Is it allowable for a Catholic husband to be the sole provider for his wife?

[TheRealJuliane]

I assume that you mean you’ll be “empty nesting”…I hope you’ll accept an e-hug!

Thank you, yes, that is what I meant! As an older mom, I’m an age where many people would already have grandchildren - we’re 55 and our youngest is just heading off to college in the fall. We are both looking forward to it, and dreading it. I guess that is not uncommon. I know my husband wishes I could get interested in a new career, but I’m not in my 30’s or 40’s any more…and I never was an “energizer bunny” type. The term “couch potato” was invented with me in mind. I love to read more than anything, always have, always will.

I try to take it one day at a time and let the Lord lead me, after trying everything I know how to do, His wisdom and guidance takes me where He wants me to go.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

It sounds like you have a very blessed family and whether you have seen signs of appreciation yet, I am sure you will. I only hope I can do as well.
That sounds awesome.

*Her children rise up and praise her; her husband, too, extols her…Proverbs 31:27

Give her a reward of her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates. Proverbs 31:31*

Sometimes I think of all of my failures, and I get discouraged. When our younger son was in rebellion and it seemed as if he might not pull out of it, I was in despair. But I do know that I have done everything I could to set my sons on the right path, if that meant being present in their lives. I didn’t do as much with them faith-wise as I should have, and I pray about that and ask for God’s mercy frequently. I can talk to them now about the Church but I could have done more instruction at home. It was tricky having a husband who did not want us to be a truly Catholic family. (Since he’s faking it - and doesn’t want much to do with the Church, disagrees with a lot of the tenets, etc.)

I don’t think I qualify for that Proverbs 31 description! That’s a tall order to fill! But thank you for the compliments.

 

[OurBeloved]

I was just making the point that if parents ( which meant in this case, the mother of course) should give up their ambitions, then why not the father too.

I agree with you. Both should work together to come up with the best for each other and the children. Women are sometimes maligned for being ambitious and or wanting a career.

I believe that your post highlights the exact reason why so many are hostile for women staying home.

In today’s world, Career is seen as an ambition. An end in it-self rather than a means to an end. A man wants to excel in his career. Sometimes it is his sole motive. He would get married just to make sure that there is someone to provide his sexual needs, food, and children. Everything and everyone will then be a means to an end, which is career progress.

I have noticed the same behavior among career oriented women as well. For them, marriage is a mutually beneficial relationship that gives them optimal stability so that they may now pursue career ambitions. Children in this scenario are usually a problem. So many just tend to have none or as low as possible i.e. 1 child. Even then, there is also time issues and the child usually ends up growing up by his/herself.

In any case, when one views the career as an end in it-self and see it as ones ambition, then having to stay at home will feel unfair. If my husband can pursue his ambitions, WHY CANT I? And that is a fair question to ask.

But the problem here is that this shows an ingrained error in the culture it-self in promoting careers as an ambition and measuring the worth of persons by their careers.

Ideally, and as it was in the past, the career is a means to an end. The husband works, not to build a reputation through his career but to provide for his family. That was his sole goal. The woman stays at home, not out of laziness but for her family. There was a sense of marital harmony where both parents were focused toward the good of the family rather than personal ambition.

Today, we first of all have a cultural distortion which makes personal ambition in career the ends. Then we have men and women pursuing it relentlessly by using everything else, including families, as simply means to achieve that ends. It’s not healthy.

So to your question, it is not a matter of giving up ambitions. It is a matter of acknowledging that a mother is more nurturing by nature and therefore stays at home to provide for her family in the best way she can. The father, is to do the best he can in providing for his wife and children and loving them in Christ like love to the point of sacrificing his life for them.

The saddest thing in modern culture is that somehow they have even come to consider men and women as equal, not just in dignity, but simply identical beings. So the words “mother” and “father” are considered to be interchangeable regardless of gender. This is probably why we have same sex couples raising children because they feel that they have both roles covered through one gender. Thankful to Scriptures and Tradition of the church, we know such a view is wrong.

It is time to go back to readjusting our homes according to an healthy culture, not the one around us. It should then not be about career ambitions, but love and family as the ends.

 

[severus68]

I believe that your post highlights the exact reason why so many are hostile for women staying home.

So basically you feeel a wife should stay at home.

 

[OurBeloved]

So basically you feeel a wife should stay at home.

I believe a wife should stay at home, especially when there are children.

In the case where a couple is unable to conceive children, as someone before had said, it is probably possible to make things work differently and probably even necessary. In such a case, the couple may decide to work together with a 100% commitment to achieve a certain goal to the betterment of orphans/sick etc.

But even in such a case, if a husband and wife just decide to work toward, for an example, becoming the VP of a company, that is just blind earthly ambition.

Overall, the problem seems to be that our culture has ingrained in most of us the idea that our jobs are an end in it-self. Your worth will be measured by what you do in an organization rather than in a family. This is why your immediate observation was that the wife will be unable to pursue her ambitions if she stays at home. But such blind ambitions are what causes the harmony between husband and wife to breakdown.

The correct ambition or goal of a husband and wife should be family. All the other desires and actions must be ordered in this sense. So wife lovingly chooses to stay at home and take care of the children while the husband does everything he can to provide for his family and love them. This entire picture is distorted once you bring in career ambitions in to the picture.

When you ask why can’t both pursue career ambitions, the answer is really simple. When both parents are working toward career goals, the amount of time for their children are limited. Parents who stay at home have a hard time balancing house chores with taking care of children and teaching them right and wrong. So it is almost a fact to say that parents who work have less time for their kids compared to children who live here.

Therefore, when one considers practically what is best for the good of the family, and discard things like career ambitions, it is almost intuitive what needs to be done.

 

[fpt]

Hi everyone,
I was wondering about something that I’m a little confused about.

It seems like every guy I talk to ( friends and aquaintances ), when asked, says that he wouldn’t want to take a woman for a wife unless she has a job to contribute to the income, regardless of whether they have children or not.
But then again, so far I’ve only been able to ask other Catholic men. At this point I have not gotten views from other types of guys ( other religions and/or no religion ).

So I was wondering, is there a rule/protocol being Catholic that the guy has to have the wife working in order for him to be a good Catholic husband? Or, is it allowable for a good Catholic husband to be the full provider for his wife?

And similarly, is there a rule that for a woman to be a Catholic wife she has to have a job in which she is bringing in income? Or, is it allowable that a woman can fully be provided for by her husband and at the same time still be a good Catholic wife?

Thanks

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=658738

Sorry, I am from France, perhaps that my first point of view is very provocative, but the natural and catholic marriage is not the prostitution, directly or indirectly, explicity or implicitly. I mean, your love and your choice, before wedding, does not have to be in function of this “stuff”.

Before all thing, marriage is true love.

Freedom and Love are the keys. After, since the world is world (original sin) in function of the context (education, intellectual capacities, health…etc.) wife and husband or one of them must work in order to give food, clothes, to provide a roof, to educate, to instruct…

 

[Walking_Home]

This bears repeating:

Same here - both of my parents worked full-time, but they put a lot of time and effort into raising us well, and were always there for all the good stuff - school plays, long summer vacations, school dropoffs and pickups (an advantage of working for themselves) and parent-teacher meetings. We got decent food, although most of it wasn’t fancy.

Most of all, they lived as good examples of faith and good character - and all of us children are good characters as a result.

I’ve seen plenty of stay at home parents who are less involved, less caring and whose children turn out worse. Merely sharing the same house with someone is not really much of a guarantee of anything. A child AFAICS doesn’t notice who washes it’s clothes or cooks it’s meals. It’s the other stuff - stuff that working parents can do equally well if they are determined to - that counts.

 

[OurBeloved]

This bears repeating:

We must always remember that there are exceptions and more importantly, good things do happen out of bad circumstances.

For an example, there are good saints that may come out of a broken family. A person who grew up in a same sex family can claim that he/sh had a great experience of the family. But these are just the exception and not the norm. There is also the practical issue where a person who grew up in such a family might not obviously know what it is like to grow up in a different family. So they cannot say what they missed.

Practically, it is a fact that the child who grows up in a family where the mother is at home has more chance to interact with the mother (and for the mother to take care of the children) compared to parents who both go to work. We must keep in mind that we must consider families where parents are both willing to love their kids. This removes the parents who stay at home but show no love or concern for their children from the equation. These families have other important things wrong with the family. But when that factor is equal/accounted for, the loving parents who both work have less time to show that love for their kids compared to a family where the mother is home.

The person who you quoted might have had a much more gratifying experience had their mother been at home. It is hard for someone who has grown up in such an environment to see what they might have missed, obviously and understandably. However, it is possible for someone who grew up in an environment where their mother is at home to easily see what the other person is missing. Anyway, I think we shouldn’t put much weight on anecdotal evidence but rather on the facts. In that sense, the fact remains that the time left for children is less in a family where both parents work.

 

[LemonAndLime]

Yes, of course it is allowable.

In fact, it is the only right way of doing things - that is, as far as the Traditional section of the forum goes.

My dad works while my mum stays at home. Now my dad’s getting near retirement age (my mum is about 10 years younger), he’s gonna lose his job soon and my mum is pressuring him to try to get another job. I can see my dad is tired but my mum won’t get a job, she just finds it too scary. I don’t want to be anywhere near so helpless and dependent as my mum is.

It’s interesting that many people seem to think the traditional view is that women should stay at home and not work, when that has only been considered the norm for around 100 years.

 

[OurBeloved]

Yes, of course it is allowable.

In fact, it is the only right way of doing things - that is, as far as the Traditional section of the forum goes.

My dad works while my mum stays at home. Now my dad’s getting near retirement age (my mum is about 10 years younger), he’s gonna lose his job soon and my mum is pressuring him to try to get another job. I can see my dad is tired but my mum won’t get a job, she just finds it too scary. I don’t want to be anywhere near so helpless and dependent as my mum is.

It’s interesting that many people seem to think the traditional view is that women should stay at home and not work, when that has only been considered the norm for around 100 years.

I am not sure the bolded part is accurate.

Nearly every human culture, has had their mothers always close to their children. The foraging cultures in which women engaged in gathering of food, still had the children with them or their own mothers take care of the children while they do so. But even more usual was for the elder or neighbor to do some gathering while the mother stayed at home.

But in current society where elders are usually in the retirement home and women cannot have their children with them at work, such arrangements are obviously impossible.

So I would say as a norm, the idea of mothers staying with their children has been around since the beginning of humanity. The idea of both heading to work and leaving their children with the day care service provider or to be on their own is rather new.

Also something to consider, most non-Christian cultures outside of North America and Europe (which abandoned this traditional set of values) used to have the ‘mother stay at home’ tradition for as long as they remember in their culture. It is only now that they too are changing by following suit with our culture.

 

[LemonAndLime]

I am not sure the bolded part is accurate.

Nearly every human culture, has had their mothers always close to their children. The foraging cultures in which women engaged in gathering of food, still had the children with them or their own mothers take care of the children while they do so. But even more usual was for the elder or neighbor to do some gathering while the mother stayed at home.

But in current society where elders are usually in the retirement home and women cannot have their children with them at work, such arrangements are obviously impossible.

So I would say as a norm, the idea of mothers staying with their children has been around since the beginning of humanity. The idea of both heading to work and leaving their children with the day care service provider or to be on their own is rather new.

Also something to consider, most non-Christian cultures outside of North America and Europe (which abandoned this traditional set of values) used to have the ‘mother stay at home’ tradition for as long as they remember in their culture. It is only now that they too are changing by following suit with our culture.

Source for all of the above?

And, you are wrong. Before the US existed and most people lived in rural areas, do you think women sat around the farm idle with babies on their laps? No, babies were put in cots indoors or outdoors while the women sowed the seeds, helped during the harvest or perhaps milked cattle. A basic knowledge of history shows this, and that when the middle class was invented it became fashionable. Before then, women had to work alongside their husbands whereas with the high class neither husband nor wife had to work. When the middle class began to appear, they did not want to appear that they all had to work (like the lower classes) but at the same time, perhaps did not have a steady income without work.

Here is a brief history lesson for you -

In regards to the US’s own history -

The 1870 US Census was the first to count “Females engaged in each and every occupation” and provides an intriguing snapshot of women’s history. It reveals that, contrary to popular belief, not all American women of the Victorian period were either idle in their middle class homes or working in sweatshops. Women were 15% of the total work force (1.8 million out of 12.5). They made up one-third of factory “operatives,” to be sure, but teaching and the more gentle occupations of dressmaking, millinery, and tailoring played a larger role. Two-thirds of teachers were women. And they could be found in such unexpected places as iron and steel works (495), mines (46), sawmills (35), oil wells and refineries (40), gas works (4), and charcoal kilns (5), and held such surprising jobs as ship rigger (16), teamster (196), turpentine laborer (185), brass founder/worker (102), shingle and lathe maker (84), stock-herder (45), gun and locksmith (33), hunter and trapper (2). There were five lawyers, 24 dentists, and 2,000 doctors.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_history#Employment

The UK -

In Great Britain for example, just before World War I, out of an adult population of about 24 million women, around 1.7 million worked in domestic service, 800,000 worked in the textile manufacturing industry, 600,000 worked in the clothing trades, 500,000 worked in commerce and 260,000 in local and national government (including teaching).[1] The British textile and clothing trades, in particular, employed far more women than men and could be regarded as ‘women’s work’.[1]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_roles_in_the_World_Wars

Also -

Within a village, women would have done many of the tasks men did on the land. However, they were paid less for doing the same job. Documents from Medieval England relating to what the common person did are rare, but some do exist which examine what villages did. For reaping, a man could get 8 pence a day. For the same task, women would get 5 pence. For hay making, men would earn 6 pence a day while women got 4 pence. In a male dominated society, no woman would openly complain about this disparity.

About 90% of all women lived in rural areas and were therefore involved in some form of farm work.

historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval_women.htm

 

[OurBeloved]

Source for all of the above?

And, you are wrong. Before the US existed and most people lived in rural areas, do you think women sat around the farm idle with babies on their laps? No, babies were put in cots indoors or outdoors while the women sowed the seeds, helped during the harvest or perhaps milked cattle. A basic knowledge of history shows this, and that when the middle class was invented it became fashionable. Before then, women had to work alongside their husbands whereas with the high class neither husband nor wife had to work. When the middle class began to appear, they did not want to appear that they all had to work (like the lower classes) but at the same time, perhaps did not have a steady income without work.

Ok, my mistake, are we specifically talking about the US here or history of humanity? US history, specifically the one you speak of, is not that old anyway.

But if you look at the native population of US, that had a foraging / hunting type life style had the women take care of their children. As I said before, even in foraging cultures, the women went out with there children on their backs or leaving them in the care of their own parents.

As for even farms, women are still with there children. The women won’t leave there kids in the cot and go do there own work away from a distance that they wouldn’t know if the kid woke up. So the “work” is once again not the same as “work” we refer to in the 21st century. The “work” then could refer to something like washing the laundry. So yes, in this sense, women have been working for ages. What they never did was leave there children behind and go pursue career ambitions. That is a relatively new concept for humanity that started with us Western folk which is why other cultures find the concept so foreign to them.

What you are doing here is using the word “work” in two different senses in two different histories. Women “worked” in the past. But that concept of work is usually what is encompassed by the phrase “stay at home mom” today. The concept of “work” as in leaving ones children, as I said before, was a relatively new concept in the history of humanity. I am not sure how you say contrary.

You also asked for sources. All I can say is pick up any Anthropology text you like.

Are you sure you have a good historical understanding?

 

[LemonAndLime]

Ok, my mistake, are we specifically talking about the US here or history of humanity? US history, specifically the one you speak of, is not that old anyway.

But if you look at the native population of US, that had a foraging / hunting type life style had the women take care of their children. As I said before, even in foraging cultures, the women went out with there children on their backs or leaving them in the care of their own parents.

As for even farms, women are still with there children. The women won’t leave there kids in the cot and go do there own work away from a distance that they wouldn’t know if the kid woke up. So the “work” is once again not the same as “work” we refer to in the 21st century. The “work” then could refer to something like washing the laundry. So yes, in this sense, women have been working for ages. What they never did was leave there children behind and go pursue career ambitions. That is a relatively new concept for humanity that started with us Western folk which is why other cultures find the concept so foreign to them.

What you are doing here is using the word “work” in two different senses in two different histories. Women “worked” in the past. But that concept of work is usually what is encompassed by the phrase “stay at home mom” today. The concept of “work” as in leaving ones children, as I said before, was a relatively new concept in the history of humanity. I am not sure how you say contrary.

You also asked for sources. All I can say is pick up any Anthropology text you like.

Are you sure you have a good historical understanding?

I have edited my post to provide some information for you to read. Women were far from “stay at home moms”.

 

[OurBeloved]

I have edited my post to provide some information for you to read. Women were far from “stay at home moms”.

As I said in my post, going out to milk a cow, is not the same as leaving your children behind, is it?

Also, most of your links talk about very recent times like after 1800’s. Humanity as you know, is not just Western Civilization and is much more older than that.

In none of these older cultures will you find a concept of “work” for mothers that require them to **regularly **leave their children at home for **prolonged **periods. I am frankly a bit surprised that we are actually having this conversation.

 

[LemonAndLime]

As I said in my post, going out to milk a cow, is not the same as leaving your children behind, is it?

Also, most of your links talk about very recent times like after 1800’s. Humanity as you know, is not just Western Civilization and is much more older than that.

In none of these older cultures will you find a concept of “work” for mothers that require them to **regularly **leave their children at home for **prolonged **periods. I am frankly a bit surprised that we are actually having this conversation.

What about female servants/domestic service?

Teachers?

Cooks?

Midwives?

 

[OurBeloved]

What about female servants/domestic service?

Teachers?

Cooks?

Midwives?

Very good question. Now if we look at those closely, and how each of these professions fit, you will realize that they didn’t require separation from Children.

Take teaching for an example. In this case, the mother will be teaching when her children are out in school as well. When the children come back, so do the mothers. Also, some of these schools in some cultures were run at home. So the children were still nearby.

The case with cooks is very similar to the above as well. Once the mother is able enough to cook after child birth and the child is grown enough, the mother will engage in such activities and the child will be very close to her while she is cooking.

Midwives is also not a regular absence.

If you comb history of humanity, I will be very surprised if you can find a “work” that women participated in that required regular, long absences from her children. In most cultures where even some form of even irregular absence was possible, the parents of the mother would be there to take care of the child temporarily.

All of these arrangements are absent in today’s society and the concept of “work” is much different from then. Even the profession cook or midwife is vastly different from what it was back then. So we must be careful not to read the words like “work” in the history of humanity to mean what we mean today by “work”. What we mean today by “work” for mothers is very new and did not exist in the history of humanity before.

 

[Diana_Catherine]

…

In any case, when one views the career as an end in it-self and see it as ones ambition, then having to stay at home will feel unfair. If my husband can pursue his ambitions, WHY CANT I? And that is a fair question to ask.

But the problem here is that this shows an ingrained error in the culture it-self in promoting careers as an ambition and measuring the worth of persons by their careers.

Ideally, and as it was in the past, the career is a means to an end. The husband works, not to build a reputation through his career but to provide for his family. That was his sole goal. The woman stays at home, not out of laziness but for her family. There was a sense of marital harmony where both parents were focused toward the good of the family rather than personal ambition.

Today, we first of all have a cultural distortion which makes personal ambition in career the ends. Then we have men and women pursuing it relentlessly by using everything else, including families, as simply means to achieve that ends. It’s not healthy.

So to your question, it is not a matter of giving up ambitions. It is a matter of acknowledging that a mother is more nurturing by nature and therefore stays at home to provide for her family in the best way she can. The father, is to do the best he can in providing for his wife and children and loving them in Christ like love to the point of sacrificing his life for them.

The saddest thing in modern culture is that somehow they have even come to consider men and women as equal, not just in dignity, but simply identical beings. So the words “mother” and “father” are considered to be interchangeable regardless of gender. This is probably why we have same sex couples raising children because they feel that they have both roles covered through one gender. Thankful to Scriptures and Tradition of the church, we know such a view is wrong.

It is time to go back to readjusting our homes according to an healthy culture, not the one around us. It should then not be about career ambitions, but love and family as the ends.

I like the way you put this. I agree with it and had thought to saysomething like it but didn’t think it would come out right.

Good post. Our end goal should be the good of the family, the people who love us.

 

[Walking_Home]

We must always remember that there are exceptions and more importantly, good things do happen out of bad circumstances.

For an example, there are good saints that may come out of a broken family. A person who grew up in a same sex family can claim that he/sh had a great experience of the family. But these are just the exception and not the norm. There is also the practical issue where a person who grew up in such a family might not obviously know what it is like to grow up in a different family. So they cannot say what they missed.

Practically, it is a fact that the child who grows up in a family where the mother is at home has more chance to interact with the mother (and for the mother to take care of the children) compared to parents who both go to work. We must keep in mind that we must consider families where parents are both willing to love their kids. This removes the parents who stay at home but show no love or concern for their children from the equation. These families have other important things wrong with the family. But when that factor is equal/accounted for, the loving parents who both work have less time to show that love for their kids compared to a family where the mother is home.

Walking_Home:

This bears repeating:

The person who you quoted might have had a much more gratifying experience had their mother been at home. It is hard for someone who has grown up in such an environment to see what they might have missed, obviously and understandably. However, it is possible for someone who grew up in an environment where their mother is at home to easily see what the other person is missing. Anyway, I think we shouldn’t put much weight on anecdotal evidence but rather on the facts. In that sense, the fact remains that the time left for children is less in a family where both parents work.

---

The fact is too – that just because a wife/mother works outside the home — does not mean – the children are neglected and will turn out wrong. It is not so much the “quantity” of time spent in the home — but the quality of time spent with the family…

 

[OurBeloved]

---

The fact is too – that just because a wife/mother works outside the home — does not mean – the children are neglected and will turn out wrong. It is not so much the “quantity” of time spent in the home — but the quality of time spent with the family…

Very true. Which is why I said that given that both parents are equally loving, the mother who stays home will always have more quality time with their children than a mother who also works.

The usual mistake people make is consider parents in general. Then we have pretty bad parents where mother stays home and just does her own thing anyway. We have to account for this and only consider parents who are loving. Otherwise we want be able to draw more conclusive facts.

When we do this accounting for, the final conclusive fact that remains is that there is a difference in available time if the mother works as well. So no matter how loving the mother might be, she has less time compared to if she had stayed home. It is unfortunate.

 

[Walking_Home]

Very true. Which is why I said that given that both parents are equally loving,** the mother who stays home will always have more quality time with their children than a mother who also works.**

The usual mistake people make is consider parents in general. Then we have pretty bad parents where mother stays home and just does her own thing anyway. We have to account for this and only consider parents who are loving. Otherwise we want be able to draw more conclusive facts.

When we do this accounting for, the final conclusive fact that remains is that there is a difference in available time if the mother works as well. So no matter how loving the mother might be, she has less time compared to if she had stayed home. It is unfortunate.

---

The mother who stays home – may have more “quantity” time — but it is not a given that this is “quality” time. A mother who works – outside the home – while having less “quantity” time – can most certainly – be devoted to having quality time with her family.