pay their rent and meet basic needs.  I don’t want to have this conversation and not acknowledge those realities.)

What I am Hearing Today

This morning, I just finished up listening to excerpts of a few sermons on gender roles and parenting. You must wonder why I do this to myself! (Sometimes, I wonder, too.) But, a friend of mine had told me about one sermon in particular, and I wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation. I was particularly interested in the ends of the sermons, where people can “text” their questions to the pastor and then be given live answers.

For my purposes here, I don’t  want to name the pastor who gave the sermons I listened to, but I will say that he is one of the most influential Christian leaders in America right now, and tens of thousands of people listen to his podcasts. I am for the most part familiar with his theology (women submit to men, men are called to have authority and leadership, mothers are called only to the home, etc.).

In light of our recent exchange of letters on the topic, though, I found myself listening more and more not just for the theology, but rather the psychology behind the words of this pastor. What was apparent to me in terms of the psychology of his sermons is that the world is black and white. Men and women must maintain their “biblically” distinct roles (women inside the home, men outside the home). You can either believe this man’s interpretation of the Bible or be deceived by Satan. You will either be blessed by following this man’s interpretation of the Bible, or you will suffer pain, divorce, and “bad” families and marriages because you will be following the ways of the “world.”

One person “texted” during the end-of -sermon Q & A time and asked if it was OK for a father to stay home with his kids while his wife worked outside the home if she wanted to; or whether it was OK for both to work outside the home if they needed to. The pastor  shamed stay-at-home dads and told them they were not “men” and that a wife could not respect a husband who does not “provide” for his family. “Provide,” apparently, only means monetary provision. There were no questions asked about whether the couples might have made their decisions mutually and with thoughtful reflection. No, these stay-at-home dads were simply not “men.” (Isn’t shame such a powerful tool in creating these gender constructs?) In fact, that pastor went so far as to say that such men are liable to church discipline. It is one thing to call men to be responsible; it is another to have such a narrowly defined view of what that looks like, and to threaten that a man who didn’t comply with that view would be kicked out of a church. 

The pastor went on to say that he is not “legalistic” and in extreme situations, like the sickness of the father, a man would not be in “sin” for not working outside the home.

As I continued to listen to such a narrow construction of reality, my stomach felt like I had swallowed a lead weight. My entire being felt this terrible, tightening sense of restriction, as though parts of me would have to be violently cut off to fit this black and white world. This pastor was charming, authoritative, and sincere. I could see the seductiveness of his message. He was essentially saying (my paraphrase here), “You can be on God’s side. You can do this all right and have a good marriage and a good family. You just need to follow what God says.” Only, what “God says” is really what he, the pastor, says, because he fails to acknowledge that he is a fallible human being interpreting Scripture.

What We Fear

What struck me about the kind of paradigm the pastor presented is that there are not very many choices to make. If the world is “either/or,” there are fewer opportunities to mature as you navigate the grey. When gender constructs are black and white, your primary job is to adapt yourself, not ask yourself who you really and truly and authentically are. After all, the basic prototype is already there for you.

The existentialist psychologists and philosophers like to remind us that we as humans deeply fear or own freedom. When I first studied existentialism, I thought this was hogwash. Fear my own freedom? I love my own freedom! What were they talking about, anyway? I think I have only recently started to understand what it means to fear freedom and harbor a subconscious bent to just follow prescriptions.

When I listened to these sermons this morning, I realized again the profound weight of responsibility I must embrace if I do not conform to someone else’s expectations of who I am. If I am making my choices, I am the one responsible to care well for myself as I also care well for others. I must seek the balance. I must have the courage to be who I am, even as I seek to be a good friend, sister, mom, daughter. And in the midst of that freedom, sometimes we fail. When I heard the story about Alice Walker, in particular, it is hard to deny that there were profound failures in her relationship with her daughter.

Mother and Daughter Relationships

Letha, when you discussed the very public problems between certain feminist mothers and daughters, I thought to myself, “These problems make perfect sense!” When pastors are preaching these sermons and putting the entire parenting responsibility on women; when people who resist such messages are pioneering something new; and when most of society is not set-up well to allow for couples to truly share caregiving responsibilities, we are set up for some rocky cultural transitions. Add to that the fact that men are not typically valued enough as nurturers or expected to do an equal part with household chores, we will certainly see some significant issues arise as women try to balance both careers and families.

And yet, what is at stake if we don’t press on to more creative, equal views of partnerships? What happens when men and women are not given the freedom to ask thoughtful questions about who they are and their unique callings in life?

I think the harm of trying to adapt to a gender stereotype  gets carried deep within a man or woman.  I have several friends who are practicing therapists, and they see every day in their offices Christian women who must effectively dissociate and lose their own voices as they do their best to adapt to expectations.

OK, that’s all my angst for now! Thanks again for your letters, thoughts, and perspectives, and letting me process these rather complex topics with you. (And to our readers, I love your stories and comments, so please feel free to keep sharing them!)

Your friend,

Kimberly

Dear Kimberly,

In this letter and my next one, I’d like to comment on two topics you brought up in your Sept. 24 letter. One topic  is the parent-child relationship  — especially your questions about the stereotypical image of feminists as being uninterested and uninvolved in motherhood.  That’s what I want to talk about today.

The other topic, which you talked about in describing Carol Gilligan’s research on fathers, is the sense of loss that occurs when we realize that gender constructs may require us to be something other than ourselves.  I’ll save that topic for one of my next  letters.

Feminists and the Motherhood Question

You began your letter mentioning your sadness over the very public break in the relationship of third-wave feminist Rebecca Walker with her mother, second-wave feminist/womanist Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple and numerous other writings.  Their estrangement saddens me, too, Kimberly.   And I know, as you said, that patriarchal traditionalists like to use such anecdotal evidence as proof that feminism is at its core “anti-motherhood” — or at least encourages poor mothering.

But to base a condemnation of feminism on a single example, such as the estrangement between the Walkers, neglects the complexities in any relationship, especially in the mother-daughter bond.  Phyllis Chesler writes about this in her June 10, 2008 Salon essay, “The Mother-Daughter Wars,” using the estrangement of Alice and Rebecca Walker as her starting point.

Although Chesler makes some excellent points, I wish she had qualified some of her statements and used the word “many” instead of “most” in a few instances, such as in this sentence:  “Most second-wave feminists therefore either condemned or feared motherhood.”  At the same time, Chesler takes care to name numerous second-wave feminists who cared deeply about motherhood and wrote about it.  And she also takes care to point out that what some women were rejecting was the notion of career motherhood, not the idea of motherhood itself.  They were renouncing the way bearing and rearing children was essentially forced on women of Alice Walker’s generation. Society at that time was loathe to allow many other choices for women — including the choice not to have children at all.  (In addition, at that time, the parenting role of fathers was seldom discussed — or was considered fulfilled simply by their earning income to support the family. )

Daughters of Feminists

Still, it’s interesting and informative to hear how some adult daughters of second-wave feminists look back on their early lives with their mothers.

Often, those who choose to walk a different path from that of their mothers are simply making a generational statement about their ability to think for themselves.  Children sometimes adopt viewpoints that run counter to those of their parents as one way to establish their own separate identity.  An example would be a case in which politically liberal parents find that one or more of their offspring becomes ultra conservative, as in the case of the fictional Alex Keaton in the 1980s television program, Family Ties.

Or maybe you’ve heard  singer-songwriter Nancy White’s humorous song, “Daughters of Feminists,” which plays on the stereotype of a feminist mother who rejects many aspects of traditional femininity and doesn’t want her child to be “girly.”  Yet the daughter chooses frilly dresses and Barbie dolls and wants to marry a prince who will take care of her. The song asks if she is doing this to annoy her mom.  Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer have a nice rendition of it on  “Raise the Roof,” a  musical retrospective of various artists who performed at the Barns of Wolf Trap near Washington, DC. You can listen to a sample of their track online (number 10 on the album) on the website of one of my favorite recording distributors, CD Baby.

Alice Rossi and Her Daughter

Alice Walker is not the only prominent second-wave feminist whose daughter has voiced negative feelings about her mother’s involvement in a feminist career that was perceived as distracting her from attention to her daughter. I was rather startled last year to hear an NPR segment on the problems between Alice Rossi and her daughter Nina, a 47-year-old single mother. The difference between these two and the Walkers is that this mother and daughter have not closed off communication but are reaching out to each other and talking about their past problems. This is all the more crucial now that Alice Rossi is in her mid-80s and gravely ill with emphysema. Listen to this honest exchange between Alice and Nina.

Hearing this segment on NPR’s Weekend Edition held particular interest to me, because Alice had been a feminist heroine of mine many years ago. I remember being especially impressed and informed by reading her 1973 book, The Feminist Papers, which is an outstanding compilation of original writings by women (and a few men) who had dared to believe women were fully human and equal to men — even during periods of history when such an assertion was far from welcome. The authors included in the compilation ranged from Abigail Adams to Simone de Beuvoir.  Alice Rossi also wrote introductory essays about each one, thus providing historical context, sociological insights, and human interest narrative.  (She and and her husband Peter Rossi were highly regarded sociologists who taught at the University of Massachusetts.)

In 1964, two years before she became one of the founding members of the National Organization for Women ( NOW), Alice had contributed an essay to the spring issue of Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It was a special issue on the theme, “The Woman in America.”  Alice’s essay, titled “Equality Between the Sexes: An Immodest Proposal,” asserted that the feminist ideals and activism that had reached a peak with the winning of women’s suffrage had gone downhill thereafter and had lost its spark.

“American women,” she wrote “are not trying to extend their claim to equality from the political to the occupational and social arenas and often do not even seem interested in exercising the rights so bitterly won in the early decades of the twentieth century in politics and higher education.”  She said when she’d ask her brightest students about their future educational and career plans, she would find “they either have none because they are getting married in a few months, or they show clearly that they have lowered their aspirations from professional and research fields that excited them as freshmen, to concentrate as juniors on more practical fields, far below their abilities.”  She said she was finding young women “increasingly uncommitted to anything beyond early marriage, motherhood, and a suburban home.”

Kimberly, you’ll remember from my own letters to you describing the 1950s and 1960s, that the homemaker aspirations of both college and non-college women that Alice Rossi was describing constituted the norm at that time.  But Rossi was daring to question it.  And her views caused quite a stir. She later told the Cambridge Forum that she was viewed as “a monster, an unnatural woman, and an unfit mother.” Some anonymous person even sent her husband a sympathy card “lamenting the death of his wife.”

The Ideal of Shared Parenthood

In her Daedalus essay, Rossi writes that “for the first time in the history of any known society, motherhood has become a full-time occupation for adult women.”  That was the idea she was challenging. She pointed out that women of previous generations could not possibly be full-time mothers because of all their other responsibilities as coworkers with their husbands on farms or in family businesses and were not worried about their children’s being made insecure or psychologically damaged when they were cared for by other adults. Rossi expressed her belief that “the American woman has been encouraged by the experts to whom she has turned for guidance in child-rearing to believe that her children need her continuous presence, supervision, and care and that she should find complete fulfillment in this role.”

When few people espoused ideas such as those she was presenting, her Deadalus article stressed the importance of both choice and shared parenthood. She wrote about the importance of  a man’s “weeding out of nonessential activities either in work, civic or social participation” when he assumed the role of father.  Ideally, “unless a man can make room in his life for parenthood, he should not become a father.”  She believed that a woman should marry and have children “only if she deeply desires a mate and children” and that she should “not be judged a failure if she decides against either.”

My Thoughts as I Heard the NPR Segment Again

As I listened again to the honest exchange between Alice Rossi and her daughter, I realized that at the time that Alice published that famous essay, Nina must have been three or four years old.  Was that when she sat outside her mother’s study door crying because she could not go in?  Or was that at a later age when she needed to confide something in her mother and felt shut out?  I can imagine the pangs of regret and struggle in Alice’s mind as she listens to Nina.  Alice’s work was so important for all of us; and as she said, it would be hard for Nina to fully understand how difficult it was to speak out for women’s equality at the time and how much her voice was needed.  But at the same time, it must also have been hard  for Alice to hear of Nina’s childhood yearning for Mommy and her feeling of being neglected. Alice also says in that NPR interview that in spite of the co-parenting she and her husband wrote about, Nina’s father did not take up the slack adequately to make up for Alice’s increasingly busy life as a feminist scholar and activist.   We also don’t know whether Nina’s brother and sister felt similarly to what Nina felt or whether their childhood needs and experiences were different.

In hearing stories such as those of both Alices (Walker and Rossi) and their daughters, there is so much we don’t know, and their lives are not for us to judge.   But perhaps we can learn something from them.  As you pointed out in your last post, Kimberly, we also know all too little about how children of famous busy or absent fathers feel about their childhoods or how various dads feel about missing out on much of their children’s lives.  I have read various interviews in which evangelist Billy Graham, for example, has said his one regret in life was not having spent enough time with his children.

“A Writer Because of, Not in Spite of, Her children”

These word above are the title of a chapter in Alice Walker’s collection of her essays, published under the title, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. In this “A Writer Because of . . .” essay, she tells of reading a novel by Buchi Emecheta which is dedicated to her five children. In the dedication, she lists each of their names and then this statement, “without whose sweet background noises this book would not have been written.”

The central character in Emecheta’s apparently partially autobiographical novel is Adah, a Nigerian woman who moves to England and, in spite of immense hardships, is determined to write a novel which she says is really written for the adults her children will become.  Walker comments that thus “it is okay with her if the distractions and joys they represent in her life, as children, become part of it.”

In her essay about the novel, Alice Walker says that she herself has always needed absolute quiet and privacy to work but found herself wondering whether it’s possible to rethink “the traditional Western ideas about how art is produced.” She goes on to say, “Our culture separates the duties of raising children from those of creative work.”

I loved the paragraph Walker wrote about Adah’s story of working on her novel, surrounded by her children, and aiming it toward the adults her children would become:

“In this way, she integrates the profession of writer into the cultural concept of mother/worker that she retains from Ibo society. Just as the African mother has traditionally planted crops, pounded maize, and done her washing with her baby strapped to her back, so Adah can write a novel with her children playing in the same room.” (In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, p. 69)

I loved that part of the essay because it brought back to me the warm, cozy feelings of my own earliest writing days. My two young boys were playing with their toys on the combined kitchen/living room floor of a small Eugene, Oregon student apartment, as I sat at the kitchen table pounding out my first book on a manual typewriter in the fall of 1963.

I interrupted the writing of the book to write some articles, including my earliest article on issues related to women, work, and children. It may surprise some people who know my later writings to know it was called, “Homemaking: Prison or Privilege?” It was published in The Sunday School Times, May 30, 1964, the same year that Alice Rossi wrote her Daedalus essay.  Somehow I thought both worlds could be combined.

To me, child-rearing, not housekeeping, was what I was writing about in saying “homemaking” in the title.  And thus, I came down on the side of “privilege” in answer to the question.  I enjoyed my time with the boys, knowing they would be young for such a short time, and somehow I hoped I could fit together my work and my time with them.

But I also know that’s because I am a writer by profession and can work at home, and that in itself is a privilege.  And I also know one’s personal temperament enters in.  Alice Walker said she needed quiet and privacy to write.  Alice Rossi apparently also kept her study door closed.  Somehow we all find our own way.

But that’s more than enough for this time, Kim! I’ll be eager to hear your thoughts about all this.

Your friend,
Letha

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