I went into our local bank last week. Since we live outside a small town, everyone knows each other, and I enjoy chatting with the bankers. I asked about the young teller who had just had a baby and was told she had decided not to return to work, but instead planned to stay home with her newborn. It’s a perfectly understandable decision.
Yet this is a choice many feminists would decry. Horrors! This young woman is now a domestic slave, dependent on her husband for income!
“As long as women with children put family first, feminists’ utopian vision for gender equality – where 50 percent of women hold top corporate and government positions right along with men – will never be achieved,” notes this Fox News editorial from a few years ago. “And they’re right, of course. It won’t. The mistake is in thinking most women care. The research shows, unequivocally, that they do not. … The truth is, women change when they have children. They care less about what they do for a living and more about how their children are faring. They also realize they’re needed at home in a visceral and primal way. … That’s why feminists are so frustrated. They can’t get women to do what they want.” [Emphases added.]
Now keep this in mind as I confess something so shocking, so appalling and so outrageously backward to the progressive cause that I’m certain feminists the world over will faint in horror.
Ready? Here it goes: My husband is the head of our household.
Yes, really. Here, some smelling salts will revive you.
In today’s world marinated with progressive morals and ideals, it’s tantamount to heresy for a woman to freely admit that her husband heads the household. But let’s face it: It makes life easier for both my husband and me.
In “The War Against Parents” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, they write, “Important strands of liberal thinking are antagonistic to the parenting enterprise. Scratch the surface and you will find that many folks on the left don’t particularly like marriage or children. In their view, the enormous quantity of other-directed energy absorbed by families gets in the way of freedom of choice, and ultimately of self-realization. This is particular true for women, which is why some radical feminists tend to see motherhood as a plot to derail equal rights and lure women back to subservient, submissive roles within the family.”
It was the terms “subservient, submissive roles within the family” that annoyed me. Why on earth do feminists think housewives are subservient and submissive? Do I sound “submissive” or “subservient” to you? Have they ever even talked to a happy homemaker?
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Why is it oppressive or subservient to look to one’s husband for guidance and strength, rather than to feminist ideals? Why can’t it be a freeing thing for a woman to lean on her husband? Trust me, it’s comforting when a woman doesn’t have to “do it all.”
Of course this assumes that the man in question is a real man. Men who truly assume the mantle of Head of a household don’t have to throw their weight around, physically or psychologically, to prove their manhood. My husband calls that kind of behavior a sign of weakness, not strength. Real men don’t force their wives into submissive, subservient roles. They know diamonds are too valuable to treat like glass.
I am the Heart of our household, and as everyone knows, a body is no good without a heart, just as a body is no good without a head. We need both, and the fact that I view my husband as my Head in no way diminishes my importance as his Heart. But someone has to have the final say in a house for peace and order to prevail, and that job goes to my husband.
A wise Head takes advice and counsel from his Heart. My husband and I discuss all household decisions and mutually agree on nearly everything. But if there is a dissenting opinion between us, and unless I can demonstrate why my position is superior, then I defer to his guidance.
Oooh, sacrilege to the feminist cause. Feminists, presumably, must always have the last word, which I interpret as meaning feminists try to make their husbands submissive and subservient.
And here’s something many feminists seldom have: peace within the home. Because my husband and I each understand our unique and critical roles, we are blessed with domestic harmony that is the envy of many (32 years and going strong!). But we are not unique in this. All our happily married friends are the same way. It’s like we’ve discovered the “secret” to a happy marriage that no modern-day feminist will ever admit works. A happy, harmonious and (worse) traditional family arrangement can no longer be accepted as creating the best environment for raising children.
Remember the parents (Charles and Caroline) of the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder? I once saw it written that Caroline went wherever Charles took her, but Charles would only go where Caroline let him. In other words, they worked together as a team. Being the Head of a household doesn’t mean a man is a nasty dictator. To be a true family leader means taking wise counsel from others, primarily from one’s Heart, to discern the best path for a family to take.
So an important task for a woman in choosing a husband is to pick a man who truly understands what it means to take his place as Head of the household.
Much of the hostility toward stay-at-home moms appears to stem from the notion that home is an awful place to be. And frankly, if I had to live in male dictatorship or an emasculating feminist environment, I agree – it would be an awful place to be. But a home ruled over by a domestic diva who appreciates her man is a lovely, warm, welcoming place, a refuge from an often cruel world, an anchor of peace in a tough economy, a haven of tranquility against the rigors of the outside world.
And men know this very well, because they are the slayers of dragons and our knights in shining armor whose efforts permit us to create those homes.
I will continue to live the life feminists hate. I prefer it that way.
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