The New Eve - Lewis Robert [16]
For men this spells an identity crisis of the first order. A Newsweek article bears this out, for with few exceptions the stay-at-home dads who were interviewed confessed their dislike of this new role. Why? Because from earliest boyhood, males fix their eyes on the broader world outside the home, where they have a God-made hunger for adventure and accomplishment. Women too are exhilarated by success, but for men it is the very stuff of life. Men who aren't conquering the turf God has called them to aren't merely standing still; they're losing ground and their masculine soul in the process. Something dies inside a man when he gives up on authentic manhood and settles for something less than the call that lies within him. His manhood becomes hollow. And when a man surrenders his life and leadership to a woman, as Adam did to Eve (Gen. 3:6, 17), both inevitably hate it in the end.5
So where does this swinging social pendulum leave you as a woman? Honestly, with hard choices concerning …
What you want out of life
Balancing home and career
Living with a man
Children and what is required for them to grow up healthy
Your spiritual beliefs
But underneath all these concerns that you and other women battle with daily is a basic question rarely asked or answered: How do you define what a woman is and isn't? For you as a Christian woman, we could add: How does God define what a woman is and isn't? When those questions are left open and unresolved, confusion, wrong turns, and painful regrets usually follow. But an amazing clarity, confidence, and problem-solving ability comes when you can move past confusion to solid, life-giving answers. Defining your womanhood at a basic level is the issue behind the challenges and problems of an ever-evolving femininity. It's an issue we will address from a biblical perspective in chapter 6.
Issue 2: A New Supreme Pursuit
Let's face it: life today, especially for young women, has been turned upside down. A radical and profound idea has been introduced and propagated concerning what womanhood is really all about. Against all social history as well as the wisdom of Scripture, young women are bombarded with slogans and images in the media, taught from grade school through the university, and told indirectly by what they see honored among women that a career is the ultimate goal in life.
This is womanhood's new supreme pursuit against which all else should be measured. We celebrate “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”; we guard girls against stereotypes that make motherhood and domestic life seem like their inevitable calling; and every time we speak to them about aiming high, we're thinking of careers in medicine, law, business, or the like, possibly inviting them to put off or deny altogether some of their most powerful, God-given drives. Former Brandeis professor Linda Hirshman pressed for this new pursuit when she wrote, “Housekeeping and child rearing [are] not worthy of the full-time talents of intelligent and educated human beings.”6 Her book for today's woman is appropriately titled Get to Work.
I recently attended a high-school football game in a rural Arkansas town. It was the essence of small-town Americana. Picket fences, a general store, folks gathered on the front porch to solve the world's dilemmas. The game was homecoming, and at halftime the announcer introduced the members of the homecoming court. For each of the young ladies he mentioned their accomplishments and future aspirations. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, teachers … the aspirations were high and career oriented. Nothing wrong with that. A career is a good thing. We can all be proud when our daughters aim high in accordance with their gifts. But as I sat in the stands, I began to wonder how the crowd might react if one of the girls had named motherhood or homemaking as her chief ambition. Honestly, it would have sounded odd. Second-rate.
In the twenty-first century the primacy and place women individually and collectively give a career is a huge issue with immense consequences. And what