I'm Every Woman?

This is a rant. This is only a rant. The result of too many videos of windbag preachers with faulty scriptural interpretation clogging up my facebook page and the misinformed and asinine defenses that come with them. This does not apply to many, many, many people, so when I use sweeping generalizations and fail to qualify them, understand that this is a rant.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with people.

Specifically (this is going to come with a lot of qualifiers) with the gender-stereotyped mindset of many of my fellow believers in the evangelical church.

The dynamic of June and Ward Cleaver is an incredibly loaded cultural icon: for some it heralds a Lost World, a harking back to the Way Things Should Be. For others it's a black-and-white reminder of what we have escaped. For still others it represents a cultural hilarity, an amusing artifact of our benighted ancestors. Either way, it is an image that has largely disappeared from the cultural landscape.

Living as my generation is in the midst of third wave feminism, girls [in my general socio-economic stratum] have been raised to believe that we can do anything we set our minds to. We can have the same careers as boys do. What were once closed doors, men-only clubs, are now viable options for a successful and fulfilling future, regardless of sex. This is what we are told; this is what we take for granted. Leaving aside the grandiose childishness of career opportunity, we've also been raised, for the most part, in an economic climate of career necessity. Our mothers worked outside the home because we needed groceries, or rent, or mortgage payments, as much as they did because they were following their dreams, or loved their work.

The point is that many of us were raised by working mothers as well as fathers. This is largely regarded as a necessary evil in the Church, rather than an historic opportunity or a possible good. The shifting gender roles of the 20th century have, in the evangelical church, been blamed on (not explained by) such anathematic movements as Feminism and Women's Lib (never mind the historical movements in gender that go way past Betty Friedan or even the activism of Margaret Sanger and her ilk. As though gender role shifts were nonexistent until their advent.).

At any rate, the churched children of my generation have been raised with a somewhat schizophrenic reading of gender roles: little girls are told to be anything they want to be, while little boys are told that they must, under no circumstances, relinquish the role of primary economic provider within a family structure. Young women are expected to simultaneously believe that careers are an open opportunity for them, and that housekeeperhood (not just mother- or wife-) is the obvious first and best choice, with all other callings, gifts, talents, or dreams becoming necessarily secondary to the undeniable claim staked by her reproductive organs and hormonal functions.

And so the little girls grow up dreaming of careers that they are expected to faithfully forfeit as soon as they wear a wedding band, or as soon as they first ask for maternity leave. While economic necessity forces many mothers to work, many pastors still paint working mothers as at best a worst case scenario (woman who would much rather be a keeper at home needs the income to make ends meet for her family) and at worst absolute selfishness (woman who despises children seeks self aggrandizement in a soulless search for money and prestige). Rarely are we presented any sort of middle ground, and just as rarely do we see a woman who feels a greater call to a particular field of work than to mothering, helpmeeting, or housekeeping, as a figure to admire or emulate.

Far be it from me to malign in any way the godly, holy calling of motherhood. I would never disgrace the insanely difficult, demanding, and challenging job of the stay-at-home mom by suggesting that it is somehow less than a career in itself. I will say, however, that even though women as a gender are built to carry children, not all women are called to be keepers at home. Not all women, despite their ability to carry children, or even their desire to bear children someday, feel called to forego the gifts that God has given them in favor of full-time housekeeping. If you are so called, be blessed. Work hard. Be devoted to that job. But if, like a case I have in mind, you are gifted in, say, languages, and feel called to work in international business, then do that. Do it well.

And--here's the kicker--do it even if and when you have kids. Why is it wrong to ask a man to take a prominent role in the home life of his children? Why does that make him somehow less manly? I am not advocating for stay-at-home dads. I am not saying that wives and mothers should all leave the home and enter corporate America--far from it. But I'm asking for a little reciprocity. I keep hearing the virtues of the "either-or" dynamic. What is so wrong about a "both-and" family? Why is a man providing for his family only considered in economic terms? What about emotionally? Spiritually? Surely a man can do a more fulfilling job as head of the household if he spends more time with his children, even if that means his wife maintains an extra-domestic career of some sort, whatever that looks like. Surely a woman would do a better job of raising her children if she showed them that she had a set of gifts and abilities that she used to make their lives better and to bring glory to God.

I guess what really gets me is the idea that everyone accepts that there is more than one type of man in the world--you have engineers and fighter pilots and dentists and cricketers and midshipmen and lawyers and accountants and professors and musicians. A man can be any of these things and still be considered manly. But too often (see disclaimer above) women who do likewise are not considered womanly enough. And that frustrates me. If a woman is following the will of God for her life, how could she be otherwise than womanly?