She sighed. “See, you read different books than I did at your age,” she said with a smile. And then she pressed two unfamiliar books into my hands and urged me to read them. I took them. Of course I would read them. I am a reader, after all.
The books she lent me are Mary Pride’s The Way Home and All the Way Home. I had heard of Mary Pride, and was vaguely aware that she began it all in a way–the exodus of Christian women from feminism and its various entrapments, including, but not limited to, the post-Industrial workplace and the government-funded institutional schoolroom.
It is interesting to read Pride’s words, informed as she was by her own personal {pre-conversion} experience in the feminist movement. Her introduction contained an indictment against the fifties, something I didn’t expect, although I personally have been uncomfortable with the whole wife-as-decoration mentality with which our culture seems to remember that decade. Here is an excerpt:
Well, who would have believed in 1955 that in twenty short years over one-third of all mothers with children under the age of three would be leaving their infants in day-care? But it happened! The reason it happened, in a land where apple pie and motherhood used to be sacred, is that Christians, along with everyone else, had already accepted the basic outlook on which feminism is based. Feminism is self-consistent; the Christianity of the fifties wasn’t. Feminists had a plan for women; Christians didn’t.
Although the Bible teaches distinctly what a wife’s role shoud be this teaching had been getting more and more muted in the churches until it was almost muffled entirely. Women did not know their calling or why it was important. They became restless.
Motherhood in the fifties, for example, had been reduced to a five- or ten-year span, lasting only until the youngest of the two or three “planned” children was in kindergarten. With an empty house full of labor-saving appliances and a family which no longer seemed to need her, it was understandable that a woman felt trapped at home. She was not expected to produce anything at home; her very inactivity was a status symbol for her husband, proving he could afford to maintain her in idleness. All the action seemed to be out there in the men’s world, while she felt bored and useless.
I have alluded to my disdain for the way culture views the SAHM {stay-at-home-mom}, that women, should they remain home with their children, then exist only to chauffeur said children to and from various activities that are perceived as generally more important than the life of the home. People who believe this about motherhood are the people who ask mothers what they could possibly be doing all day. Unfortunately, the popularly accepted alternative remains the same as it was in the days Mary Pride first wrote her book: ditch the kid with a caregiving “specialist” and work “professionally.” I’ve finished the first book, and might share a few more reflections. For now, let me assure any of you who have not read Pride’s work that she has affirmed that happy, biblical alternative to the housewife and the career woman, balancing being at home with a great work ethic, creativity, and intelligence.
*NOTE: Quoting or endorsing this book {or any other book for that matter} does not mean that I believe it to be inspired by God or infallible. There were a few places where I disagreed with Pride. However, I appreciated her respect for and her desire to be obedient to the Word of God.
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