Was feminism a lie?
Is the opposite of feminism also a lie?
A common talking point, especially in Christian circles, right now is that women have been sold the lie of feminism. They have been told if they go to college, take on enormous monetary debt, get a good job, work their way up the corporate ladder, date around, maybe get engaged, maybe get married, put off having kids for the sake of career…they will be happy. They will be satisfied. They will be accomplished. This is how we are ending up with 45 year old women who are unmarried and longing for a spouse or are married and longing for children but it’s too late to have them naturally. How instead of being grandmothers in their 40s the way it was common to be 100 years ago, many women are just beginning to settle into family life at that age. The You Do You culture has turned us into power hungry, career hungry, money hungry, stuff hungry feminists.
Well, yeah. I can get that.
I don’t subscribe to it. I got married young by choice. Rather, “we” got married on the younger side, by choice, and that was it. We did, however, put off having kids, by choice, because there was no way we were ready for that after knowing each other for 9 months exactly when we got married and moved thousands of miles from home for a life in the military. I chose to work for 3-4 years with no intention of having children right away. It worked out for us like that and I don’t regret that decision at all. This is where I will lose the Christians out there: I don’t regret it. I was also still very young. And I was teaching small children in an elementary school. I wasn’t trying to climb a corporate ladder. If you want to look at it in terms of fiscal responsibility, we worked really hard those years so we could pay off all our loans and set ourselves up for the future. It’s really great not to have student loans while you’re also trying to pay mortgages, you know?
But, like I said, I’ve already lost the Christians in the audience by saying I chose not to have kids on purpose :)
After those few years, we were confronted with infertility. Again, no regrets. I couldn’t have known. I’m glad I had those few years of never even considering something like infertility because it definitely ruled over the *next* 4 years of our lives; a baby became an idol to me.
However, during those next 4 years of wanting to have a baby but not being able to get pregnant, I put the stay at home mom on an altar. It was a true idol. Life would be so much easier if I could be a stay at home mom. As a military wife, it was ideal. I held that up as my standard of “what could be” if only I could get pregnant.
Then, we had a baby. I became a stay at home mom. Goal achieved. My contentedness lasted several months but then I realized that maybe staying home wasn’t for me. There were many factors here, but it had nothing to do with the baby. Military life is just as stressful staying at home as it had been when I was working. The effects of PPD/PPA don’t go away overnight. In the end, I realized I just truly had enjoyed my job more than I thought I did.
Reflecting back now (two kids and almost 5 years later), I felt like *I* had been sold a lie: I’d assumed that the end goal was to be a stay at home mom. Like, that was it. That was where we all needed to land in order to be content.
I couldn’t understand why I had held this standard that I knew nothing about. If anything, I’d been sold the opposite lie of feminism. I had been told by society (okay, by the internet) that the only thing that would satisfy me was a baby and the chance to be a mom. When that didn’t, I really started to wonder about myself.
While motherhood should be held in the highest of regards, it’s not the most high. It cannot be a sole identity. Many of these thoughts didn’t become clear to be until recently, but Allie Beth Stuckey said it best on her podcast this week:
If we are holding “being a mother” as the sole way to satisfy ourselves in life, we will likely be disappointed.