The older order of things held far more promise for women, for it saw women as vulnerable, had compassion for them and shamed men who abandoned their duty of timely marriage. Marriage was long believed to produce positive spiritual growth and development that singleness was simply incapable of accomplishing.
She has a whole segment praising how past cultures shamed singleness.
Past cultures shamed improper singleness. They considered married life 'as far more excellent than the condition of the single life.' Singles were required to live with established families, and they enforced laws against single men living alone. Take the case of John Littleale of Haverhill, Massachusetts, who was found to be living 'in a house by himself contrary to the laws of the country, whereby he is subject to much sin and iniquity, which ordinarily are the consequences of a solitary life.' He was told to find a real family to live with or the court would help him find one. And if he refused? They'd be only too happy to place him in a 'house of corrections.' That's right, jail! Early Americans did not think the single status or life anything to be glorified, but rather something that a 'real' family should absorb, so that no one would have to suffer the infirmities of singleness, nor its vices.
Is that really the golden era you want us all to try to return to? Also, one of the things that is disturbing to me is that she (and those she cites) assume that it is simply impossible to remain sexually pure as a single, and that if you are single then you are obviously spending your time in secret whoredom.
So, what is the cause for this grave condition of singleness that so many are enslaved by? Why, what else but the typical default answer to every problem church and society faces? The lack of male leadership. In fact that is the title of chapter three: "The Lack of Male Leadership: The True Cause of Protracted Singleness."
I had a hard time following her on this chapter. She tries to point away from feminism as a cause of singleness and focus squarely on the fault of men, but it seems like she must have been in such a flurry of anger when she wrote this that she came up swinging blindly at everything. I'm also not sure she knows what she means when she talks about feminism. She begins by framing a long, and what seems to me to be a very sensible, accurate and even prophetic, quote by none other than C.S. Lewis as the wrong way of analyzing the problem of the presence of a multitude of lonely and hurting single women. Lewis is expressing that a society that tolerates open sexual promiscuity is actually a society adverse to women. Although she earlier comments that men were helpfully forced into marriage because promiscuity was not tolerated in earlier societies, she here chastises Lewis for presenting this message because she thinks he is blaming feminism.
She then begins her attack on men in earnest.
Many men say they would love to be married, but the greater question is, should any woman have them? Most of them are lagging behind the women in this culture . . . we must call men on the carpet and ask them to be the leaders that God made them to be.
Oh, and it is actually in this chapter that she comments about women buying houses, but she is not saying they shouldn't. She is saying that women should not deserve to be single because they are going forward and being responsible with their own lives. But she is saying it in a completely sarcastic tone which may be why people thought she was against it. Her exact wording is,
"We think women today deserve to be single for choices they made, like attending college or buying a house. How dare they be successful and leave men behind?"
She goes on to say,
" Women often have no choice but to prepare themselves to be market competitors because they cannot rely upon men to marry them, or for that matter to stay married to them."
Notice the adversarial wording here? Women are not market participants (with all the opportunities that presents) but market competitors. Also, it seems that only men leave women in marriages and women never leave men.
She still finds a way to use the fact that women are working professionals and home-owners as a dig against men:
Men in general do not want women to be dependent. The social science research in this area shows that 'men expect women they date to be economically independent and able to take care of themselves.' This proves that women are not leaving hapless suitors in a dusty haze due to obsessive career development goals. This proves that most men today want a 'pay your own way' type of deal where the mantle of assuming the care of another is avoided and their personal autonomy remains unchecked. This allows men to keep jobs that resemble hobbies and to maintain hobbies as costly as their jobs. The convenient scapegoat of feminism obscures the discussion of leadership and accountability.
She then goes on to illustrate a few different stories and comments
What these stories prove is that men often do not think they have to live up to any realistic timetable in which they present themselves as marriage-ready - formal schooling completed and gainfully employed."She also adds that
"The simple truth is that men (and women) could be marriageable candidates by the time they are twenty-two, as opposed to twenty-seven and twenty-nine, which is now the national average for first-time marriage by college-educated females and males respectively."If she had done more research, she might have been surprised to learn that the divorce rate of people who marry between the ages of 25-29 is roughly half that of people who marry between the ages of 20-24. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. And don't let the high divorce rates of this generation's parents be discussed as a possible consideration in explaining the later marriage ages we see now.
Of course, it is not just the lack of male leadership in general that is to blame. We really need to blame the lack of leadership in the church too.
"The church must get out of the way and stop being a stumbling block to the pursuit of marriage (italics are author's)."
And finally we arrive at the capstone comment of the chapter:
Until the church returns to preaching the superiority of marriage over singleness and the duty to marry, and until some of these singles (especially the men) start squirming in their seats and feel the shame that is rightfully theirs to bear if they are refusing to follow God's leading into marriage, there will be no substantive improvement in the number of Christian marriages.
That is a direct quote, including the parenthetical reference to men.
1 comment:
Wow. The funny thing is that she's acting as though every woman on the face of the Earth is just itching to get married to the first man who goes on his knees with a ring in his hand.
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