Why are Christian women destroying their families all around us, with seemingly little justification?

In the opening post I identified the use of plastic words, language seeking to use the emotion attached to a word to influence listeners and justify behavior that would otherwise be questioned, and laid out three culprits that helped lead to this problem - the church, the culture, and husbands. The post prior to this one addressed how the church has set women up to be vulnerable to the detrimental effects of secular culture - by segregating them, infantilizing them, and coddling them. Thus, women in the church are left without the defenses that the church is supposed to afford them.

It might seem strange to blame “the culture” for the behavior of Christian women. Isn’t part of the point of becoming a Christian and living in a Christian community a rejection of secular culture, and an understanding that said culture is and will always be at the war with the Bride of Christ? Of course it is - but we all swim in the same ocean. The waters in which Christians live may be surrounded by a coral reef and provide some protection against the predators and natural dangers of the deep ocean, but that ocean water is all around us, and the reef isn’t impregnable. Identifying the cultural waves which may smash our reef and damage its residents can help us prepare to resist them and possibly even take the offense to recover some of our poisoned reef.

And, my friends, this water is indeed poisonous. Our culture has denigrated everything central to womanhood, sold a false view of marriage that caters to women’s predispositions, and finally tried to retain a Victorian view of the virtue of women while discarding its moral boundaries. All of this has resulted in hardship, suffering, and pain in women and families.

1) The Assault on Natural Femininity. Women and men are equal in value but different in the role they are designed for. This is evident most clearly in the sexual component. The human reproductive system is the only biological system whose function is incomplete apart from another person of the opposite sex. Without the other, neither can fully meet the potential with which they were born. Furthermore, those sexual roles are distinct. The man penetrates and deposits and the woman receives and nurtures the fertilized egg and growing life within her. On top of that, upon birth, only the woman is able to convert her own energy and resources into sustenance for the new human being. As the processes of pregnancy and nursing have significant physical demands, the man is far better postured to give provision and protection to his wife and children, especially during these stages, but also throughout their lives.

Yet second- and third-wave feminism have sought to not only obfuscate these differences, they also sought to deny them. After women secured the right to vote and other elements of legal equality, the activists moved on to secure “equality” that denied the truth of biology. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote, women must actually no longer be allowed to pursue their purpose as wives and mothers, because too many would choose to do so. Women must, somehow, be just like men in every way. While the birth control pill was not developed by activist second-wave feminists, it became their rallying cry, for it allowed women to have sex without becoming pregnant, “just like men”. This was the equality later feminism sought: that women are men. Of course, they didn’t seek to be the men of chivalry, piety, and honor, but claimed that equality meant they could be like the crassest of men, seeking money, sex, and public power and prestige at the expense of their families, their character, and their sacred calling. They chose to give up their superpower, the ability to carry and bring forth new life, for the cheap baubles of immoral male culture…and the fruits have been as one would expect.

The average age of marriage for women has increased from 20 in 1960 to 28 in 2018. That’s eight years of fertility lost, eight years of faithful matrimony to a husband sacrificed to making money, getting titles, and having sex with men who, as a rule, she will not spend her later years growing old with. Thus, the rate of births to single mothers has risen from 5% of births in 1960 to 40% in 2018. No one believes that such an astronomical increase is good for women, children, or society. Of course, reported abortions have also increased over this period, so the percentage would likely have been even higher. Anxiety and depression in women have increased, not decreased, following the sexual revolution. In fact, anxiety and depression have increased for everyone as men and women became unrooted from their natural purposes and less likely to marry and have families, and children live in a no-fault divorce culture with the attendant damage I noted in my first article, best recorded in Judith Wallerstein’s “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study.”

2) The Reduction of Marriage from a Good Duty to an Optional Accessory. In the mid-80’s the sitcom “The Golden Girls” premiered, featuring four geriatric single women who lived together, generally involved in various dating exploits. The show was full of sexual humor, pushed acceptance of gay and lesbian sexual relationships, and was generally raunchy (despite your vague memories of a more prudish time in American television). In a particular episode in which two younger people, who are 20 years apart in age, express their desire to get married, one character says, “All that matters is how the two people feel about each other.”

Contrast this with the historic view of marriage, as expressed in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England.

“Holy Matrimony” had little to do with “how two people feel about each other”, though feelings of affection are valuable! It was viewed as a supernatural union that reflects the union between Christ and the church, and was “not to be entered into unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly” but instead “reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God, duly considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained”. And what were those causes? In order, procreation of children, to prevent fornication, and mutual lifelong assistance. And, reflecting the words of Jesus, once the marriage was formed, “what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Clearly it was considered a relationship and institution built for much more than convenient feelings - build to last, built to rear and protect children, and built to make both people better. Now, the culture has proclaimed in law, media, and the therapeutic spirit of the age, that marriage is a disposable arrangement no more valuable than a contract with a lawn maintenance company. If it doesn’t “spark joy”, and if “the glitter is gone”, it can be thrown away. And of course, the culture proclaims as noted before, the kids will be alright.

But as we noted, the kids aren’t alright. In fact, the real attitude of these Christian women toward their kids in these situations is, basically, #fthemkids (which has 109 million views on TikTok). Don’t get me wrong, they love their kids - just not enough to do honest inquiry as to the impact of divorce upon children. Why? They feel they deserve something better themselves, something more like what the culture tells them - freedom, being a Boss Babe, self-care Fridays, girls’ night, whatever. So much dangled in front of them seems better than what they have. And they feel they deserve it, and when all that matters is how two people feel about each other, then detonating their family is justified.

3) The Elevation of Women to Sainthood Apart from Virtue. Like Victorian England, in which women of some means were considered both morally superior to men and expected to maintain the highest public and private ethics, today’s America is invested in the social and moral prestige of middle-class women. But, unlike the Victorians, today’s Americans regard it as natural and right that middle-class women should have professional lives. They have also dropped the Victorian valorization of sexual modesty. Presenting middle-class women as above reproach even as they pursue sexual relationships and professional careers is easier if we affirm they lack agency in their relations with men (“pawns”) and are incapable of lying (#BelieveWomen). These conceits have allowed the burden of proof to shift readily to the accused in the legal and pseudo-legal proceedings of the past few years. In the show trials of the public square, #MeToo simply is an assertion that the purity of women (of a certain class) must not be doubted.*

But, of course, it is only the women that accuse the correct targets that are immediately believed. Accuse a liberal, progressive, democrat, or powerful tech enabler of the moral revolution (or their useful puppets), and you are attacked by not only men, but women who are proclaiming, “believe all women.” The woman who was held at gunpoint by George Floyd and the woman who was attacked by Jacob Blake were ignored and dismissed. The women who accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual assault were actively undermined by the pro-women group Time’s Up. The women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual impropriety and assault were defamed. Some of them were easy to dismiss because they were poor, but others were dismissed solely because they accused the wrong people. Even the assertion of the purity of middle-class women only lasts as long as it is politically and culturally beneficial.

How does that impact this issue? These Christian women, using plastic words, are believed (at least publicly) when making accusations of abuse, violence, and rape against their husbands. Any person who questions their accusations is lambasted and excluded from polite company. The women understand that the culture will back them, right or wrong, and they rest firmly in that knowledge. It’s hard to resist a sin when you know you will get away with it - and that’s exactly what women have been told will happen.

With our churches failing to build up, partner with, and provide the necessary community armor for the faith of Christian women, such an assault by the culture was going to have the upper hand. But someone else needed to fail for it to work so well - us, the husbands, who we will examine in the next post.

* - This paragraph is largely taken from a book review I providentially happened to be reading while composing this post.