July 06, 2005

Father Still Knows Best

A recent USA Today article by Ginny Graves who co-authored the book, Bringing Home the Bacon, notes that more women are earning more than their husbands. I suppose that’s good news for single women but the bad news, for working married women is that while more women work, their domestic responsibilities have not decreased.

One explanation is that men who are already feeling rather emasculated by their wage earning wives are reticent to do household work. The solution according to Graves is to “replace old notions about men’s and women’s roles with more progressive ones.”

Graves solution is of course patently wrong. The God of heaven assigned roles at the outset; roles which have been subverted, controverted and perverted. That does not change the wisdom of God’s counsel nor the consequences of ignoring it.

In the 40 years since Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mistake—I mean Mystique—the family has been in a downward spiral with women and children paying the highest price of all. Ironically, what was supposed to bring equality and liberation has brought bondage and pain with men reaping the bulk of the perks of women’s desire for man. This goes all the way back to the curse of Genesis 3:16 when God said to Eve, “Your desire shall be for your husband.” In other words, the woman will as a matter of course, be out to usurp the man’s role in life.

So now we pay the piper with a society in shambles, transient relationships and a culture of temporary gratification which favors the male and that, a result of the woman’s doing.

Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinhem and the rest did more to liberate the man from responsibility, faithfulness and consideration of the opposite sex better than any man ever could have. Ironic isn’t it? What was called women’s liberation has became women’s oppression unlike anything ever known in America.

And yet the nature of deceit is that it is covert and to this day, women still don’t get it. They are not any freer than they were when June Cleaver was preparing dinner for Ward in heels and pearls.

To be sure there were inequities of gender that needed to be addressed but you have to admit that Wally and the Beaver at least came home to a “home,” and they knew who their mother and father was and life, though not perfect, was at least peaceful; something unknown to the American family today. Amazing isn’t it? It’s still true today—Father Knows Best!

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