September 16: Working Parents Day

 

September 16:  Working Parents Day 

No one is certain who or when this day was created, but it certainly is a sign of the times.  There was a time when such a day would have been redundant.  “Of course parents work!  They always have.”  What this celebration has in mind is especially working mothers.  Since the 1940’s, women have made up a much greater share of the workforce, and that number is only growing.  Should this give us pause?

It should, and here is why:  Western society is committed to greater role confusion, and the denigration of being a “stay at home mom.”  I know—feminists everywhere are planning their protests even as we speak.  So, let me set the record straight:  I am not advocating that women should remain barefoot and pregnant, in the kitchen.  Nor am I suggesting that there is not a place, often even a need, for women in the workplace.  But a subtle but profound shift has occurred in the West that has left a gigantic hole in the hearts of many women, and also shortchanged generations of children.

Let’s start at the beginning.  Genesis 1:28 includes the blessing that God pronounced over humanity.  ²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 

Clearly, both the man and the woman were appointed as co-regents over creation.  But that blessing includes a mandate—“be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth.”  None of the other beings that God created were given such a command.  Part of our stewardship of our world includes procreation, the bearing and raising of children.  The family forms the foundation for everything else that proceeds from mankind.  This establishes the priority of women, and their role as the givers of life.  It is a high calling, perhaps the highest. 

The very notion of family, marriage and child-bearing is under assault.  For a woman to embrace that calling, in the home, is viewed as somehow second-class.  A wife may choose to do that, but she is somehow short-changing herself.  Really? 

Recent studies by Leeds Beckett University and the University of Missouri, have found what they call “a gender equality paradox.”  In the most gender-equal countries in the world (primarily Nordic countries) they have discovered that women tend toward more “feminine” pursuits, including choosing motherhood over careers.  In terms of work outside the home, those same women overwhelmingly choose careers in teaching and nursing, as opposed to STEM fields.  In other words, as we “level the playing field” for women, they “naturally” tend to embrace more feminine outcomes.  It is almost as if there is something pre-wired in men and women, something innate, that moves them in markedly different directions in terms of roles in society.  And a growing body of research is finding that feminism has not only failed to give women what they want, but it has left countless millions of them feeling unfulfilled and insignificant. 

Today, celebrate your sex!  God created men and women as equal but not identical reflections of His character.  And to all the stay at home moms out there, don’t for a moment think that you are somehow giving up on being significant.  There is simply no higher calling for a woman than to be a mom.  Thanks mom.