Men and women. Women and men.

July 16, 2006 · Filed Under zeitgeist

Great rivers of words have been written on the subject of men, women, and how they differ in doing things. I’ve just started reading a book that is based firmly in that subject area, with an emphasis on the female perspective. I found out about To Hell with All That {Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife} by Caitlin Flanagan by reading an interview with her in the July 1, 2006 issue of World Magazine. So far, this is an interesting and well thought-out book on an interesting subject. If all goes according to plan, a more complete review of it will be my (no doubt long awaited) first contribution to The Luther Library.

In anticipation of that full review, I’ll drop this nugget in the form of a quote from Chapter 2:

“What we’ve learned during this thirty-year grand experiment [i.e., feminism] is that men can be cajoled into doing all sorts of household tasks, but they will not do them the way a woman would. They will bathe the children, but they will not straighten the bath mat and wring out the washcloths. They will drip a toddler off at nursery school, but they won’t spend ten minutes chatting with the teacher and collecting the art projects. They will, in other words, do what man have always done: reduce a job to its simplest essentials and utterly ignore the fillips and niceties that women tend to regard as equally essential. And a lot of women feel cheated and angry and even — bless their hearts — surprised about this.[p. 30]

I find this to be tremendously insightful. Undeniably obvious, of course, but still insightful. I’ve lived it, lo these last 16.5 years with the God-given blessing that is my beloved wife. I’m not sure what, if anything, I can do to change it mind you, but it’s nice to see someone else mention it.

While the author doesn’t seem to bring an overt theological POV to the book (at least as far as I’ve read…), it’s easily inferred from the Word Magazine interview that she’s a Christian, most likely “conservative” if not even orthodox, doctrinally-speaking.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the book!

-ghp

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Tags: christianity, feminism, society, truth, vocation