Unwilling Orphans
In our rush to leave our mark on the world, who is taking care of the children?
Today about half of all mothers are employed, leaving much of the care of their children to paid professionals. Adventists are concerned with this trend. Books and periodicals are filled with accounts of teenage problems. But few people seem to sense the connection between troubled youth and absent parents. Occasional family outings and quick bedtime hugs simply cannot substitute for real commitment.
Parents today are besieged with appealing advice. A steady stream of social scientists and women's advocates stress the benefits of the two-career family. The predictions of personal fulfillment and expanded horizons coupled with powerful economic incentives are propelling many working parents toward a new definition of family life.
But amidst all the success, quiet fears are beginning to grow in the hearts of many. The responsibilities of a career inevitably chip away at discretionary time. Since the mundane basics of housekeeping must be done, busy parents are spending fewer hours nurturing their children. For much of earth's history this was a problem only for men.
Day Care
The problem often begins with day care. Well meaning mothers seeking careers and fulfillment in the professional world wistfully imagine that their youngsters are learning helpful social skills at the local center. But this happy ideal is seldom realized. In Policy Review (Spring 1988), Karl Zinsmeister summarizes the findings of Deborah Fallows after she spent hundreds of hours in day-care centers researching for her book A Mother's Work: "While Fallows discovered no abuse, little dirt and adequate physical conditions in most centers, she found the average child's experience to be frighteningly empty.... There is much tedium, much bewilderment, many unconsoled tears".
He concludes, "Basically it appears that whether the day care takes place in a center, a private house or at the child's home, similar risks result. The question is: can you substitute a paid relationship for the natural parent-child bond without seriously harming children and society? It appears the answer may be no".
By the time most of us are finished with a day's work we are harried and tired. But all the necessities of homemaking crowd upon us when we open the front door. This double duty is crushing mothers (and fathers), robbing them of the time and energy to adequately train their children. There is little room for personal prayer and reflection, even less for the waning family worship, and none to patiently guide the young in their own devotional life. Is it any wonder that children trudge off to school or day care ill prepared for the temptations of an average day?
Single working parents undoubtedly need child care. But we must not make their plight an opportunity for others to weaken their own parenting.
A myth of modern feminism is that it is more rewarding and fulfilling and takes more intelligence and talent to hone a career than to be a successful wife and mother. At least one female author has thought otherwise: "Woman should fill the position which God originally designed for her, as her husband's equal. The world needs mothers who are mothers not merely in name but in every sense of the word. We may safely say that the distinctive duties of woman are more sacred, more holy, than those of man... Would that every mother could realize how great are her duties and her responsibilities and how great will be the reward of faithfulness" (The Adventist Home, pp. 231, 233).
Disturbing Proposal
A most disturbing current proposal is that the church should encourage women to pursue full-time pastoring. Unlike many other careers, this is a call to lifelong commitment. It would not be easy to simply come and go during childbearing years. Few would advocate that all female pastors be single or childless. If a woman pastor is justified in subordinating her family responsibilities, even more Adventist women will likely follow, often with less noble aspirations.
This matter has been lauded as a women's issue, an equality issue, a ministry issue, but never as a children's issue. Those who grow up in a minister's family know first-hand how difficult it is for their father to find quality time for them. With mother equally engrossed, their prospects for meaningful family relationships are dim.
Our church needs the able contributions of women. Their work should be recognized and appreciated, their time justly compensated. Cultural gender barriers are crumbling, as they should be. But in our sincere efforts to maximize the ministry of women to the church, we must be careful not to cripple their commitment to the family. Any proposal that tends to undermine the already-beleaguered home and implies that parenting by proxy is acceptable should be suspect.
Blurred Responsibilities
But there is a more subtle implication here. Since the position of pastor involves church authority and spiritual leadership, the mother-pastor's role would blur the distinctive responsibilities given by God to fathers and husbands. (See The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary on 1 Cor. 14:34).
While scholars may debate this issue endlessly, young people can sense inconsistency even when they cannot understand theology. If they see their adult role models diluting authority and skirting responsibility, they are confused and often encouraged to throw off their own restraints.
Such a cause-effect relationship may be beyond proof. Most social issues involve such a complexity of factors that rigorous scientific verification is impossible. But in our work as teachers my wife and I have listened too often as young people have pled for their parents' time and companionship while slowly drifting away. Many of these bright, healthy, entertained kids are "religious" but not spiritual. They are neglected.
Avian Logic
The obvious logic of the birds seems to escape many: when you're out finding the worms, it's nice to know your mate is watching the nest. Parents who sidestep this issue with brave compromises and creative alternatives may find their pockets full but their nests empty.
Analyst Peter Drucker reminds us that "we are busily unmaking one of the proudest social achievements of the 19th century, which was to take married women out of the work force so they could devote themselves to family and children".
Rita Kramer in a Wilson Quarterly article (Autumn 1986) notes that by the 1980s, "the traditional family, long condemned by feminists as a patriarchal trap, took on new luster.... The workaday world, where women held 45 percent of the jobs by 1984, proved to be less exciting than advertised". Moreover, "while the working women who were getting all the attention in Cosmopolitan and newer women's magazines like Self and Working Woman were donning somber business suits and taking 'assertiveness training' classes the vast majority of women (like men) held less than glamorous jobs.... A 60-hour work week, young professionals complained to Newsweek, did not leave much time for some fundamentals: finding a suitable husband and raising children".
Kramer concludes that today women "enjoy unprecedented personal autonomy and financial independence. Their material aspirations are often high. What they apparently find more difficult to count on are those private things that their mothers... once took for granted—husbands, homes, and children. Those items, essential to a healthy society, are not at the top of any feminist agenda".
As we see one-time enthusiasts returning from the conquests of advanced feminism bruised and wiser, sometimes without children or spouse, let us not rush past them with eager ignorance. Our children are crying for our care more than our career—our time instead of trinkets. Will we make them unwilling orphans?
Partnership
What are we to conclude? Are women to be forever confined to comfortable domestic boredom? Certainly not. A growing number of Adventist families are returning to a concept that has worn well—partnership. The parents choose a joint vocation in which they and their children can work together. This is not so easy to accomplish in urban America. But if we locate our families in an inviting natural environment, partnership becomes quite logical. We have observed that most young people who come from these stable country homes, whether their parents are professionals or mechanics, are happy, growing Christians and serious-minded students. They are fulfilled, secure, content.
What a contrast with those who come from segmented homes! With parents gone to separate jobs and children drawn to activities outside the home, these families become hurried and divergent. The result? Scant time for true companionship or spiritual guidance. Young people from these "broken homes" are often restless, secular, fickle.
Eroding Influences
No one would argue that a single factor is the cause for all that troubles children. Affluence, urbanization, the media, and other influences have all contributed. But the cumulative effect of these, together with distant parents, is steadily eroding the Adventist home. We must stop this decline. An excellent place to start is with full-time mothering, regardless of its unpopularity in the present feminist climate.