Posted in book reviews
In my last post about the book, the Feminine Mistake, I said if I had anymore to say, I would just post again. Of course, after I clicked submit, I realized that I had a lot more to say.
In reading the book, you get the impression that her highest goal in life is financial security. It really is no wonder that I disagree with Ms. Bennetts on so many things, because we have entirely different starting points. The Catholic Church teaches that God made us "to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world so that we can be happy with Him in the next." Jesus had a lot of fairly negative things to say about money and about how hard it is for rich people to enter Heaven. When the young man who had kept all the commandments asked Jesus what he must do to obtain eternal life, Jesus told him to sell everything and follow Him. The young man went away sadly, thereby showing that he had not followed the commandments out of love for God, but merely to be good.
Now, it is the love of money, not money itself, that is the root of all evil. And so we have to question, why does Ms. Bennetts feel money is so important? The answer seems to be that money equals power. Jesus also had a lot of fairly negative things to say about the quest for power. Here is just one: "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you [the apostles]. Rather, whoever wishes to be great amoung you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20: 25-28).
This is not to say that financial security is a bad thing: my husband and I have recently made some changes in our lives so that we can hopefully provide a modicum of financial security to our children. Our goal of financial security is NOT the highest goal here: providing for our children is. Our vocation is marriage, marriage frequently leads to children, and so we serve God by caring for and providing for our children while raising them to also know, love and serve God in this world so they can be happy with Him in the next. Children are not an afterthought, whose care we can relegate to someone else for a large portion of the day. Children come from the very heart of a marriage!
The care of children, as I said, is not something that Ms. Bennetts devotes many pages to in her book. But children need care. God designed human children to need quite a lot of care for many years, and then even when they could physically care for themselves, children require a lot of parental input. So the question is, who should give them this care? The answer might seem obvious but I would really like to explore this.
Grantly Dick-Read said, "The newborn baby has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother; food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three." God designed human babies to need human milk. Yes, substitutes can be found, but research has shown that they are not as good. Who did God design to produce the milk each baby needs? His mother. Since babies need feeding every couple of hours, that strongly suggests that the mother should be providing the majority of baby care. This does not suggest that she shouldn't have breaks too!
God gave my children to my husband and me, which suggests to me that He wanted us to take care of them (just as He gave Jesus to Mary and Joseph). When I did the Spanish immersion week, I saw the twins for about an hour in the morning. Then I had to get ready to go and left. I came back home about nine hours later and they went to bed two hours after that. In those two hours I was so tired I didn't even really want to interact with them. Working full-time, no matter what the quality of the child care, is not the same as the two of us caring for our children the majority of the time. I was very blessed to have my oldest son be able to take care of them for that week.
It's obvious that child care has very low status in the United States. That's why moms say they don't work or do nothing, and why child-workers get paid next to nothing. Even Montessori teachers, who have bachelor's degrees and at least another year of training, only make about $25,000 a year. And that's also why feminists say that mothers need to work. Betty Friedan said in The Feminine Mystique that "You can't just deny your intelligent mind; you need to be part of the social scheme" as though mothers who care for their children are not part of the social scheme. Status, though, is also not a pursuit of the Christian life. "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" (Matthew 16: 25-26a)
When caring for a child, one feeds the child, clothes the child, gets the child water, wipes a runny nose, washes clothes and dresses the child, comforts the child and many other things. This work is not well-paid. There are no Social Security credits for it. But read this: "Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' " (Matthew 25: 34-40)
"Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." Every time I feed my children, dress my children, give them water, or care for them when they are ill, I am doing it for Jesus. What higher status could there be? Jesus also said, "And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me" (Matthew 18:5). When Roger and I married in the Catholic Church, we pledged before all present that we would lovingly accept children from God. We promised this because of our faith in Jesus. We received our children in His name, and so we received Him. Remember our goal: to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him. Through our children, we come to know Jesus better, we love Him by loving our neighbors (our children) as ourselves, and we serve Him by serving others.
Aside from those benefits of caring for our children, when we spend a lot of time with children, we learn from them as well as teaching them. For example, I really like blue jays. One day a long time ago, I was thinking, "God, I never see blue jays anymore. Why not?" A day or two later, as I was rushing my oldest child somewhere, he stopped and pointed up at a power line. "Mommy, look at that bird!" he called. It was a blue jay. God gave me that gift through my son, and I learned to slow down and to look around. What else can we learn from children? "Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). How can we become like children if we never spend any time with them?
I think there is room in many mothers' lives for some professional paid work. Unlike Leslie Bennetts, though, I don't see the rejection of full-time separation from our children as a bad thing. I hope eventually it becomes possible for both men and women to spend more time with their children and caring for their families. The way jobs are structured now, and with health insurance being tied to a full-time position, it is practically impossible for both parents to work a rewarding part-time schedule. In our society, two twenty-hour a week positions does not equal one forty-hour a week position (and many positions require more than forty hours anyway). I think that La Leche League is a great example of what mothers can accomplish while also tending to the needs of their children. LLL was started by 7 women who had an average of 7 children each. It is now celebrating its 50th anniversary and it has helped many mothers nurse their children successfully.
And if you work full-time and your entire income goes to pay for child care and you sacrifice your time with the children to give your family financial security and opportunities, shouldn't you actually have financial security as Bennetts claims? Another book I just read, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, makes the argument that the mother working full-time can actually make the family more vulnerable, if they depend on her income for fixed necessities, and also because they don't have someone available to go to work to make up the slack or to care for the ill person. Very often if something happens, such as job loss, or divorce, or a child's illness, the family cannot continue their lives with only one income because they have built their lives on having two incomes. The authors reached their conclusions by studying families who filed for bankruptcy. It's an interesting, quick read. Since I am now going to be working, I didn't want to fall into any traps. My income however, won't be going for necessities: it will be going to pay off debt and for my classes.
"Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." And now I'm off to put a little one down for a nap.
