The role of women as wives and mothers

[Antigone]

Unless you believe that a just payment means "men get more than women," I cannot fathom why you'd think I meant that. Unless you believe justice is unjust?

Because you said:

Payment should be just, not merely equal

and I accidentally skipped over the 'merely'. I get it now. My apologies.

 

[Eucharisted]

What if a wife can't really cook, but the husband is really fond of cooking (like a hobby)?

Sounds like the husband will be literally bringing home the bacon.

It's not doctrine that a husband can't cook, so I don't see the problem.

 

[Eucharisted]

Because you said:

Payment should be just, not merely equal

and I accidentally skipped over the 'merely'. I get it now. My apologies.

My apologies for misunderstanding your post

 

[Gwendolyn]

This might sound bad, but I've been involved in a discussion on another forum about what women are paid vs. what men are paid.

Most of the time, women are seen as more of a liability than a solid worker, because they will inevitably begin bearing children and will therefore need months/years off work in order to begin raising the children. Therefore their companies will often pay them less because, comparatively, they will not be able to be as efficient or productive as men, who do not take months/years off to raise children.

This bothers me because there are women in the workplace who are not able to have children, but they will still be paid less with the expectation of pregnancy in mind.

 

[JacktheCatholic]

This might sound bad, but I've been involved in a discussion on another forum about what women are paid vs. what men are paid.

Most of the time, women are seen as more of a liability than a solid worker, because they will inevitably begin bearing children and will therefore need months/years off work in order to begin raising the children. Therefore their companies will often pay them less because, comparatively, they will not be able to be as efficient or productive as men, who do not take months/years off to raise children.

This bothers me because there are women in the workplace who are not able to have children, but they will still be paid less with the expectation of pregnancy in mind.

It bothers me too. I would rather my wife was having children and I was working. My wife would be the first to agree. I have nothing against a woman working. FWIW I have seen women get in management and only hire women unless they are in a position where they have to hire a man.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

This might sound bad, but I've been involved in a discussion on another forum about what women are paid vs. what men are paid.

Most of the time, women are seen as more of a liability than a solid worker, because they will inevitably begin bearing children and will therefore need months/years off work in order to begin raising the children. Therefore their companies will often pay them less because, comparatively, they will not be able to be as efficient or productive as men, who do not take months/years off to raise children.

This bothers me because there are women in the workplace who are not able to have children, but they will still be paid less with the expectation of pregnancy in mind.

Well in my 35 years working in engineering, I saw women come into the field of electronic and software engineering. In all cases, they were paid equal to the males who entered with them.

Over time however, the males moved up in pay scale over the women and this was because the males worked overtime, where the females did not, mostly because they had kids to get home to.

However, I also saw where a poor performing female was kept on the job, where a male counter part would be fired for being less poor of a performer.

This was because firing a female, or any minority, automatically brings a lawsuit. The company was better off keeping a poor performer and not giving them raises.

Also, in the USA, most of the data on pay inequality, comes from tax returns, which show males making more than females in the same professions.

However, this is inaccurate because tax forms don't show performance or hours worked.

At any rate, I've seen more injustice towards males because of affirmative action in favor of females, than the opposite.

Jim

 

[dusky_tresses]

This topic makes me wonder-- is it implied that while a woman should not cause her roles of mother/or wife to usurped by other roles, does that mean it's okay for an man who is a husband and/or father to allow his role of being a breadwinner take precedence? I think of all the men who I have witnessed go to work and then come home to have their wives be at their bid and call, practically have their meals handed to them on a platter (I have literally seen that), and don't participate in the child rearing. One set of parents I saw the father barely participated in the child rearing, yet would undermine his wife's authority by encouraging poor behavior on his child's part. I only worked with the child in the home but it was so frustrating to witness. I thought to myself "if this is what a 'woman's place' looks like, I want no part of it."

My husband believes that if he is able to take the car to get the oil changed, do some maintenance, shovel snow, etc. I need to be able to learn how to do those things too because as he puts it, he may not be around all the time to help me. I have also worked very long hours which required lots of physical labor that could be seen as "man's work," but I did it because we needed it. My husband is very wary of people who believe in "women's place," and "man's work," "woman's work" stuff because of what he's witnessed in his own family. He has an older relative who, after the husband died, was practically unable to do anything for herself because all she did was stay at home with the kids and was a homemaker. My husband doesn't want to me to be helpless, so I'm expected to be able to do the things he can do.

 

[Eucharisted]

This topic makes me wonder-- is it implied that while a woman should not cause her roles of mother/or wife to usurped by other roles, does that mean it's okay for an man who is a husband and/or father to allow his role of being a breadwinner take precedence? I think of all the men who I have witnessed go to work and then come home to have their wives be at their bid and call, practically have their meals handed to them on a platter (I have literally seen that), and don't participate in the child rearing. One set of parents I saw the father barely participated in the child rearing, yet would undermine his wife's authority by encouraging poor behavior on his child's part. I only worked with the child in the home but it was so frustrating to witness. I thought to myself "if this is what a 'woman's place' looks like, I want no part of it."

My husband believes that if he is able to take the car to get the oil changed, do some maintenance, shovel snow, etc. I need to be able to learn how to do those things too because as he puts it, he may not be around all the time to help me. I have also worked very long hours which required lots of physical labor that could be seen as "man's work," but I did it because we needed it. My husband is very wary of people who believe in "women's place," and "man's work," "woman's work" stuff because of what he's witnessed in his own family. He has an older relative who, after the husband died, was practically unable to do anything for herself because all she did was stay at home with the kids and was a homemaker. My husband doesn't want to me to be helpless, so I'm expected to be able to do the things he can do.

Fatherhood and motherhood, paternity and maternity, and so parenthood, is more than childbearing, moneymaking, cooking, working, and lovemaking. It is charity, responsibility, cooperation, mercy, helping, support, generosity, reconciling, self-control, purification, chastity, good example, correction, and trust, all of which are seen fully in God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and His Compassion for us.

 

[helenofbritain]

You guys have been busy while I was asleep!

Anyone want to have a go at some of my questions from post 1? How do you understand equality between married persons? Not just in terms of who does what job, but as a whole-of-life attitude?

 

[dusky_tresses]

Fatherhood and motherhood, paternity and maternity, and so parenthood, is more than childbearing, moneymaking, cooking, working, and lovemaking. It is charity, responsibility, cooperation, mercy, helping, support, generosity, reconciling, self-control, purification, chastity, good example, correction, and trust, all of which are seen fully in God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and His Compassion for us.

I don't want to sound snide here, but of all the threads and posts I've seen on this topic, my understanding is that motherhood/wifery is about childbearing, cooking, being "available" for one's husband to you know what, and obey your husband's every command and whim. Whereas, husbands can do whatever they want.

 

[Eucharisted]

I don't want to sound snide here, but of all the threads and posts I've seen on this topic, my understanding is that motherhood/wifery is about childbearing, cooking, being "available" for one's husband to you know what, and obey your husband's every command and whim. Whereas, husbands can do whatever they want.

Good for you. Now why not take off your own chains of slavery? No one is holding you down to such a level of slavery except you, and only you, by God's grace, can take off those chains.

 

[helenofbritain]

The different roles between wife and husband has nothing to do with dignity or equality..

Today the word equality has been used in a semantically wrong way. People use equality to try to justify abortion..

While a woman can work, It should never usurp her role in motherhood and in marriage. It is always a secondary..

I disagree with women in the army though and being put out in the frontlines to be killed..Shall we have men and women play football together too so??? such is the thinking of egalitarianism.


Pope Benedict XVI on egaltarainism

In his God and the World interview Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) comments: “Personally it still horrifies me when people want women to be soldiers just like men, when they, who have always been the keepers of the peace and in whom we have always seen a counter-impulse working against the male impulse to stand up and fight, now likewise run around with submachine guns, showing that they can be just as warlike as the men. Or that women now have the ‘right’ to work as garbage collectors or miners, to do all those things that, out of respect for their status, for their different nature, their own dignity, we ought not to inflict on them and that are now imposed on them in the name of equality. That, in my opinion, is a Manichaean ideology that is opposed to the body” (p.82).

egalitarianism does not exalt women but diminishes their status. By being treated as male, [women] are dragged down to being undistinguished and ordinary” (p.83).


The document, approved by the Pope, says feminism has "inspired ideologies" that view men and women as enemies, and question family and marriage.


But the Pope has also called for more respect for working women, and taken a first step towards breaking the male hold on the Vatican bureaucracy.
Feminists have condemned the document as a step backwards.


The Pope will call on leaders of the Roman Catholic church today to attack feminist ideologies which assert that men and women are fundamentally the same. The Vatican is concerned that this belief is eroding what it regards as women's maternal vocation. But a paper on the subject which is due to be published today - the Vatican's third major pronouncement on women's role in the quarter century of John Paul's papacy - has drawn scornful criticism from feminists and academics.


The Pope rules out feminist theology - Telegraph

You have some interesting points by Benedict there, Creed. But they don't really address my document. What do you think of it? Will you consider the questions I posed?

How do you define equality?

 

[helenofbritain]

As a stay at home dad who is home schooling... Thanks


I refer to my wife as "super mom" and "super wife" because she is so amazing. We should be able to have such dignity from our spouses and why not society as well?

You are very welcome!

How did you two go about organising yourselves that way? Straight up practicalities?

 

[helenofbritain]

In reading Creed's last post I think we need to understand where he is coming from, as Creed may need to do with us. In the USA we have a culture that is not the same globally and Creed may live in a culture that sees some of the values in the USA as bad. We may want to give some thought to that, all of us.

The quote is not by an American, if that helps

 

[dusky_tresses]

Good for you. Now why not take off your own chains of slavery? No one is holding you down to such a level of slavery except you, and only you, by God's grace, can take off those chains.

Tell that to the guy of Catholic Planet.

 

[Eucharisted]

Tell that to the guy of Catholic Planet.

I would if I had a spaceship!

 

[dusky_tresses]

(rolls eyes)

 

[helenofbritain]

This topic makes me wonder-- is it implied that while a woman should not cause her roles of mother/or wife to usurped by other roles, does that mean it's okay for an man who is a husband and/or father to allow his role of being a breadwinner take precedence? I think of all the men who I have witnessed go to work and then come home to have their wives be at their bid and call, practically have their meals handed to them on a platter (I have literally seen that), and don't participate in the child rearing. One set of parents I saw the father barely participated in the child rearing, yet would undermine his wife's authority by encouraging poor behavior on his child's part. I only worked with the child in the home but it was so frustrating to witness. I thought to myself "if this is what a 'woman's place' looks like, I want no part of it."

My husband believes that if he is able to take the car to get the oil changed, do some maintenance, shovel snow, etc. I need to be able to learn how to do those things too because as he puts it, he may not be around all the time to help me. I have also worked very long hours which required lots of physical labor that could be seen as "man's work," but I did it because we needed it. My husband is very wary of people who believe in "women's place," and "man's work," "woman's work" stuff because of what he's witnessed in his own family. He has an older relative who, after the husband died, was practically unable to do anything for herself because all she did was stay at home with the kids and was a homemaker. My husband doesn't want to me to be helpless, so I'm expected to be able to do the things he can do.

I disagree with the concepts of "women's work" and "men's work" for the most part. There are certain jobs I'd rather not do, and likewise for my husband. But that doesn't mean any kind of work is beneath either of us - it's more loving to do jobs the other really dislikes though.

I can and do change tyres, lightbulbs, oil, take garbage out, change washers, etc.

My husband can and does cook, mend things, get kids dressed, make lunches, etc.

And we're not exclusive about it! We share pretty much all tasks.

 

[helenofbritain]

Oh, and you all may be interested in my allied thread: http://www.christianforums.com/t7516300/ It's about being a husband and father

 

[dusky_tresses]

By the way I don't enslave myself to those views. Though there are sure a lot of people out there who try to catch me with the chains...