The subtle lie: Women must be powerful but not fruitful

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Oh good grief.

Did I say that?

I meant you don’t need to have a high level of education or a specialized skill to be a good mother or a good father.

Having maturity and a good character is what is essential to be a good parent, be it mother or father, and is in my opinion more precious than a high level of formal education.

By the way, being a parent does not automatically make you a better person. It will provide you opportunities for character growth but the process is not automatic.

There are a lot of bad parents out there.
 
VanitasVanitatum said:
How about Catherine of Siena who was neither a nun or a mother? She put her talents to good use.
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So a Doctor of the Church is an example of a woman who simply chose a career over having children? Some women are called to other vocations than being mothers. Could you at least agree that it is a valid calling for a female human who has given birth to be a full time mother?
 
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MikeInVA said:
Could you at least agree that it is a valid calling for a female human who has given birth to be a full time mother?
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I could be wrong, but I don’t think a single person in this thread is opposed to women’s being stay-at-home mothers.
 
MikeInVA said:
Could you at least agree that it is a valid calling for a female human who has given birth to be a full time mother?
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My parents both worked hard in their jobs and I came out fine. This is more of an ideal and since virtue and holiness aren’t essential to it, I find no reason to agree with such. Unless the Church has a very clear and unchangeable position on it, in which case I would submit.
 
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Of course it does take a lot of skills most of which are on the job training, but I never said otherwise.

I also never said bad parents set the standard. Where is this coming from?

You seem determined to attribute the worst motives to me just because I don’t agree with you 100%.

Parenthood does not automatically make one a better person. It can provide the opportunity to grow but one has to avail of the opportunity.
 
You quoted the wrong part of the post. MikeinVA was saying that just being a mother should be enough (and it can be for some women). AlruwjAlquds provided an example of someone who was a mother AND had a calling beyond that. St Elizabeth is a perfect example that not every mother is called to only raise children.

There is nothing wrong with only raising children. That IS what some women are called to do. But that’s not what every woman is called to do.
 
LumineDiei said:
There is nothing wrong with simply wanting to be a stay-at-home mother.
There is nothing wrong with being a mother and having a career.

The idea that you can still making mothering your priority when you are working 60+ hours a week to get ahead in the firm or corporation is problematic.

The idea that a women must be a stay-at-home mom to be a good mother is problematic.

Some women love being at home, even when the children go off to school and she’s alone from 8-4 each day.
Some women may be at home with their children, but aren’t truly present with them.

Trying to stick the idea of a mother with a career or a SAHM into a one-size fits all box does not work and is ignorant.
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LumineDiei said:
There is nothing wrong with simply wanting to be a stay-at-home mother.
There is nothing wrong with being a mother and having a career.

The idea that you can still making mothering your priority when you are working 60+ hours a week to get ahead in the firm or corporation is problematic.

The idea that a women must be a stay-at-home mom to be a good mother is problematic.

Some women love being at home, even when the children go off to school and she’s alone from 8-4 each day.
Some women may be at home with their children, but aren’t truly present with them.

Trying to stick the idea of a mother with a career or a SAHM into a one-size fits all box does not work and is ignorant.
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Also, plenty of women want to be both and often have to really sacrifice something they care a lot about when they have to choose.

My wife wants to be a stay-at-home mom but also wants to have a good career. She out-earns me by a decent bit. We’re going to have a really tough decision to make when we have our first child.
 
“Particular” skill means specialized skill, like being an underwater welder. Generalized skills is like being a project manager. Neither one is superior to the other just different.

The skills in raising children is different than a specialized skill since you need to master a lot of widely differing skills and knowledge. More like a generalized skill than a specialized skill.

Again I am not saying that moms don’t need skills. It’s a hard often thankless job.

So I would never insult mothers.

Again I would never insult mothers.

Do you believe me now?
 
I have lived in both Germany and the UK as an adult. I think some very important reasons why women are having less children in these countries is because of the lack of social support given to child rearing. In Japan it is incredibly stressful to be married as you will virtually never see your husband due to the hours they are expected to work. In Germany most schools close at 1pm with the expectation that “someone” i.e. mom is available to collect them, feed them lunch and cover much of the curriculum with them. This model just doesn’t work for modern families. So much of the time families are expected to fit everything around a long working day, and commute. The amount of physical, mental and emotional energy it takes to be a good parent is not acknowledged in the way work is arranged. For families to survive financially and emotionally it is very hard to manage childcare in around everything else. We may live in “wealthy” nations but wages are stagnant and the cost of everything else is skyrocketing. Noone wants to put themselves in financial jeopardy.

Housing costs in the US and UK are very expensive in most areas where jobs are. To be qualified for work young people have to take on debt (unless they are from wealthy families). As mentioned upthread in the 1950s a man could go from high school to a manufacturing job that paid enough he could buy a house, his wife could stay home and raise 4+ children. We just don’t have those economic conditions anymore. Young people are making sensible decisions in the world that we have created for them.

Noone would think they were prudent to have a lot of children they could not financially support.
 
joyfulandactive said:
In Germany most schools close at 1pm with the expectation that “someone” i.e. mom is available to collect them
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Where I grew up the schools used to close if it got too cold (-50F). These days they keep the schools open because so many kids would be left at home alone.
 
joyfulandactive said:
As mentioned upthread in the 1950s a man could go from high school to a manufacturing job that paid enough he could buy a house, his wife could stay home and raise 4+ children. We just don’t have those economic conditions anymore.
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We actually do have those conditions now, if you’re willing to accept a 1950s standard of living.

Also, some nations have taken lots of steps to ease the economic burdens. Singapore has absolutely bent over backwards to support parents and it has completely failed.

Look, I’m not denying that economics are a factor. They are. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to raise kids. But there’s way more going on than economics. The wealthier people get, the fewer kids they have. In the wealthy countries we’re talking about, the poor and less educated are more fecund than the rich and well-educated. That tells us that the issue is not primarily economic.
 
Aquinas11 said:
To suggest Mothers don’t even need a “particular skill” to raise children is not only factually wrong but rather offensive.
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Particular is defined as “specific” as defined by the dictionary

particularadjective

US /pərˈtɪk·jə·lər, pəˈtɪk-/

particular adjective (SPECIAL)​



special or single, or this and not any other:

Is there a particular restaurant you’d like to eatat?

What in particular (= special things) did you like about the last apartment that we saw?

Specific in contrast to general.

So you have a specialized skill, e.g., underwater welder, and a general skill set, like a bank manager who has to know a lot of widely differing things.
 
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Aquinas11 said:
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jlc2k2:
St Elizabeth is a perfect example that not every mother is called to only raise children.
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She is perfect example that religious vocation may be an additional role , yes.
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Do you have a list of acceptable roles women may take in addition to motherhood?
 
Could you please give me a example of a job in the USA that you can get with nothing more than a high school diploma and enable you to get a mortgage and support a family of six?
 
HopkinsReb said:
That tells us that the issue is not primarily economic.
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Worldwide fertility rates have gone down, with the exception in Sub Saharan Africa.

Even in countries like the religiously conservative Iran and Saudi Arabia, fertility rates are now barely at replacement level. So it is not a matter of being religious or not.
 
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