- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
hawkgrrrl wrote:
People who behave like this generally resent the choices they’ve made in life and now want some company for their misery. This should be obvious now that I’ve pointed it out, but it takes a little more life experience to see these things some times. I would add to this that she’s on a shrinking iceberg in this opinion. The church is softening its stance on this – I have been blogging for over 5 years, and there is a lot of progress. There’s still a long way to go, but the women who bought into the patriarchy hook, line, and sinker, are interestingly the people in the church who have the most to lose from change. After all, they made this huge sacrifice that is no longer “required.” Their views are becoming antiquated. And their entire self-worth is based on an evaporating myth.
This last comment is 100% Awesome and helps me to take a few breathes and resist the urge to throw stones through someone else’s “stain glass window.”
HSAB wrote:hawkgrrrl wrote:
Motherhood being praised is deceptive. This is something called Romantic Paternalism, when a man restricts a woman’s choices by telling her how great she is. She’s too special, precious, important to be out in the world. He needs to protect her. Putting a woman on a pedestal is one way to shackle her. Also, bear in mind how many times you hear that men need the priesthood whereas women don’t because they are inherently more spiritual. Nice try, but it’s Romantic Paternalism again.
Hawkgirl, I always love your comments! Romantic Paternalism is exactly what we say about the MIAness of our Heavenly Mother. Thanks for enlightening me on that term!
I’ve also seen this described as Benevolent Sexism. Wikipedia has the following to say about it.
Quote:Within hostile sexism (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS), the three subcomponents serve distinct functions. Dominative paternalism (HS) suggests that men should control women, while protective paternalism (BS) implies that men should protect and care for women. Competitive gender differentiation (HS) bolsters men’s self-confidence (e.g., men are superior to women). Complementary gender differentiation (BS) places importance on traditional gender roles for women (e.g., mother & wife) and assumes that men depend on women to fulfill these roles. Lastly, heterosexual hostility (HS) views women as sexual objects for men’s pleasure and promotes the fear of women’s capacity to manipulate men by engaging in or withholding sexual activity. Intimate heterosexuality (BS) romanticizes women as having sexually purity and views romantic intimacy as necessary to complete a man.
So the Intimate heterosexuality aspect of Benevolent Sexism “views romantic intimacy as necessary to complete a man” and “In the old economic model, 1/2 + 1/2 = 1.[snip] In the economic model, the couple is financially successful because the wife runs all the domestic aspects of life supporting and cheering on the husband as he meets the financial obligations.”Is it fair to say that we have enshrined the idea that men and women are not complete without each other in our theology? Might it be extra hard to eliminate these notions from the church because we understand these things as the way God intended it to be? Is this part of why singles, divorced persons, gays, career women, and anyone else that doesn’t fit well into the traditional gender role of marriage tend to feel out of place like they don’t fully belong?
You can do what you’d like. And what you want may change over the years, or stay firm. Either is ok. Just be prayerful about it. Be open to seeking what God wants for you. I’ve learned he usually has better plans for me than those I come up with on my own. 😮 )Don’t worry about what others in the ward say you need to do. If you pray, and give it a lot of thought, you can gain a confirmation of God’s plan for your life. Then you don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks. I know what we are doing is right for us. My patriarchial blessing even instructs me to prepare to support myself and my family.
I have been happily married for years and have only one child. I work full time and my husband stays home with our son. It works. I am fully active and involved in our ward. People may well disapprove, but they don’t say it to my face. I don’t think about it or worry about it. If they disapprove I’m not bothering to find out. I get one life, and I know I’m doing what is right with mine.
Quote:It works . . . I get one life, and I know I’m doing what is right with mine.
and that, ladies and gentlemen, is our mission, in a nutshell.
We hope everyone can say, eventually:
Quote:It works . . . I get one life, and I know I’m doing what is right with mine.
Roy wrote:
Is it fair to say that we have enshrined the idea that men and women are not complete without each other in our theology? Might it be extra hard to eliminate these notions from the church because we understand these things as the way God intended it to be? Is this part of why singles, divorced persons, gays, career women, and anyone else that doesn’t fit well into the traditional gender role of marriage tend to feel out of place like they don’t fully belong?IMO absolutely.
[quote=”mom3″I add my agreement to everyone else’s – this is your life, your road – and it is between you and God how you walk it. You’re very okay.[/quote] Thank you for your story & encouraging comments (:
Martha wrote:On the main page of this site is a great article that may help you differentiate what is from God and what is just opinion or culture.
Thank you!! (:wuwei wrote:I’ve found many that get upset when we buck a tradition are those who’ve bought in the hardest, regret it, and are jealous you have the spine to exercise your agency unlike they did.
I agree! Congrats on your baby!! So exciting!! (:Roy wrote:
Is it fair to say that we have enshrined the idea that men and women are not complete without each other in our theology? Might it be extra hard to eliminate these notions from the church because we understand these things as the way God intended it to be? Is this part of why singles, divorced persons, gays, career women, and anyone else that doesn’t fit well into the traditional gender role of marriage tend to feel out of place like they don’t fully belong?
I think you’re exactly right. My mother is divorced and struggles with the feeling of “not belonging” or not fitting quite right into the cookie-cutter Mormon mold.hawkgrrrl wrote:Motherhood being praised is deceptive. This is something called Romantic Paternalism, when a man restricts a woman’s choices by telling her how great she is. She’s too special, precious, important to be out in the world. He needs to protect her. Putting a woman on a pedestal is one way to shackle her. Also, bear in mind how many times you hear that men need the priesthood whereas women don’t because they are inherently more spiritual. Nice try, but it’s Romantic Paternalism again.
Quote:my leaders then proceeded to explain how it’s not a woman’s “place” to have a career, but it is the man’s job. And the woman’s job is to have children and stay home.
What if the man loses his job? What if he cheats on you and leaves you? What if he is critically injured or killed? Try taking this empty promise to the bank. And besides that, this is essentially an economic model for marriage which is very outdated today. Most people have what it called a Hedonic marriage – marrying for love and companionship. In the old economic model, 1/2 + 1/2 = 1. But I don’t believe that people are a half of a whole. People should be whole people in their own right, not requiring marriage to “complete” them. In the economic model, the couple is financially successful because the wife runs all the domestic aspects of life supporting and cheering on the husband as he meets the financial obligations. But heaven help the couple that divorces or loses one of the two spouses because the whole thing collapses.
But – and I should follow my own advice on this one – don’t get mad. Ignore stupidity, and it will be much easier for you throughout life, both in the church, in college, and in your career. Probably in your marriage too.
😮
Wow.. I understand now why people love your posts so much!! Thank you for your input, I really appreciate your perspective! (:Gah that sounds so infuriating…. I got angry when I heard the same type of comments in YW too. I think this image just sums it up though: http://feministmormonhousewives.tumblr.com/post/41145584070/i-belong-to-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of Blue-bird, let me begin by saying I know exactly how you feel. I really, really do. I am a 64-year-old LDS woman (born and raised in the Church). As a teenager, I absolutely hated babysitting, simply because I just didn’t like kids. Growing up, I remember telling my mother that I never wanted to have children. She couldn’t possibly have handled my statement more appropriately. There was no guilt trip, no pressure, nothing of the sort. My mother was an absolute angel and my best friend in the world. By the time I fell in love and got married (at age 21), I was starting to have second thoughts, but only because of my relationship with my mother. I knew there would come a time when I no longer had her, and I didn’t want that mother-daughter relationship to ever end. I knew I wanted kids, but only two of them, and I knew I didn’t want them for quite some time. My husband and I were married for 9 1/2 years before I gave birth to my son. It was our choice to wait. I was 31 by then. I went through my 20s hearing exactly the same crap you’ve described, week in and week out. We lived in the University of Utah married student housing for the first four years of our married life and I swear that 25% of the women in my ward were pregnant at any given time. There were so many babies in the ward that it was practically impossible to get anything out of Sacrament Meeting and the Primary was absolutely gargantuan. I made the mistake early on of sharing my feelings with a sister in the ward. What a mistake. You’d have thought I’d morphed into some kind of an alien creature right before her eyes. From then on, I just kept quiet about how I felt. I went to baby shower after baby shower, and I’m sure everybody just assumed that I couldn’t have kids. We were in that student ward for four years. Several years into our time there, our bishop spoke to us one night at Relief Society (it was mid-week back then, before the 3-hour block). I honestly can’t remember exactly what the subject of his lesson/talk was, but it had to have been something about motherhood. After the meeting, I decided to bare my soul to him. I sat in his office and did just that. I remember saying, “What if you don’t want kids?” He was actually quite compassionate, but I was overcome with feelings of guilt over the simply fact that I, too, wanted “a career, and not 10,000 kids.” I felt like there was something really, really wrong with me, but it was something I simply couldn’t change. I bawled like a baby for probably twenty minutes as I sat there with him. Eventually, he said something about being glad that I had talked to him about how I felt. He said he wanted to continue to meet with me from time to time, so that I could work out my feelings and feel better about my decision. Well, that was the last time we ever talked. Over the next few weeks in church, he didn’t say another word about the elephant in the room and neither did I. Then we finally moved away. A few months later, we were invited to some kind of event at the old ward and decided to go. When I saw him, the first thing he said was, “Well, are you pregnant?” I told him I wasn’t. I didn’t become pregnant until more than four more years had passed.
My parents were gems. During tht nine year period, they never once asked, “So when are you going to give us grandkids?” My sister-in-law, on the other hand, would call us and tell us that we were breaking one of God’s most important commandments by using birth control. I remember one call that came while we were getting ready to go to work. My husband took it, but I could tell from his side of the conversation what it was all about. I stood there in my bedroom, screaming at her to mind her own business at the top of my lungs, making absolutely sure she’d be able to hear me in the background.
On Mother’s Day, in 1979, I was getting ready for Church when I told my husband, “I’m not going. I’m not going to go and be honored for being something I’ve tried for nine years not to be.” (All of the women were given a flower or something, just so that none of us poor childless ones would feel hurt over being left out, when we were obviously already suffering so much due to our infertility.) My husband was understanding. We stayed home that week. A couple of weeks later, I learned that I was pregnant. By then, I’d gone off birth control. I was 30 and I figured that if I was going to have kids, I’d better start doing it. Truly, it was something I had to talk myself into.
I do have two grown children now, a son and a daughter. I love them both with all my heart, there has never been a moment when I regretted having only two or waiting as long as I did to have them. Their growing-up years were not really fun for me, and I enjoy them both now more than I did when they were children. I continued to work while they were young, but just 30 hours per week instead of full-time. I really don’t know what I can say to you to help you deal with what you’re going through, except that to say, “You’re not alone.” (And in reading some of the other posts on this thread, I feel — almost for the first time in my life — that I’m not alone either.)
I have a friend who had the dream of becoming a doctor. She married at 21 but decided to get through medical school and the first few years of being qualified before having kids. The old ladies and church would often ask her ‘any kids yet?’ To which she’d sweetly smile and reply ‘no, but we’re having fun practising.’ That would usually shut the old dears up for a while.
They now have two beautiful kids.
mackay11 wrote:I have a friend who had the dream of becoming a doctor. She married at 21 but decided to get through medical school and the first few years of being qualified before having kids. The old ladies and church would often ask her ‘any kids yet?’ To which she’d sweetly smile and reply ‘no, but we’re having fun practising.’ That would usually shut the old dears up for a while. They now have two beautiful kids.
Hahaha love it!!Katzpur wrote:Blue-bird, let me begin by saying I know exactly how you feel. I really, really do. I am a 64-year-old LDS woman (born and raised in the Church). As a teenager, I absolutely hated babysitting, simply because I just didn’t like kids. Growing up, I remember telling my mother that I never wanted to have children.
Thank you so much for sharing (: That’s exactly how I feel. Glad Im not the only Mormon girl who feels this way.vickzorz wrote:Gah that sounds so infuriating…. I got angry when I heard the same type of comments in YW too. I think this image just sums it up though:
http://feministmormonhousewives.tumblr.com/post/41145584070/i-belong-to-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of
Perfect. (:I am so glad this subject was brought up! Thank goodness, our Heavenly Father knows how unique and individual we are. Growing up, I did not like to babysit either and it seemed I got all the brats to babysit. I would never date a guy for long if he wanted a big family. My sister on the other hand, majored in child development and wanted alot of kids. She was not able to get pregnant and finally adopted two. My mother was very mentally ill after world war two in Germany and I did not have a good example of how to be a mom. I got pregnant three months after I married at 24 and had 5 months of horrible morning sickness, a nightmare childbirth, and a colicky baby I felt overwhelmed and exhausted. I did not like motherhood at all though I loved my children. When I heard Spencer W. Kimball at a conference talk about mothers not working and staying in the home, I was really depressed. In RS when all the women oogled over babies, I thought only of how hard it was to take care of them. God understood me and my situation though and led me to a wonderful book by Anita Canfield, called “Self-esteem for the Latter Day Saint woman. Her book discussed our individuality just as Jesus picked such different apostles, it is alright to be different. For me, going to work was a life saver. I loved my work as a hairdresser, and felt self-esteem in that area. I made sure to get good lds babysitters who loved children, but I was a far better mom working than when I stayed home all the time. I wished my mom had worked outside the home when I was growing up because she drove us all crazy with her mental illness. I believe the church gives out general guidelines and then we pray about what is right for us. It is difficult to feel like you ‘fit in’ with the church when you are a minority but, in this forum, we are pretty much different anyway and think for ourselves so lets all just hold hands, walk together, and sing Kumbya!
Love the comments here! bridget_night wrote:I believe the church gives out general guidelines and then we pray about what is right for us.
This is sooo true. I want to hear this in GC (more at least).
Quote:I want to hear this in GC (more at least).
It’s often there, but, generally, something else is said that gets emotions roiling and causes it to be forgotten.
We generally hear and remember whatever we are attuned to hear and remember. We can’t always control fully the tuning fork in our hearts, but we can work on adjusting the tuning to whatever pitch is best for us.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.