Our culture has been steered by feminism for a few generations, and there is now a huge crater where there might have been healthy, happy families. On top of that, our society has been rocked by many other significant changes in technology, medicine, economics… the list could go on. In the midst of all that change and confusion, it’s difficult to know what a healthy, happy, Christian family should look like.
Here’s one example of what I’m talking about from the article I’ve linked to:
Second, the nuclear family as a standard unit of social life is a relatively new and isolating phenomenon. Wives returning from work to an apartment or house are expecting their husbands to fulfill all the emotional and conversational needs that were once fulfilled by other women of multiple generations throughout the agrarian workday in the fields or at home (where the burdens of childcare and eldercare were group shared).
This rang true to me. I was recently talking with a man in my church, and I realized that his wife was expecting him to do just what Paglia was describing: to “fulfill all the emotional and conversational needs that were once fulfilled by other women of multiple generations…” I counseled him that they wouldn’t make it if that kept up, and I urged him to make sure that his wife get support from other women.
There were other good things to chew on in this article, and it left me wanting more… but from a Christian author.
Aaron Renn’s The Masculinist addressed this a little bit, if you haven’t read it. Didn’t do a great job, but at least it’s from a Christian perspective.
I’ve had quite a few conversations about this with women in the church. We’re feeling it not just in the area of emotional support, but also in physical struggles- not enough hands to do the housework or schooling, help with new babies, help with older parents, etc.
And we don’t have a very clear idea of what a properly structured family looks like.
Leila Lawler writes a little about this at her blog for women:
She is a devout Roman Catholic, so I read very carefully and with a large grain of salt, but she’s doing Titus 2 from the nitty-gritty daily details to the big ideas such as community and generational living.
Michael Foster and Bnonn Tennant are starting to write about this, too, mostly addressing the men.
Yes, sometimes the saint-venerating gets to be a bit much.
I have found that she is very vocal (on Twitter) about the current pedophilic scandal in the Church, and as far as I can tell, speaks about it intelligently and without being a harpy. Quite an accomplishment in and of itself.
But nobody does a better job describing the void and attempting to fill it with sound advice. It’s not exactly the same thing, but she uses this term “collective memory” that is really helpful.
I’m not really convinced that this is a new problem, though. I think there have probably always been women who turned to their husbands to fill a void that was meant to be filled by friendship with other women. Isolation and loneliness aren’t anything new, though I’m sure they’ve been compounded by the things you mention, @ldweeks
I’m not sure she appreciated it