Family

Keepers At Home Redux

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Undesirable consequences of wives going out to work

a. Since she is bringing home part of the income she will want a voice in how it is spent.

b. Children to a babysitter — no discipline.

c. Contact with other men at work — temptation, flirting, unfaithfulness and divorce. It is no accident that the divorce rate has been climbing since World War II when women went to work for the war effort.

d. The husband will soon be expected to help with the housework – after all, it is unfair for him to expect her to work all day and then do all the housework.

e. Meals will be thrown together — leftovers and TV dinners.

f. Physical well-being will suffer — she cannot work all day and clean house all night; she is the “weaker vessel.”

g. Her spiritual life and that of her children will suffer.

h. The added income will lead to worldliness — the things of this world will become more preeminent in the life.

i. In attempting to make it up to the children you will spoil them — you feel guilty about leaving them so you let them do anything they want and you give them anything their little heart desires. This will not compensate for parental neglect nor will it cause them to love you.

j. Her respect for her husband will lessen — she will resent the fact that he couldn’t provide for them. Should she be moved ahead by her employer, she will wonder why he never gets a promotion. Perhaps she will make more money than he does; she begins to chide him, trouble ahead.

k. Children rebel in reaction to the neglect and lack of love. Again it is no accident that teenage and college age rebellion runs parallel with the increase in working wives over the last thirty years.

Taken from the The Christian Home Manual by Paul L. Freeman

65 thoughts on “Keepers At Home Redux”

  2. @ Mark Rossdale

    I’ve actually been attending a Methodist church, which my parents don’t mind, but it has only one service during the week. When I was still in college I had an excuse for not showing up to any other services – “Classes” or “Working on a project with a friend” or “Field Trip” tended to work. Now that I’m out of college and have no job, my parents have laid down the “If you’re going to live here you’re going to live by our rules” line. Which means going to church when they do.

    But I totally agree with you about Sunday *not* being a day of rest in IFB churches. You’d think the church would be serving its people by offering services for those who can’t attend Sunday mornings, but noooo, it’s mandatory.

  3. Pretty good reasons for the most part. I know you feminists and effeminate men don’t like it, but that is because you have allowed your view of Scripture to be biased as a result of living in your heathen feminist culture that is anti-family and pro-Satan.

  4. @GodHatesFeminism

    Wow, you’ve convinced me… NOT!

    You have no clue how to argue; in fact, that post doesn’t even have an argument in it. That nonsense won’t convince anyone here, because, for the Christians here – which many of us still are, we believe that we can serve God and not check our brains at the door. Now run along and find some other fundie blog where you’ll have more success with people for whom the brainwashing has stuck.

  6. @Toodles,

    Yea I wasn’t living in my parents house after college so they really couldn’t tell me what to do. But I did have an old pastor friend of mine who found out about the one service thing. His response, in seriousness, was “Oh well if you only have the one service then you could go to that in the morning and drive (45 minutes) to your parents church for the evening.” I laughed thinking he was joking…he wasn’t…that was awkward. It is strange how a Fundy thinks. Essentially God ordained 3 services a week and they must adhere to these certain days at these certain times and fit these formats. Anything else doesn’t compute. My in-laws church (IFB) switched up the summer schedule and are doing the prayer meeting on Thursday’s. Yea my in-laws are still reeling over the change.

    Me I welcome a true day of rest. @Darrell have you done a post on what a Sunday looks like in IFB? There is some potential funny stuff to glean from that.

  8. @GodHatesFeminism

    Wow I guess I’m effeminate. You nailed that one right on the head. In fact I get it all the time. And you nailed it I hate the family, in fact Children are the spawn of satan whom I worship on a daily basis. So there you go. Glad to get that off my chest.

    The reality is about the opposite. My wife jokes that I am more of a feminist than she is, but that certainly doesn’t make me effeminate it just makes me a good person who looks out for the opposite sex especially my wife. And we are about as pro-family as they come. We certainly aren’t going to do quiverful or anything like that but if my wife works does that make us anti-family? And we don’t worship satan in our free time though I do enjoy going to some rock concerts here and there. So come again when you have a real observation.

  10. I’m completely baffled by this idea that multiple services mean you’re expected to attend all of them.
    I’ve attended Methodist and Anglican churches and I always thought multiple services were so that even if you’re busy on Sunday there’s still a church service at a time you can attend.
    When I attended an Anglican church they had a 9.30 old fashioned high church service with vestments, an 11.00 family worship service and an evening service which alternated between evensong and a modern praise service. Where I live now plenty of churches will have a Welsh service at one time and an English service later on.

  11. @Rhoda: While that is the case out in the real world (and is how it should be), in the IFB bubble you are *expected* to attend all three services a week, or more if they’re having a “revival” or conference.

  12. Makes me wonder what this guy would make of my father cooking all the meals in my house. (He says it’s his way of relieving stress and has lots of fun tweaking the recipes.)

  13. Ooooh, let me answer each one, just for funzies!

    a. Those women and their opinions! But, then again, we won’t be wondering how we’ll pay the light bill.

    b. Unless your husband is a cop and you are a hairstylist and your schedules work out that someone is always home.

    c. Women in WWII were guilted into going to work and then guilted into going back home. But, what the leaders didn’t bank on was that they discovered a new freedom, and there was no going back at that point. But, of course, its all women’s fault. They should have “kept their place”, right?

    d. Actually, my husband insists on helping with the housework. Otherwise, I’m happy to do it all myself. Honest.

    e. Nope. I work a full-time job and still make home-cooked meals (some taking an hour or more to cook), because I hate pre-packaged foods and fast food and I refuse to eat TV dinners and frankly, I just love to cook.

    f. Yeah, okay. I’ve worked with a stomach virus AND kept my house BEFORE I even knew I had a stomach virus. Same thing when I had strep recently.

    g. My spiritual life is no one’s business, but will say, time can always be made for things.

    h. Huh?

    i. Please refer to answer b.

    j. Nope again. My husband is a real life hero, and not only am I proud of him, I think he’s the sexiest thing on the planet. And, he provides just fine for his family.

    k. Kids rebel for a lot of reasons, even ones from the best of homes.

  14. Coming to this one late (as usual) but some things demand a reply.

    First of all, nowhere does the list address an obvious *advantage* of having two incomes–more money to tithe. 😉 Or, for that matter, to put toward charity.

    Secondly, and specifically toward GodHatesFeminism:

    My mother was a vocational nurse who sometimes worked 16-hour shifts. She also handled the vast majority of the family’s business transactions and more than her share of the chores. This was okay with my father, a career US Marine who served three tours in Vietnam while simultaneously earning a college degree and (when he wasn’t getting his ass shot at) washing dishes, doing laundry, taking care of kids, etc. while my mother was working. Want to call him effeminate? He’s 72 years old now and has a bad back due to being dropped out of helicopters much of his life but I’m pretty sure he’d tell you where to put that sentiment. :mrgreen:

    That said, my wife is a stay-at-home mother, mainly because she is disabled and there aren’t a lot of jobs she can do that would pay enough to be worth the effort. As it is, she’s got quite enough work to do with two young children (one special-needs) at home. If she could work, however, she would. And I would support her in doing so.

    As someone else mentioned, the ideal Proverbs 31 woman handled all the business affairs of the family, including major financial transactions. There was no debate about who worked in the family back then because pretty much *everyone* in the family worked as soon as they were walking–the ancient Hebrews were an agricultural/pastoral society, with all that implies.

    God created women to be equal partners with men, not one to rule over the other–an imbalance in either direction always leads to trouble.

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