Dear Fellow Women,
An idea that seems to be prevalent in the mind of women today is the one of marriage being a goal to check off the to-do list, a way to find fulfillment, a way to enrich your own life and gets things you want. This me-focused idea of romantic relationships starts long before the courtship process even begins, perhaps while planning a princess style wedding in one’s head or envisioning how things “ought” to be in a perfect world. From there the self-centered approach to love continues as the idea of romance is seen as superior to the realness of true human interaction and the courtship process must involve niceties that have come to symbolize love more than words and non-material actions do in today’s world. The man must of course pay for the entire process, to show he cares, even if the woman earns her own money.
This process, when successful, culminates with the necessary three months pay diamond ring, the lavish celebration that focuses mainly on the bride rather than the important commitment to be shared with family and friends on this special day, and the lovely and costly home to follow. Soon after the wedding there is the mandatory splitting of the household duties, to ease the workload of the wife and later the cries of “I want to have a baby” and a battle for the division of household labor that surely gets worse once the baby arrives.
All of this we are told is a the proper and right way to find fulfillment as a woman today. We must check off all the boxes on our list and conduct our lives with new gender roles when we see fit and when it would suit us, not our husbands, to do so. We’re princesses and the world revolves around. We are entitled to everything we want and if we don’t get it, well, HE is a bad man for not making it happen. How dare our every whim not be fulfilled when the mean evil patriarchy has been so cruel to us all of these years! This narcissistic madness is nearly everywhere you turn, from magazines and television shows to sermons at church and books that are supposedly anti-feminist. It’s all about what women deserve and how to make ourselves happy. Female superiority it could be called.
Enough is enough!
This is all a lie. A BIG twisted sinister lie that is causing all sorts of sickness in our society today. When you are married, it’s not about *YOU* it’s about *US*. When children arrive, it’s not about “wanting a baby” but about wanting to be a mother. Both marriage and motherhood are noble desires and two of the most beautiful roles to fulfill in life but they aren’t about fulfillment and happiness in the sense these words are used in pop culture, dating books, magazines, and the world at large. The joy and delight that comes is not about you but something else entirely.
Marriage and motherhood are about humbling yourself, learning to be selfless & giving beyond what you ever thought you had to give, and placing the needs of others ahead of yourself. It’s about caring for others and being given the wonderful opportunity to give yourself completely and with abandon to a man you belong to and little ones who have been given to you as a great gift. It’s about sharing burdens, not being afraid to get your hands dirty, and learning to accept others for who they are, imperfect messy humans just like yourself. As a wife, you are to be your husband’s helpmeet, fiercely loyal to him through thick and thin. You are to be the one who encourages him and helps prop him up when times are the tough, the one who celebrates his triumphs and helps him achieve his goals and dreams in any way you can. With beaming eyes and a heart full on intense love, you’ll wonder how you could ever be so lucky to be married to such a fine man and might even feel a bit inadequate when you ponder this thought. As a mother, you are given a fragile and helpless baby who needs you for his/her’s very survival. You must give your all to this little one, fret & worry around the clock for their safety, and feel so much love for this itty bitty human that you think your heart might explode. These are both important parts of a woman’s life, ones that are about other people far more than they are about yourself.
In a marriage, splitting duties shouldn’t be a priority but rather getting done what needs to get done. You are to cooperate with your husband, not worry about making deals or fret about who is getting the raw end of the deal. With an eager loving heart, you learn to look around and ease the burden of work your husband has to do. You might take it upon yourself to do all the domestic chores and find a way to work lawn care into your schedule as well. You might start a home business and really learn to pinch pennies until they scream to help provide your family with the cushioning of a good emergency fund. Part time work in the evening might be something you look into, to help assure your husband has quality time with the precious little ones that you share, while your family still thrives financially. Contests over who has it worst will kill your marriage and make your husband resent you. Pushing for an equal split in housework as a high priority is not the recipe for a beautiful thriving marriage but may very well be one for divorce.
When others depend on you, your emotions need to be under control. Maybe you will need to force yourself to get extra sleep during certain delicate times of the month. Perhaps keeping a journal and being cautious of what foods you eat might help. Whatever works, though, hormones, bad days, and sleep deprivation are not excuses for bad behavior. We all had our bad days, the moments when we make mistakes, but these shouldn’t be actions for which we make excuses. Instead they should be painful moments that spur us to learn and understand ourselves to do better next time. I realize that blaming biology and excusing icky behavior is very prevalent nowadays, but to give everything you can to others, self-control is an important part of character to work on, as is having the prudence to plan accordingly for times you know might be rough on you physically and emotionally.
Once children arrive equal parenting investment is important, but this doesn’t mean tallying up diaper changes and midnight feedings. To parent equally means you make sure your husband has enough quality time with the kids, that you do not tell him how to be a father, and that you are sure to instill a healthy love and respect for daddy in your children, thanks both to your words and your actions. You both leave an important mark on your children and must be sure your children are provided with the proper balance of both mommy and daddy, of discipline and unconditional love, and all the heaps of time they need to grow and develop into confident and productive young adults in the future.
But parenting is far from just giving mom & dad both equal influence. Children should not be had because one wants to have a baby. They should come about because a married couple wants to take on the lofty job of parenting a child together and has a stable marriage and loving home to provide a child with the best possible welcome into the world. Small children take up far more time and require much more work than you can ever realize until you bring your precious babe home. To make a conscious choice to bring a child into a single mother household is selfish to the extreme and detrimental to the child and so too is bringing a child into a situation where they aren’t going to receive not only quality time but quantity time. Children deserve parents who are going to give them all the love, attention, affection, and careful care they need to grow and thrive. They need lots of stories, numerous games of peek-a-boo, and daily trips outside to explore the big outdoors. They demand many sleepless nights spent nursing the night away, rocking a colicky baby, or soothing painful teething gums. They need somebody who wants to be their parent and give all they have to give, not just somebody who wants to bring them into this world to fulfill their desire for a baby or to be needed or to appease their biological clock.
All of this is hard work, not the easy, pretty picture painted by glossy magazine pages or sitcoms on prime time television. When you become a wife, certain doors close as the Mrs one opens. The same is true with motherhood as well. You learn to say no to what isn’t important and invest fully in what is. Ideally you will find that what might seem like drudgery is far from it. Cooking and baking become cherished ways to express your love for your family, as does doing their laundry, picking up the laundry strewn about your bedroom, and even scrubbing toilets. You learn to accept the sleep deprived months for what they are–time that will soon pass–and quickly come to realize that it passes far too soon. You learn to not only look past the annoying habits your husband might have, not only to accept them, but to come to see them as part of who he is, the wonderful man you married and the one with whom you’re building your “to death do us part” life. And you learn to smile and delight in the pleasures that can only come with the comfortably mundane life that is marriage and motherhood, preferring them to even the most exciting and glamorous bits of the life you left behind and the one you could have had.
I suppose you could say you come to find deep fulfillment in it all, but it’s not about you, it’s about your very special & irreplaceable us.
Or so it should be.
With Love,
Hestia
