Posts

Repealing the 19th Amendment

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This seems like an odd thing to talk about, but it has been in the news lately courtesy of Idaho pastor Douglas Wilson and some members of his church being interviewed on CNN, and it pops up in the rotation of issues the Titus 2 influencer set highlights in their social media feeds. The argument given by the Titus 2 influencer set for taking the vote away from women is twofold: Women are more emotional than men, and they vote overwhelmingly for abortion. They back this up by pulling out a verse or two of Scripture and attempt to convince others the Bible prohibits women from voting.   This is a man’s job, they argue, and if a woman votes, it should only be to vote the exact way her husband votes, and under her husband’s guidance, because she should not be worrying her pretty little head about intellectual things like politics and should busy herself cooking, cleaning, and raising her children.   After all, homemaking and all the homemaking things are the only things women ar...
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Reflections on the Empty Nest After a Year

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This week marks the one-year anniversary of us officially becoming empty nesters.  It’s been interesting, to be sure.  Looking back, it’s both been easier and harder than I thought it would be.   Weird that it could be both, but that’s the only way I can describe it. First, on the easy side of things: Because the girls were very busy with their own lives and as soon as Morgan became an adult we regularly left them to go on trips and do our own thing, we were kind of used to doing things without them.   So that went on just like it did before.   We enjoy doing things together and have made that a priority, so that was the easiest part of just having two of us at home. The hard side of things is kind of a mixed blessing.   Because we are still close to the girls, we know what is going on in their lives.   Some of those things have been rough the last year.   It’s stuff all adults go through from time to time, but it was hard to be so far away ...
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Older Christian Women Paint an Unappealing View of Marriage

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I’ve seen a lot of the "Titus 2" influencer set giving what they think is helpful marriage advice. I've read several of the popular Christian marriage books. I have also been married for 31 years, and I have wondered for a good while why a lot of this advice seems to be stuff that doesn’t apply to my life. And I finally came to the conclusion that much of what they say doesn’t resonate with me because they start from the premise that marriage is very hard and they are telling you how to survive. This was clearly on display on X (Twitter) the other day when a woman was responding to the very toxic influencer I have responded to before.   The woman’s comment was this: “We stay married because we fear God and love our children. Make sure the man you marry fears God and is shown by his behavior. Teach your daughters this.” This comment struck me as super odd. If that’s the only reason to stay married, you must be just sticking it out, not joyfully living as husband and ...
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Young Ladies, Be Careful What Kind of Marriage Advice You Take

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  This is a bit of a follow-up to my last blog post, naturally prompted by another post full of bad advice from the Titus 2 blogger. Here is the post in question, with her info removed. (Some of you know who she is, but I am serious about not driving traffic to her page.) I am always amazed how low she and Debi Pearl (her favorite “godly wife” and the author of the worst marriage book ever written) set the bar for the men in their lives. My first thought was that this advice was given because she (and Debi Pearl) are married to guys who don’t do anything around the house and don’t treat them very well, and this is their advice to already married women who have the same issue.   But this blogger fully admits she used her head and not her heart to decide to marry her husband, and that she married him because he would be a good provider and he loves Jesus.   That’s it.   She settled for a comfortable situation (just like Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice .) A...
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A Word About Our Single Adult Christian Daughters

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I recently read a blog post from a patriarchal Titus 2 “influencer” with a large following asking whether it was a sin for a single adult Christian woman to have an education and a career.  While she initially stated she couldn’t definitively say, she proceeded to lay out all the bad things that happen (in her mind) to women who work outside the home, especially as nurses or teachers (traditionally female occupations). In the discussion on her Facebook page, she not only deleted whole sections of comments from very well balanced single young Christian women with careers whose parents are elderly and on a fixed income (therefore cannot support them), she revealed her true thoughts when responding to several people who questioned what would happen if women left education and health care.  “Straw man argument!” she declared, “Not all will repent and come home.” She also stated that only those who didn’t love Jesus would stay in nursing instead of being full-time homemakers or sta...
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Homemaking Isn’t Rocket Science

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This is going to be purely my opinion.   I hope I don’t step on any toes, but the idea of girls spending a tremendous amount of time learning “homemaking skills” has confused me for a long time. Homemaking isn’t rocket science.   But it’s okay for your daughters to learn rocket science. In fact, as a homeschool mom, I feel it is easy for our daughters to learn both homemaking skills and rigorous academics by the time they graduate from high school. Let me explain why.   As a classroom teacher, we wasted lots of time in transitions and dealing with behaviors.   The days were long, but the actual amount of instructional time we had was short.   You classroom teachers know what I am talking about. At home, things are more flexible. My kids knew they had to get the work done that I planned for them, and they also knew that they were in control of how much free time they had.   Also, we all had chores we shared since we lived in the same house, so housewor...
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Why We Didn’t Have Stay-At-Home Daughters

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I just finished reading Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away From Christian Patriarchy by Cait West, and I found it to be both sad and unsurprising. Some people who have observed our family may have assumed we were fans of the stay-at-home daughter idea.   After all, our three girls stayed with us after high school.   Only one went to college directly out of high school (the youngest) and all three lived with us until they recently graduated from college and moved on to their next steps. But there is a huge difference between your daughters staying with you for a time and requiring them to stay under your authority until you pass them off to a husband.   In the stay-at-home daughter culture, girls are trained to be homemakers and nothing but homemakers.   Academic work is the bare minimum in most cases, because it is assumed they will marry young and have children, so it is more important to focus on homemaking skills instead of academics they most likely won’t use...
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