Sweet dreams, Mommy...

Sweet dreams, Mommy... | BaylyBlog Jump to Navigation HomeJoe Bayly's booksContact us Search   Featured Posts House rules... Christian Medical and Dental Association doesn't want abortion to divide Christians... A strategy for Christians who object to same-sex "weddings"... R2K is segregationist... How many children should we have? Previous Pause Next You are hereHome › Sweet dreams, Mommy... by Tim Bayly on November 20, 2013 - 11:01pm

So to all those who don't know the word 'jaded,' this just sent to one mother by one of her daughters who is now a mother of four herself. It was accompanied by this note: "It's very sweet and well-done, just short peeks into the lives of 3 mothers. I read the comments of women saying it helped them not to feel so conflicted and guilty about staying home with their kids. They made me want to write and say thank you. I'm so glad that you were at home with us, Mom. ...And I'm thankful that, because of the way you raised me, I have the ability to do my work without nagging questions or guilt about what else I should be doing. I love you!"

The following excerpt is from Chesterton's "The Emancipation of Domesticity" in his splendid, What's Wrong with the World. This is an essay I believe every father should read aloud to his daughters after they've had their third child. (My dear Mary Lee says the third is the most difficult because it's the first time husband and wife are outnumbered.)

Honestly, I have no desire to speak with the husband or father who can't understand and doesn't love this essay no matter how fast he can say sovereignty/providential/imputation three times in a row. True Christian faith proves itself by its fruit which, according to Scripture, always starts at home. And what greater fruit does any man give to God than his manly support of the motherhood of his wife and their flat-out commitment to everything needed to raise up godly seed?

Mothers are the greatest!

So now, this dose of ...G. K. Chesterton:

There is only one way to preserve in the world that high levity and that more leisurely outlook which fulfils the old vision of universalism. That is, to permit the existence of a partly protected half of humanity; a half which the harassing industrial demand troubles indeed, but only troubles indirectly. In other words, there must be in every center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not "give her best," but gives her all.

Our old analogy of the fire remains the most workable one. The fire need not blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water; its point is that it blazes more than water and warms more than light. The wife is like the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion, the fire is like the wife. Like the fire, the woman is expected to cook: not to excel in cooking, but to cook; to cook better than her husband who is earning the coke by lecturing on botany or breaking stones. Like the fire, the woman is expected to tell tales to the children, not original and artistic tales, but tales--better tales than would probably be told by a first-class cook. Like the fire, the woman is expected to illuminate and ventilate, not by the most startling revelations or the wildest winds of thought, but better than a man can do it after breaking stones or lecturing. But she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school mistress, but not a competitive schoolmistress; a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman's professions, unlike the child's, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid. This is the substance of the contention I offer about the historic female position. I do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time. I do not deny that even under the old tradition women had a harder time than men; that is why we take off our hats. I do not deny that all these various female functions were exasperating; but I say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various. I do not pause even to deny that woman was a servant; but at least she was a general servant.

The shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience, and even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others. The French King wrote--

"Toujours femme varie
Bien fol qui s'y fie,"

but the truth is that woman always varies, and that is exactly why we always trust her. To correct every adventure and extravagance with its antidote in common-sense is not (as the moderns seem to think) to be in the position of a spy or a slave. It is to be in the position of Aristotle or (at the lowest) Herbert Spencer, to be a universal morality, a complete system of thought. The slave flatters; the complete moralist rebukes. It is, in short, to be a Trimmer in the true sense of that honorable term; which for some reason or other is always used in a sense exactly opposite to its own. It seems really to be supposed that a Trimmer means a cowardly person who always goes over to the stronger side. It really means a highly chivalrous person who always goes over to the weaker side; like one who trims a boat by sitting where there are few people seated. Woman is a trimmer; and it is a generous, dangerous and romantic trade.

The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior. Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

But though the essential of the woman's task is universality, this does not, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe though largely wholesome prejudices. She has, on the whole, been more conscious than man that she is only one half of humanity; but she has expressed it (if one may say so of a lady) by getting her teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for. I would observe here in parenthesis that much of the recent official trouble about women has arisen from the fact that they transfer to things of doubt and reason that sacred stubbornness only proper to the primary things which a woman was set to guard. One's own children, one's own altar, ought to be a matter of principle-- or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the other hand, who wrote Junius's Letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice, it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent inquiry. But take an energetic modern girl secretary to a league to show that George III wrote Junius, and in three months she will believe it, too, out of mere loyalty to her employers. Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity. They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm. That is why they do office work so well; and that is why they ought not to do it. 

Mommy Wars Are Spirit Wars

As a part of American jargon, the “mommy wars” have raged for more than 20 years. The term was coined in the late 1980s by Child magazine to describe the tension that existed between working and stay-at-home mothers. Since then, numerous books and articles have been published about the so-called mommy wars, feeding the talk show circuit and fueling blogosphere brushfires.

But our history of cultural ambivalence about motherhood is much longer. Allow me a moment for a quick overview.

Shortly after our nation was founded, motherhood hit a high note. As historian Glenna Matthews writes in Just A Housewife, this new political experiment needed mothers:

There were no precedents for a republic on the scale of the United States. Many people believed that the new nation would require the support of a uniquely public-spirited citizenry. If citizens must learn to place a high value on the public interest, this was a lesson they would need to begin in childhood. Thus the home became crucial to the success of the nation and women — whose education began to be taken much more seriously than ever before — gained the role of ‘Republican Mother.’

Soon the Republican Motherhood concept began to spill out of the home into the public square as women organized benevolent agencies to combat drunkenness, slavery, gambling, and other problems of the age.

But Republican Motherhood met its demise when Charles Darwin released his 1859 publication, On the Origin of Species. Darwin viewed women as lesser beings in the system of evolution. His ideas were immediately embraced by Social Darwinists, who claimed that since men had always fought for survival in the world, they were honed by competition and natural selection. In comparison, women were sheltered from this process because they were at home with the children — thus, they “evolved” more slowly.

With motherhood thus devalued, children became the next targets. Margaret Sanger, who founded what later became Planned Parenthood, believed that most evils stemmed from large families. As she wrote in her 1920 book, Woman and the New Race, “the most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

Sanger was a vocal proponent of eugenics — the theory of race improvement that was the cornerstone of Nazi Germany. Her monthly magazine, Woman Rebel, was published under the slogan, “No gods; no masters!” For Sanger, the birth control movement was founded on two goals: limiting the reproduction of the “unfit” and challenging Christian teaching by creating a “new morality.” She campaigned against women who “with staggering rapidity” were breeding “those numberless, undesired children who become the clogs and the destroyers of civilization.”

Sanger’s scorched-earth writing left no one guessing about her views. Confidently, she predicted a future that never materialized — and arguably was precisely the opposite in the century that followed.

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide. . . . Child slavery, prostitution, feeblemindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war will disappear from the earth. . . . When the womb becomes fruitful through the desire of an aspiring love, another Newton will come forth to unlock further the secrets of the earth and the stars. There will come a Plato who will be understood, a Socrates who will drink no hemlock, and a Jesus who will not die upon the cross.

On the contrary, there is no hope for “child slavery, prostitution, feeblemindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war to disappear from the earth” if the Father’s righteous anger against these terrible sins is not satisfied! Where would justice be in the universe if such sins go overlooked? There is no hope of a new heavens and a new earth, free from the effects of the fall, without the atonement of our sinless Savior. There is no hope for mercy to triumph over judgment unless it be found at the foot of that cross. Our only hope is the cross!

Therefore, the real “mommy wars” are not against other people and their parenting styles, nor even against Darwin, Sanger or those who promote similar ideologies. As Ephesians 6:12 says, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The real mommy wars are spiritual. And this conflict began with the very first mother, Eve.

Her initial assignment, along with her husband Adam, was to be “fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). But after the Fall, childbearing became painful and opposed. When the Lord God cursed the serpent that deceived Eve, he said, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15).

Ever since, Satan has labored to destroy the offspring of those who are made in the image of God. The real mommy wars are not against flesh and blood, but against the one who seeks to destroy the next generation of those who would rise up to praise God.

You may be a mother and in the thick of rearing children right now. Perhaps it took you several attempts to read this blog post, thanks to the constant interruptions of young children. Your daily life may consist of dozens of repetitive tasks that feel mundane and irrelevant. This is absolutely not true! You are engaged in spiritual warfare. You are standing against those who believe heinous lies, like “the most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” By bearing and nurturing life, you are reflecting the life-giving characteristics of our holy God! Made in his image, you are reflecting him when you care for the lives he has created.

This applies to those of us who are childless, too. Whether you are not yet married, or married but not yet pregnant, or past the age of bearing children — whatever season of life you are in, you are still part of the great community of believers who are called to witness to the majesty of God: “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4).

It may be quite bitter not to have children of your own, but I ask you to be strategic about the battle. Where can you stand against the devil’s schemes and invest in the children God has already put in your life? Where can you reach out? So many hurting children exist and so many are being discarded.

The real “mommy war” needs every believing woman to enlist. The battle is more significant and more costly than we truly perceive.

________

Mommy Wars in the Local Church: A Parable

This parable* was told to some mothers who engaged in Mommy Wars and trusted in themselves that they figured it all out, and treated others with contempt:

Two mothers woke up and opened their Bibles to pray, one a perfect mother and the other a not-so-perfect mother.

The perfect mother prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am Mom enough, not like other mothers who have no clue what they’re doing, or even like those whose children disobey and don’t achieve as much as mine do.

But the not-so-perfect mother prayed, ‘God, help me, a grace-dependent mother whose faith is so small but whose God is so great!’

Christian and non-Christian mothers alike decry the issue of mother-to-mother destructive criticism. Their voices have weighed in by the hundreds of thousands against the “Mommy Wars.”

Many women, with cynical derision, claim this problem is more prevalent inside the church, and that is because inside the church, motherhood-related issues are more likely to be assigned a moral value, creating a game that no mother can win.

Along with Rachel, I find these Mommy Wars to be quite foreign. In fact I asked some friends back home in the States to explain how their lives were impacted. We left the U.S. before our oldest was 16 months, before DIY online stores were generating income for Proverbs 31 hopefuls, before social media sites showcased our God-given creativity with professional cameras, and before organic food was available in major grocery food stores.

Our other two children were born in the Middle East. Here, when someone asks me about my mothering, it is often in the vein of “It takes a village to raise a child, so what village are you from?” There’s little competition here, but sincere intrigue and concern.

I have been asking my friends: Are Christian mothers more violent contenders in this culturally-facilitated Mommy War? Do the moral values of Christian mothers make us more likely to throw other mothers under the bus instead of build them up in the gospel?

There are in fact moral values assigned to certain parenting practices described in the Bible. Ephesians 6:4 comes to mind, “Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” The moral value of this parenting practice is indisputable. Our moral potential for practicing this is also indisputable. We are sinners in need of God’s grace!

But most of the outrage against mother-to-mother criticism comes from the assigning of arbitrary moral values to non-moral mothering techniques or practices. Take nursing and bottle feeding for example. I have heard both of these moral judgments: “You nurse your baby? Shame on you.” and “You use bottles? Shame on you.”

When we acknowledge the heart idols of competitive mothering we can understand who fired the first shot in the Mommy War. We all did.

Christian mothers must not accept Mommy Wars in the church. Mommy Wars are a contradiction of a community founded on Jesus Christ.

God's forgiveness, and our knowing that we are forgiven sinners, frees us from the very things that spoil our relations with each other. It frees Christian mothers from the need to prove anything. It frees us from envy and one-up-mothering. It frees us from the craving for approval and praise that we seek from others. It liberates us to value each other in Christ, and to love our mother-neighbors as ourselves.

In other words, the cross makes possible the fellowship that the Mommy Wars threaten to tear down.

So-called Mommy Wars have no place among Christian sisters. Christian mothers are weak and needy for one another. Like the faithful Canaanite mother, we approach the Savior on our knees, saying “Lord, help me” (Matthew 15:21–28). That is the posture of the needy, Christian mother.

We cherish the shed blood of Jesus Christ who cleanses us from our sin and we live peaceably with one another because of the cross. Moreover, we love to boast all the more gladly of our weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon us!

We approach the Savior on our knees, and we are able to “put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” (1 Peter 2:1) and we can “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24).

Instead of taking the next shot to slander a mother who does things differently, Jesus gives us the grace we need to adorn the gospel. Jesus gives us the grace to be reverent in behavior, teach what is good, train young women to love their husbands and children, be self-controlled, be pure, work at home, be kind, and be submissive to our own husbands (Titus 2).

* The parable is based on Jesus’ Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:9–14.

The End of Mommy Wars

Every other week this spring, I opened my home to a group of new moms to discuss biblical motherhood. Each of them arrived with their babies and baby gear in tow, as well a palpable fear that they were getting it all wrong.

There is an inherent danger in gathering moms in a room: we immediately compare notes regarding our children’s milestones, personalities, and sleep habits. Really, though, we are comparing ourselves, wondering if we are good moms and if our children reflect that.

With the new moms, I addressed this tendency toward comparison on the first day. Until we stop comparing ourselves or telling other moms they should mother our way, I said, we will leave our time together feeling isolated and condemned.

The gospel of Christ holds no place for comparison. We are all equally in need of grace, and we all equally receive it as a gift from God. In regards to mothering, the gospel clearly applies:

None of us are good enough mothers.Through Christ, God offers us grace in our mothering. He takes our meager efforts and produces spiritual fruit in us and our children. He is enough.He has given us principles in Scripture as a framework for mothering.He has also given us the Holy Spirit to individually lead and guide us in mothering our unique children.

What does this mean in day-in, day-out motherhood?

It means that we are all mothering toward the same goal — that our children know and worship God. Our methods for reaching that goal may vary according to our unique families, circumstances, and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Will he lead every believer toward the same goal? Yes. Will he lead every believer to the goal in the same way? No. And this is a very good thing.

Nancy Wilson writes,

Because every family is a distinct cultural unit, it is good that our methods differ. God did not intend for us to walk in lockstep with one another. . . . We ought to rejoice in a common commitment to biblical principles and in the variety of methods God’s people employ. (The Fruit of Her Hands, 58)

Because of the gospel, then, the Mommy Wars have no place among believers. After all, at the heart of the Mommy Wars is pride (“I am more spiritual than that mother because I employ this method and she does not.”), competition (“My children are better than hers because I employ this method.”), and self-condemnation (“I am not spiritual enough or a good enough mother because I don’t employ the method that she does.”).

To end the Mommy Wars in the church, we must learn to apply the gospel to our own mothering, and also to the mothering methods of others. When we know God’s grace, we stop looking for validation from others for our methods, and we are able to extend grace to others. We celebrate and respect the different gifts and styles of mothering as we move toward a common goal.

These are all the things I said to the new moms in my living room. I pleaded with them earnestly to remember grace, to turn off the chorus of (good) voices on the internet and (good) books on their shelves, and to listen for and focus on the only voice that matters, the quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit in the pages of Scripture.

_______________