Catholic teaching on gender roles

[Xantippe]

Thinking back to that Dalrock toilet cleaning thread, those guys wouldn’t even spend 5 seconds thinking through the questions, “How can we both minimize the amount of time we spend doing work we find most unpleasant?” or “How can we both win?” For those guys, a “win” consists in maximally grinding the wife’s face into the ground and maximizing the amount of misery in her life. Because somehow, that makes their home life better…

And a lot of them wonder why women at church seem so uninterested in what they have to offer…

 

[EasterJoy]

Where did I say that it was demeaning to take care of one’s children?
I did mention that women were sometimes chiefly defined by their ability to bear children but that does not translate into saying that caring for children is demeaning. I spent parts of my childhood in the third world. I have seen how women who cannot produce children, preferably sons, are treated. They are not treated well. This is what I am objecting to.
My own mother quit her own high-powered job as a financial analyst to be a housewife ever since she found out that she had a special needs child (me). I honor her a lot and she is one of the most intelligent people I know.

You are not saying that it is demeaning to take care of children, but where does the Church ever say that it is a woman’s role to be victimized with the importance of motherhood being used as an excuse?

You said: Women all over the world have been victimized by this view of them as baby makers. I think we both agree that valuing the importance of mothers, as both the Church and the two of us do, does not imply that women so honored have been reduced to “babymakers” or that childless women, whether married or not, are demeaned by implication.

 

[EasterJoy]

But it’s very, very ugly when husbands say “I’m making the money, so what I say goes.” And that continues to be a very popular approach in some quarters. In fact, in some quarters, having the wife SAHM is attractive largely because it makes it possible for the husband to say that. In that case, the traditional labor split is demeaning and abusive, because it is intended to be demeaning and abusive.

Hopefully, none of us are married to one of those guys (or destined to marry one), but they do exist, and it’s right of the single ladies in this thread to be wary of anybody who looks or talks like one.

It is very ugly when ANYBODY says, “I make the money, so what I say goes.” If my brother was considering somebody like that, I’d tell him to drop her like a hot potato and run. I hope it is obvious that this mindset is a million miles from the mind of Christ. How anyone, male or female, could defend that attitude with a straight face on Christian grounds is practically beyond comprehension.

No, the traditional labor split is not intended to be demeaning and abusive. It is a vestige of a time when there were no machines to do heavy lifting. I remember watching one of those reality shows in which some families decided they were going to go out onto the prairie and re-enact the life it took to be pioneers. One family decided to be fair, and so the wife took her turn at breaking sod with a plow and a draft animal. She didn’t last the day out. She was tough and game, but she did not have the physical strength to do it. My father did work like that. It would have been impossible for me to follow in his footsteps. My hands are too small and I am not strong enough. Few women would be strong enough.

That is the way most labor used to be. It was hard and the difference between the muscle mass of a male and that of a female was extremely relevant. So let’s just drop this c#$p about the traditional divisions of labor putting the hardest physical labor on the husband as a way to demean the wife. It is not true. Daily work used to be hard and monotonous for nearly everybody, and it was divided according to ability.

Now, if you want to argue that the idea that women staying home and doing essentially no physical labor is not a Christian ideal but rather a vestige of a time when sufficiently-wealthy men wanted to show off that they were wealthy enough that their wife didn’t have to be worn to premature old age by day after day of grueling labor, that would be true. That was still more of a difference between the wealthy and the poor than a difference between the sexes. If it got into religion, it got there by way of the insidious falsehood that the wealthy got that way by being more pleasing to God than everyone else.

 

[EasterJoy]

Thinking back to that Dalrock toilet cleaning thread, those guys wouldn’t even spend 5 seconds thinking through the questions, “How can we both minimize the amount of time we spend doing work we find most unpleasant?” or “How can we both win?” For those guys, a “win” consists in maximally grinding the wife’s face into the ground and maximizing the amount of misery in her life. Because somehow, that makes their home life better…

And a lot of them wonder why women at church seem so uninterested in what they have to offer…

This is why it pays to take anyone’s claim to be a great marriage prospect on religious grounds with a hefty grain of salt. Belonging to the same denomination does not imply sharing the same values–not by a million miles! There are a lot of messed-up ideas people have about the differences between the sexes. They think they are religious, but somebody just made them up and tries to use religion as an excuse for why they should not be inspected too carefully. You can’t run too fast from that sort.

Generous people who give without strings attached tend to be mentally healthy, while stingy people who are always afraid someone is going to take some unfair advantage tend to have the neuroses that go with that. Love the misers when you meet them, but don’t ever marry one.

 

[Sarcelle]

You are not saying that it is demeaning to take care of children, but where does the Church ever say that it is a woman’s role to be victimized with the importance of motherhood being used as an excuse?

You said: Women all over the world have been victimized by this view of them as baby makers. I think we both agree that valuing the importance of mothers, as both the Church and the two of us do, does not imply that women so honored have been reduced to “babymakers” or that childless women, whether married or not, are demeaned by implication.

Yes, we both agree.

 

[EasterJoy]

Yes, we both agree.

My apologies if my reply seemed like an attack on you. I meant to take issue with the complaint that division of labor along gender lines is always oppressive in intention. It is not. It is not even necessarily unfair in practice, depending on whether the actual abilities of each party warrant it. Having said that, there is no concept that ever crossed any human mind that cannot be twisted to a self-centered end. That the sexes are distinct is no exception. Original sin makes us quite ingenious that way. Caveat emptor.

Thinking back to that Dalrock toilet cleaning thread, those guys wouldn’t even spend 5 seconds thinking through the questions, “How can we both minimize the amount of time we spend doing work we find most unpleasant?” or “How can we both win?” For those guys, a “win” consists in maximally grinding the wife’s face into the ground and maximizing the amount of misery in her life. Because somehow, that makes their home life better…

And a lot of them wonder why women at church seem so uninterested in what they have to offer…

Well, it just goes to show that a self-centered idiot who claims Christianity as his excuse may still be safely seen as what he is: a poor, self-centered idiot. Pray for him, wish him well, hope that for the profit of his soul he will come to a more generous view of life in general and marriage in particular, but do not under any remote circumstances allow him to induce you to marry him!!

 

[sttcatherinefan]

I didn’t know what a red pill blog was and that was disturbing. More disturbing is that men with such attitudes would have been able to find wives prior to second wave feminism. I think that most of the marriages at least among the middle class that aren’t happening are ones with these misogynist types. All the nice catches are already taken, so us shier and less stunning types are left with the real losers. I’ve been reflecting on it and I am glad that I didn’t live back in the 1950s because my only choice would be an unhappy marriage to a sexist douche or be the spinster school teacher living with my parents.

 

[DebChris]

I didn’t know what a red pill blog was and that was disturbing. More disturbing is that men with such attitudes would have been able to find wives prior to second wave feminism. I think that most of the marriages at least among the middle class that aren’t happening are ones with these misogynist types. All the nice catches are already taken, so us shier and less stunning types are left with the real losers. I’ve been reflecting on it and I am glad that I didn’t live back in the 1950s because my only choice would be an unhappy marriage to a sexist douche or be the spinster school teacher living with my parents.

My father was in Korea when I was born so I didn’t actually meet him until I was over a year old and living in Japan. When the family returned to the states, my oldest sister did not come back with us. She had a job working civil service in Korea.
It was the early 1950’s, so no, your choice was not being stuck in an unhappy marriage or living at home as a spinster school teacher. She did not marry until almost the same time I did.
My brother-in-law, may he rest in peace, used to tell the story about my strong willed second sister. He couldn’t even get a kiss from her as she crossed her arms across her chest until he asked her to marry him. Within 3 years of being married they had 3 kids.

As you can see I had older parents. My grandmother on my father’s side was a suffragette. It was my mother who brought him back to the Church before they married. Her father had died when she was about nine so that means she grew up in a single parent home with 5 brothers.
Think Rosie the Riveter. Think strong resourceful women and you have a better idea than the general portrayal of women of past generations.

The Church teaches the sanctity of marriage. It teaches the solemnity of vows taken. It does not teach that a man or woman must marry. Nobody needs to “take the crumbs.”

 

[sttcatherinefan]

My father was in Korea when I was born so I didn’t actually meet him until I was over a year old and living in Japan. When the family returned to the states, my oldest sister did not come back with us. She had a job working civil service in Korea.
It was the early 1950’s, so no, your choice was not being stuck in an unhappy marriage or living at home as a spinster school teacher. She did not marry until almost the same time I did.
My brother-in-law, may he rest in peace, used to tell the story about my strong willed second sister. He couldn’t even get a kiss from her as she crossed her arms across her chest until he asked her to marry him. Within 3 years of being married they had 3 kids.

As you can see I had older parents. My grandmother on my father’s side was a suffragette. It was my mother who brought him back to the Church before they married. Her father had died when she was about nine so that means she grew up in a single parent home with 5 brothers.
Think Rosie the Riveter. Think strong resourceful women and you have a better idea than the general portrayal of women of past generations.

The Church teaches the sanctity of marriage. It teaches the solemnity of vows taken. It does not teach that a man or woman must marry. Nobody needs to “take the crumbs.”

Yeah… All the good guys are already taken. Shy, normal looking women get the crumbs. And yes it is good that we don’t have to marry the crumbs! We did back then and the Church still obsesses over us marrying today. Perhaps if Pope Francis met some of the sexist guys out there, he would understand why women don’t want to marry.

As for what women couldn’t do in the 1960s, here is a list. cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/

The thing that gets me the most is not being able to have a credit card. Seriously, credit is essential to have. If you couldn’t get a credit card, I am assuming that you couldn’t get a car loan or a home loan. Were 30-something women like myself essentially still wards of our fathers into the 1970s? Oh and what happened if the your father died? Seriously did your brother cosign for you? How demeaning is that?

 

[DebChris]

Yeah… All the good guys are already taken. Shy, normal looking women get the crumbs. And yes it is good that we don’t have to marry the crumbs! We did back then and the Church still obsesses over us marrying today. Perhaps if Pope Francis met some of the sexist guys out there, he would understand why women don’t want to marry.

As for what women couldn’t do in the 1960s, here is a list. cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/

The thing that gets me the most is not being able to have a credit card. Seriously, credit is essential to have. If you couldn’t get a credit card, I am assuming that you couldn’t get a car loan or a home loan. Were 30-something women like myself essentially still wards of our fathers into the 1970s? Oh and what happened if the your father died? Seriously did your brother cosign for you? How demeaning is that?

My parents did not have a credit card until 1969. The only reason they even got the KMart credit card was for the discounts attached to it. They would swipe the card, take the items to the car, and then go back to the store and immediately pay off the card.
Their attitude was very much “if you see something you like, save the money for it. If it’s not there when you come back you didn’t need it in the first place.” They paid cash for everything, except the house payment. They had experienced debt for medical expenses, which is something that can’t be helped. Any money my father earned working overtime went into savings.
Scripture says to owe no debt except the debt of love. It even goes so far as to call debt slavery. Of course, I still owe money on my latest student loan, but that’s another story.

Let’s go back a few years. As I stated, my grandmother was widowed when my mother was nine years old. The very first thing she did was pay off the house. She provided the roof over her family’s head that nobody could take away.
No, a woman in her mid-30’s was not a ward of her father’s in the 1970’s. Until the voting age was lowered to 18, the age of majority was 21 whether male or female.
There are certain things that I learned from my mother who was in charge of the household finances. When my father was in Korea, she had to have checks co-signed because they made the mistake of putting and between their names instead of or. It had nothing to do with gender.
My father was in the Army, so not only was my oldest sister not in the same state as we were, we were often in a different country. She owned her house and car. My father had nothing to do with any of her financial decisions once she was no longer part of the household.
My father was upset with me when I asked him to fill out the paperwork required for financial aid for college. He did so only with my promise of financial responsibility.

The point my parents stressed, the reason there was no division of labor in my family, is that a man will live at least part of his life as a bachelor and a woman might not get married.

Was there job discrimination in the 1960’s? yes, and it went both ways. Women were basically secretaries, nurses, and teachers. My youngest brother, who had been a clerk in the Army, could not get an interview for a secretarial position. In the late nineteen century, being a secretary was actually a male position. Societal views change.

 

[EasterJoy]

Yeah… All the good guys are already taken. Shy, normal looking women get the crumbs. And yes it is good that we don’t have to marry the crumbs! We did back then and the Church still obsesses over us marrying today. Perhaps if Pope Francis met some of the sexist guys out there, he would understand why women don’t want to marry.

As for what women couldn’t do in the 1960s, here is a list. cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/

The thing that gets me the most is not being able to have a credit card. Seriously, credit is essential to have. If you couldn’t get a credit card, I am assuming that you couldn’t get a car loan or a home loan. Were 30-something women like myself essentially still wards of our fathers into the 1970s? Oh and what happened if the your father died? Seriously did your brother cosign for you? How demeaning is that?

Crumbs? Why would women call the unmarried men something like that? Because they won’t look at the shy, normal-looking men? (Crumbs, really? That is the way to talk about other human beings? As “leftovers”? Incredible.)

My dad never used a credit card. He paid by cash or check. I don’t even think he had a credit card. Many people, male and female, put things on lay-away or had personal credit with individual merchants. In the 1970s, there were no ATMs, either, so you’d better get to the bank on Friday for the cash you were going to want over the weekend. It was a different world. Not so good for women, that is true, but don’t project today’s expectations too much.

I don’t know where you got the idea that Pope Francis is ignorant of human nature or contemporary problems in finding a spouse willing and able to make a lifelong commitment. He has the heart and experience of a pastor and a confessor. I fully believe he understands the realities of sin and suffering in this world better than most people do.

 

[sttcatherinefan]

Crumbs? Why would women call the unmarried men something like that? Because they won’t look at the shy, normal-looking men? (Crumbs, really? That is the way to talk about other human beings? As “leftovers”? Incredible.)

All the tech nerds are the ones that get married first as long as they have good jobs. These are the types who aren’t getting married. businessinsider.com/the-red-pill-reddit-2013-8 Either that or men in their 30s with no decent job.

Believe me… I’ve dated and met some of these guys. It isn’t such a bad thing if they never marry at all in my opinion. Most women are looking for a spouse, not a child.

My dad never used a credit card. He paid by cash or check. I don’t even think he had a credit card. Many people, male and female, put things on lay-away or had personal credit with individual merchants. In the 1970s, there were no ATMs, either, so you’d better get to the bank on Friday for the cash you were going to want over the weekend. It was a different world. Not so good for women, that is true, but don’t project today’s expectations too much.

I have a condo that I purchased myself. I’m assuming that I couldn’t do that in the 1960s.

I don’t know where you got the idea that Pope Francis is ignorant of human nature or contemporary problems in finding a spouse willing and able to make a lifelong commitment. He has the heart and experience of a pastor and a confessor. I fully believe he understands the realities of sin and suffering in this world better than most people do.

If he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t be obsessed with why young people aren’t marrying. I can give him a long survey of why I am not married. Do I have to detail every bad boyfriend that I’ve ever had to the man?

 

[Sarcelle]

Crumbs? Why would women call the unmarried men something like that? Because they won’t look at the shy, normal-looking men? (Crumbs, really? That is the way to talk about other human beings? As “leftovers”? Incredible.)

My dad never used a credit card. He paid by cash or check. I don’t even think he had a credit card. Many people, male and female, put things on lay-away or had personal credit with individual merchants. In the 1970s, there were no ATMs, either, so you’d better get to the bank on Friday for the cash you were going to want over the weekend. It was a different world. Not so good for women, that is true, but don’t project today’s expectations too much.

I don’t know where you got the idea that Pope Francis is ignorant of human nature or contemporary problems in finding a spouse willing and able to make a lifelong commitment. He has the heart and experience of a pastor and a confessor. I fully believe he understands the realities of sin and suffering in this world better than most people do.

Agreed.

Single people over a certain age are considered leftovers or crumbs. The sad part is it is usually other single people who refer to other singles as such, as in “all the good ones are already taken.”

 

[Sarcelle]

All the tech nerds are the ones that get married first as long as they have good jobs. These are the types who aren’t getting married. businessinsider.com/the-red-pill-reddit-2013-8 Either that or men in their 30s with no decent job.

Believe me… I’ve dated and met some of these guys. It isn’t such a bad thing if they never marry at all in my opinion. Most women are looking for a spouse, not a child.

I have a condo that I purchased myself. I’m assuming that I couldn’t do that in the 1960s.

If he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t be obsessed with why young people aren’t marrying. I can give him a long survey of why I am not married. Do I have to detail every bad boyfriend that I’ve ever had to the man?

Pope Francis like any good shepherd has observed that an attitude of pessimism and despair seems to have overcome his flock. He has expressed this concern that this current despair and nihilism has affected something as basic to human society as marriage.

I don’t think that he is obsessed about having everyone marry.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

A company in the 1970’s told my mom that they wouldn’t sell car insurance to divorced women because they might run their ex-husbands over.

But that was an insurance company that was enabled by a government with no real anti discrimination protections for women. The Pope didn’t do it. The church didn’t do it. And let’s face it, the idea of a priest telling a battered woman with a small child (my brother, I sure as heck wasn’t alive in the 70’s!) that she should not be allowed to insure her car so that she can go to work and support her son is laughable.

To the OP: let’s take your hysterical anger one topic at a time and try to avoid blaming people and institutions indiscriminately.

 

[Xantippe]

A company in the 1970’s told my mom that they wouldn’t sell car insurance to divorced women because they might run their ex-husbands over.

But that was an insurance company that was enabled by a government with no real anti discrimination protections for women. The Pope didn’t do it. The church didn’t do it. And let’s face it, the idea of a priest telling a battered woman with a small child (my brother, I sure as heck wasn’t alive in the 70’s!) that she should not be allowed to insure her car so that she can go to work and support her son is laughable.

To the OP: let’s take your hysterical anger one topic at a time and try to avoid blaming people and institutions indiscriminately.

Stcatherinefan is not the OP, if I remember correctly.

 

[Xantippe]

All the tech nerds are the ones that get married first as long as they have good jobs. These are the types who aren’t getting married. businessinsider.com/the-red-pill-reddit-2013-8 Either that or men in their 30s with no decent job.

**
While I’d be the first to tell you that there are way too many “red pill” guys (including on CAF), I think there probably is a certain amount of overlap between men in techie jobs and MRA/MGTOW/red pill guys, based on the jobs they self-report.

In general, red pill ideas are attractive to men that are socially unsuccessful and either better with things than with people, or not good with people or things.

It’s an amazingly self-defeating set of beliefs, because it tells men that only “alphas” are having sex (allegedly only 20% of men with 80% of women), that women will marry a “beta” like themselves only after aging out of being attractive to “alphas,” and that women that settle will eventually cheat on or leave their “beta providers.” So, lots of low self-esteem, hostility, and envy, not to mention self-fulfilling prophecies.

But, come to think of it, a woman believing that the only single men left at her age are “crumbs” is not that far away from the red pill–it’s just that the genders are reversed.
**

I have a condo that I purchased myself. I’m assuming that I couldn’t do that in the 1960s.

**I don’t know about the history of credit, but if you had the cash, presumably very few people would turn you down. Widows have bought houses since forever. **

 

[Sarcelle]

All the tech nerds are the ones that get married first as long as they have good jobs. These are the types who aren’t getting married. businessinsider.com/the-red-pill-reddit-2013-8 Either that or men in their 30s with no decent job.

Believe me… I’ve dated and met some of these guys. It isn’t such a bad thing if they never marry at all in my opinion. Most women are looking for a spouse, not a child.

I have a condo that I purchased myself. I’m assuming that I couldn’t do that in the 1960s.

If he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t be obsessed with why young people aren’t marrying. I can give him a long survey of why I am not married. Do I have to detail every bad boyfriend that I’ve ever had to the man?

Actually you can. My aunt, unmarried at the time, bought a nice Victorian home during the 60s.The lender was more interested in her ability to pay the home loan not in her gender. What persuaded the lender was her thriving career as a physician.

 

[Bonnie]

The thing that gets me the most is not being able to have a credit card. Seriously, credit is essential to have. If you couldn’t get a credit card, I am assuming that you couldn’t get a car loan or a home loan. Were 30-something women like myself essentially still wards of our fathers into the 1970s? Oh and what happened if the your father died? Seriously did your brother cosign for you? How demeaning is that?

In the 70’s I was in my 20s. I didn’t have a credit card by choice, tho I eventually had a gas card and a store card, but had no problem with having my own bank account, renting an apartment, buying a car, and buying a house - all on my own. While still in my 20s. My dad would have co-signed for me, but he didn’t have to.

Where are you getting all this strange information???

 

[DebChris]

A company in the 1970’s told my mom that they wouldn’t sell car insurance to divorced women because they might run their ex-husbands over.

But that was an insurance company that was enabled by a government with no real anti discrimination protections for women. The Pope didn’t do it. The church didn’t do it. And let’s face it, the idea of a priest telling a battered woman with a small child (my brother, I sure as heck wasn’t alive in the 70’s!) that she should not be allowed to insure her car so that she can go to work and support her son is laughable.

To the OP: let’s take your hysterical anger one topic at a time and try to avoid blaming people and institutions indiscriminately.

Women did have problems at the end of marriages for various reasons. They needed to re-establish their own identity. It was customary, not Church teaching, for women to use their husband’s first name as in Mrs. Joseph Smith. This is something my husband did not want me to do. He wanted me to keep my identity.

Actually you can. My aunt, unmarried at the time, bought a nice Victorian home during the 60s.The lender was more interested in her ability to pay the home loan not in her gender. What persuaded the lender was her thriving career as a physician.

In the 70’s I was in my 20s. I didn’t have a credit card by choice, tho I eventually had a gas card and a store card, but had no problem with having my own bank account, renting an apartment, buying a car, and buying a house - all on my own. While still in my 20s. My dad would have co-signed for me, but he didn’t have to.

Where are you getting all this strange information???

That’s what I keep wondering? My father liked Westerns. The wife always took over the family business or farm if something happened to the husband. Members of the Red Cross landed with the troops on D Day, and they didn’t even have weapons. Women have been doing heroic things and nobody has stopped them for a long time.

In many ways we were much more independent in the past than we are now. When my father retired, they registered my younger sisters at their school, but I registered myself at my own school. I was already buying saving bonds with my babysitting money and opened my own savings account. You didn’t even need to be grown up to do that.

I cited the example of my independent sister whose first job was in Korea. She spent her leisure time fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
I even cited the example of my grandmother paying off the mortgage so there was no house payment to worry about.