This is part 3 of Lies Women Believe.
In part three of the discussion on lies we women have bought into, Marina, a young mom brings up some interesting points that I thought were provoking enough to discuss.
Marina:Many have abortions because the timing is not right, they can’t afford a baby. This has become not just a mindest, but a cultural mindset affecting an entire nation. The laws in place are not a cure for this mentality, it just masks the symptoms. The real problem has come from a cultural shift on our priorities and what we regard as first importance.
Pastor Susan: What happened was that the moms of the 60’s raised daughters who believed that men were trying to keep us from our goals. We also had very guilty feeling moms who knew the heart-wrenching decisions of picking work over their children. Yet, they were stuck. Women were telling other women that they were somehow less than for feeling guilty or for wanting to stay home. They were asking the women why their husbands weren’t carrying 50% of the workload at home. So women sucked it up and did what they had to do. This created moms who were out of sorts, feeling guilty, tired and resentful of the whole mess. Women began to believe they had options. That their needs were more important than an inconvenient pregnancy. Only statistically we see many more women who live in bondage over the decision of abortion than women who live free. They end having deep regret, they think about it each year saying things like, “My baby would have been 14 had I kept it.” If this was such a flippant decision then the residue of that action would not permeate our thoughts in the now. It’s not as easy as women told us it would be.
Marina: I have been struggling with this issue even before I attended this conference because for the last few weeks, every time I drop my child off at the sitter’s I think to myself “I should be the one that spends time with my child during the day, loving him, playing with him and teaching him.”
Pastor Susan: Now there is this shift happening not just in Marina but in her generation who is waking up to the knowledge that women were sold a bill of goods. The adults who were raised as latchkey kids realize they missed out on something. The women of this generation are realizing that we weren’t given more freedom, we were given more burden. Now we are expected to work, raise children and statistically we are doing a majority of the household chores and running of the kids from event to event. We are tired! Women realized that they spent their childhood raising themselves, divorce rates increased in this society and we were not better for it.
The problem lies in that our society has changed. Men, for the most part, and I am generalizing here, don’t want to marry women who want to stay home and raise children. If truth be told, 40% of white, over 50% of Hispanic and over 70% of African American babies are born out-of-wedlock. 65% of kids in prison don’t know their fathers and if they do, they weren’t raised with them. Men also are in an period of finding themselves so they also think they are entitled to stay home. It’s a mess to say the least.
Tomorrow let’s talk about what this all means and what we have to do to make it work for everyone.
Pastor Susan 