From the latest radio series conversation from (click here:) Revive Our Hearts:
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Bob Lepine: I’ll never forget a conversation I was having once with two college professors. These professors taught what is a dying discipline on the college campus. They were teaching Home Economics. They were meeting with a group of young college women. They said to these women, “How many of you hope that some day you will be married and that you will be parents, that you’ll be a mom?”
And virtually all of the women raised their hands. That was their hope and their longing. And these college professors said, “How come you’re not taking Home Economics classes?” And one of them said, “Because my dad said, ‘I’m not spending all that money sending you to college just so you can learn how to cook and clean the house.’”
We do seem to live in a culture today that is somewhat confused about what God’s intention for a woman is when it comes to career, when it comes to her role in the home, and it’s one of the issues that young women are having to address, having to confront.
In fact, I remember speaking to a group of teenage girls once, talking to them about their plans for going to college, what they were planning to major in, and what they hoped to be doing five or ten years from now. Virtually all of them gave me career answers to that question, and when I stopped and said, “What about marriage and family? Is that something that you’re interested in?” They said, “Oh yeah.” But their thinking was career not how do I prepare to be a wife and a mom.
This is one of those challenging issues for us in today’s culture.
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And, Dannah, as you talk with teenage girls, as you talk with them today, how is this shaping their thinking, and how is it subtly influencing them in a directional way from what God would have for them?
Dannah: Well, I don’t think it’s very subtle. I think it’s pretty direct. What’s frightening to me is we’ve had the issue of young women saying, “I don’t know if I want to submit to my husband when I have a husband; I don’t know if I really want to have a husband.” Within the last five years or so, they are increasingly saying, “I don’t know if I want to have kids, at all, ever. I haven’t seen that be a good thing. I don’t want to be tied to that. I don’t want to be slowed down.”
It’s frightening to me that this isn’t just a cultural pressure anymore, but it’s something within the church.
Bob: So the lie that teenage girls are believing today is that being a mom, being a wife, is not something that has any real value. Is that it?
Nancy: It’s not just what a woman’s role is, but it goes back to this whole thing of our calling and our design as women, and the fact that God made women and men for distinctive, unique purposes to bring Him glory in this world, that’s what it’s all about. It’s not about our fulfillment or our happiness. I think we had stripped from us, in the last two or three generations, the sense of what it even means to be a woman.
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Honestly, it wasn’t until I was probably in my early twenties that I started grappling with:
- What did it mean?
- What does it mean for me to be a woman?
- Why did God make me a woman?
- Why is that a good thing?
- How can I glorify God as a woman?
I think I was probably in my early thirties before I was really comfortable with that, and not just comfortable. What God did was so sweet. It’s not just something I said, “Okay, I surrender to this.” There was that, but more than that there was embracing a vision for how my life could distinctively glorify God as a woman and finding joy and freedom and fullness in that.
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Please read or listen to the series: (click here:) Revive Our Hearts.
2 comments:
I’m not sure I’d want to pay good money for a girl to learn housekeeping either. With all respect it isn’t an academic discipline and any twit between the ages of ten and 15 ought to be able to figure out a recipe book, a laundry routine and the wonderous workings of the tubes on the vacuum cleaner. At ten my mum taught me to make pastry, at 12 I wanted a new skirt so she gave me a sewing machine and a Butterick pattern and I got on with it, at 15 she was dying and I worked out the washing machine for myself. University/college education is getting dafter by the day, let’s not add to the problem by making degrees out of things our grandmothers knew were commonsense.
I appreciate your comment very much, margi, especially the fact that you had a good upbringing to learn - and to actually desire to learn - housekeeping.
Unfortunately in our day, many girls are pushed so much to learn academics and to prepare for a career outside the home that they no longer take the time to learn - or even know to develop a desire to learn - how to manage a house or a family. Some people are self taught - true! Most people could be self-taught - this is also true! But many need guidance, and they are not getting it at home. And even those who teach themselves do actually have others around to teach them somehow - whether book or internet or class at the craft store.
Additionally, there are other careers that can be helped along by having and improving on these basic "home making" skills in a college or university - from seamstresses and clothing designers, to chefs and professional dietitians, to business ownership, true child care and training, interior design, and many more. Girls in home economics courses are not "wasting" their money, not necessarily, though I'm sure some do.
If only we all listened to our grandmothers, and if only they actually knew these things as common sense (many of these things are not common anymore - check all the internet sites on how to organize a home, prepare a meal, raise children... ) - as apparently was the case a generation or two ago.
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