Equal and Complementary: a review

A few weeks ago, I went to the conference Equal and Complementary. I wrote a review for Sola Panel, which you can read here. Below are the more personal bits of what I wrote, reflecting on what being complementarian means to me.

I was once a feminist. In my early twenties, I became a complementarian, with the view that God made men and women equal but with different roles and responsibilities. It didn't happen overnight; I studied the Bible, read books by complementarians and egalitarians, and joined in discussions, until I was convinced that the Bible teaches that God wants men to be servant leaders, and women to be helpers by their side as, together, we make Christ known.

It wasn't an easy position to come to, and it's not always an easy one to hold. It's an unpopular viewpoint in Melbourne and much of Australia, and it doesn't sit easily with family, friends or the wider church or culture. It's led to a few uncomfortable moments! I've also had to battle my own desires for power and recognition.

Over time, I've only become more convinced that God's plan for men and women is good. I've seen women cared for and honoured, and their teaching gifts nurtured and encouraged. I've seen men grow strong, gentle and servant-hearted. There's something beautiful about servant leadership and trusting submission that displays the truth of the gospel in a way nothing else can (Eph 5:22-33).

...Sometimes it's (rather patronizingly) suggested that men are complementarian because it advantages them (which it rarely does in our culture) and that complementarian women are oppressed. In fact, ... we're complementarian because we believe it's what God teaches in the Bible, and we see how both men and women are blessed and benefited by it.

Fiona McLean put words to my feelings:

In the end, I want my worldview to be shaped by God's word, the Bible. Where the Bible's teaching grates against the culture in which I live, I want to make sure that I am neither misinterpreting the Bible, not capitulating to our culture … As a complementarian woman, I feel affirmed and valued. When men live out the complementarian view, this has enormous benefits for women! All believers, men and women, have a valuable part to play in God's mission in the world, whether in paid or unpaid work, formal or informal, church-based or home-based or elsewhere. Let's get on with it!

To read the rest of my review (including some of the biblical and theological reflections which led me to this point) click here.

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a question of childcare (4a) research - Peter Cook 's Mothering Denied and the ideology of childcare

You won't find a stronger opponent to childcare* than Dr Peter Cook! My friend sent me a link to his free online book Mothering Denied, and I read it with astonished fascination from first page to last.

He brings together five lines of evidence for what he calls a "natural, biologically-based, best-fit pattern of human mothering" (p.10):

1. the kind of mothering produced through natural selection

2. the benefits of breastfeeding for physical and emotional development

3. early 20th century studies on the importance of attachment

4. how mothers' and infants' brains are affected by the mother-child bond

5. studies comparing the effects of mother-care and daycare

You can see that he covers a lot more than childcare! He's really defending a particular approach to mothering - attachment parenting - where the mother carries and sleeps with her infant, feeds on demand, doesn't follow a routine, breastfeeds (when possible), and (more importantly!) forms a strong, affectionate, joyful relationship with her children, within the context of a supportive extended family.

I have some major issues with this book. Peter Cook's arguments often seem more speculative than scientific: his view of motherhood is based largely on theories about the evolutionary development of humans, the structure of hunter-gatherer societies, and comparisons with other mammals and how they care for their infants. But he also makes many valuable observations.

There are two main ideologies he sees as contributing to the undermining of natural mothering: Christianity (and restraint parenting) and feminism (and cultural determinism).

His view of Christianity is interesting, to say the least! He argues that the doctrine of original sin is responsible for harsh discipline and for treating babies' needs as impositions to be ignored. But his alternative - that if we satisfy infants' needs and gently encourage them to respect others, they will grow into self-regulating children who rarely (if ever!) need punishment - is naive (p.93). There has to be a place for a combination of loving attention and sensible discipline!

But he has some fantastic observations about feminism and its impact on how we think about motherhood. Equality feminists saw the differences between men and women as culturally determined, replaced the words 'mothering' and 'fathering' with words like 'parenting' and 'caregiver', and "engineered social policies that pressured women back into the 'workforce,' mostly against their real wishes, and as if rearing infants only involved 'work' when you are not the mother" (p.5).

It's scary to read Simone de Beauvoir's words about motherhood:

No, we don't believe that any women should have that choice. No woman should be authorized to stay home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. (p.66 my emphasis)

And this is the philosophy our society's views about motherhood are based on! The leaders of the feminist movement - Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer - all had second thoughts when they were older. Yet the "entrenched orthodoxy of equality feminism" (p. 67) has had an enormous impact on our society's policies on work and childcare.

Women feel strong internal and external pressure to return to work and put their children into childcare. As Peter Cook observes, it doesn't help that housing prices often require two incomes, or that the joy of motherhood is undermined by the isolation of modern urban life and the breakdown of the extended family.

As Christians, we'll take our view of motherhood from the Bible, not biology. We'll try to lovingly meet the needs of our babies, although not all of us will practise "attachment parenting" as Peter Cook recommends. But his observations about feminism and its impact on our view of motherhood are sobering. I guess it shows how important it is to be aware of the ideologies underlying our choices about childcare.

This post is already too long, so I'll save Peter Cook's observations about studies of childcare for another day!

* I'm using "childcare" to mean the care of children in a professional childcare centre.

image is from Playgroup Australia

Biblical womanhood (1a) teaching younger women - the need

I was a kid bride, married at the age of 19. I was pregnant 3 months after the wedding; I had my first baby at age 20, and a year later I had my second baby. To say the least, I felt overwhelmed by the task. There were so many times I longed to have an older, more experienced godly woman in my life that I could just call for counsel and advice. My Mum was an excellent role model, but she lived 1000 miles away, so it was not very practical to contact her on a daily basis. I was the first among my circle of friends to have a baby. I really had no-one I could call and ask for help. I felt very alone in this daunting task of being a wife and a mother.

I had to learn from doing it all wrong the first time around, and sometimes it can't be avoided. However, the better way is to glean from the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before us. The better way is to benefit from the training and instruction of older women with godly character. (from Carolyn Mahaney's talk A Fresh Look at Titus 2)

There is a thirst in the hearts of many young women. I should know.

I remember so well how it felt to be a single 18-year-old with no idea of how to grow into godly womanhood, a married woman in my 20’s wondering how to love my husband, and a 30 year old bewildered about how to care for our new baby. How I longed for an older woman who would take me under her wing and show me how to live as a Christian woman!

Oh, I knew the facts. I had read books on Biblical womanhood, agonised over the theology and practice of submission, trawled through books on marriage and motherhood.

But I had no idea about how to serve Jesus through a lifetime, how to love my husband during times when marriage got tough, how to manage our home effectively, how to settle a baby, discipline a toddler, or teach a child about God. And it felt like there was no-one I could ask.

I looked around for older, wiser women, but my husband and I were in university ministry, and there weren't many around. The few faithful, godly older women I knew, who took time to encourage us younger ones, I regarded with admiration tinged with awe. I asked a couple to meet with me, but they weren’t able to. So my friends and I were left to stumble through on our own, with the help of some wise books and the occasional seminar for women.

I’m older now. Perhaps I fit the category of “older woman” myself. But the thirst has never really gone away.

Is this a thirst you have felt? How do you feel about "older women"? Have you ever asked an "older woman" to mentor you? Is there someone you could ask?

image is Diego Rivera's "Two women and a child"

Susan Maushart on motherhood

Why is it that we're tempted to undervalue motherhood? During her seminar on motherhood, Heather shared this wonderful quote from The Mask of Motherhood, where Susan Maushart discusses feminism, work, marriage and motherhood:

The current generation of mothers feels not only constrained, torn and frustrated: they feel cheated, as if an important secret of adult life has been withheld from them. (It has been, of course.) All things were meant to be possible. The discovery that only a few of them are achievable, and some of those are mutually exclusive anyway, comes as a nasty shock.

That we could have ever believed otherwise is the legacy of 1970s feminist fantasies, according to Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University. ‘By treating marriage and motherhood as obstacles to women’s progress,’ Glendon argues, ‘first wave feminist thought actually helped reinforce the idea that the only work that counts is work for pay outside the home.’ As for the rest of life – the ‘motherhood thing’ most emphatically included – well, we were implicitly assured, that would all fall into place somehow. We swallowed this, Gendon suggests, not because it made any sense (it didn’t), but because we so badly wanted it to. The fantasy of ‘having it all’ has been so alluring, we have been willing to give up almost everything – even our common sense - in the quest.

Isn’t it time we grew up? Glendon suggests sternly. ‘The grown up question is not can all our dreams come true,’ she writes, ‘The real question is whether we can do better than we’re doing now.’ … There is no such thing as Supermom. Lots of women may appear to have their cake (as mothers) and be eating it too (as paid workers), yet the net result feels suspiciously like emotional bulimia…’ (pp.178-179)

Artwork is La Noche de Los Pobres by Diego Rivera; emphasis mine.