‘It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of father’s low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside of the home.’
Pope Pius XI, ‘Quadragesimo Anno’
"We see a woman who, in order to augment her husband’s earnings, betakes herself also to a factory, leaving her house abandoned during her absence. The house, untidy and small perhaps before, becomes even more miserable for lack of care. Members of the family work separately in four quarters of the city and with different working hours. Scarcely ever do they find themselves together for dinner or rest after work – still less for prayer in common. What is left of family life? And what attractions can it offer to children?
"To such painful consequences of the absence of the mother from the home there is added another, still more deplorable. It concerns the education, especially of the young girl, and her preparation for real life. Accustomed as she is to see her mother always out of the house and the house itself so gloomy in its abandonment, she will be unable to find any attraction for it, she will not feel the slightest inclination for austere housekeeping jobs. She cannot be expected to appreciate their nobility and beauty or to wish one day to give herself to them as a wife and mother.
"This is true in all grades and stations of social life. The daughter of the worldly woman, who sees all housekeeping left in the hands of paid help and her mother fussing around with frivolous occupations and futile amusements, will follow her example, will want to be emancipated as soon as possible and in the words of a very tragic phrase ‘to live her own life.’ How could she conceive a desire to become one day a true lady, that is, the mother of a happy, prosperous, worthy family?
"As to the working classes, forced to earn daily bread, a woman might, if she reflected, realize that not rarely the supplementary wage which she earns by working outside the house is easily swallowed up by other expenses or even by waste which is ruinous to the family budget. The daughter who also goes out to work in a factory or office, deafened by the excited, restless world in which she lives, dazzled by the tinsel of specious luxury, developing a thirst for shallow pleasures that distract but do not give satiety or repose in those revue or dance halls which are sprouting up everywhere, often for party propaganda purposes and which corrupt youth, becomes a fashionable lady, despises the old Nineteenth Century ways of life.
"How could she not feel her modest home surroundings unattractive and more squalid than they are in reality? To find her pleasure in them, to desire one day to settle in them herself, she should be able to offset her natural impressions by a serious intellectual and spiritual life, by the vigor that comes from religious education and from supernatural ideals. But what kind of religious formation has she received in such surroundings?
"And that is not all. When, as the years pass, her mother, prematurely aged, worn out, and broken by work beyond her capacity, by sorrow and anxiety, will see her return home at night at a very late hour, she will not find her a support or a help, but rather the mother herself will have to wait on a daughter incapable and unaccustomed to household work, and to perform for her all the offices of a servant.
“And the lot of the father will not be any better when old age, sickness, infirmity and unemployment force him to depend for his meager sustenance on the good or bad will of his children. Here you have the august holy authority of the father and mother dethroned.”
Pope Pius XII, “On Woman’s Duties”
‘Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.’
Pope Pius XI, ‘Divini Redemptoris’
A Cardinal once said…
“Every Christian woman ought to have two things always in her heart, – first, if married, the welfare of her husband, her children, her home; if unmarried, of her immediate family; their happiness must be her most sacred duty.”
…
I always find it soothing to see people who understand to some degree how in a Christian society the woman’s true place is in the home, where she can care for her family members and they can care for and protect her. Few people understand in the West that the father has responsibility for the daughter until she is married – however old she is. Instead they send her out of the home immediately upon her coming of age, alone into the world. And few also know that a husband in a marriage is bound to provide, under pain of sin. But in other cultures in the East this is still understood despite corruption from Western media. It is after all part of natural law and Our Lord’s design.
Until people give up on material things and return the wife to the home, and fathers to the work force, families will not be healed, and children will not have what they need.
Some of this thread has been very refreshing. Thank you.
