Tag Archives: Nurturing

MUST-READ: How feminism’s war against men ends up hurting women

From the The Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

There’s been a 145% rise in unmarried births among college-educated women since 1980, more than twice the increase in such births among women without college educations. That’s just births; adoptions are another outlet for women seeking families on their own. But there’s a largely unexplored part to this story: Why is this happening?

Part of the answer is found in a Pew Research Center report released this week: A sea change in relationships is taking place as everyone adjusts to the new reality of women being better educated and in some cases more preferred than men in the workforce. Especially unsettling to some men is their role as second-best earner in the family. As the Pew report documents, 22% of men with “some college” are now outearned by their wives, up from 4% in 1970.

[…]Women are feeling the pinch from years of gender imbalances on college campuses, where today nearly 58% of all bachelor’s degrees and 62% of associate’s degrees are earned by women. Given that women prefer to find a well-educated, reliable earner as a husband, this creates a simple math problem. Well-educated women can’t find enough equally or better-educated men to marry.

Couple the education gap with the current economic “man-cession”—as many as 80% of the jobs lost in the recession were held by men—and the dilemma for single women becomes even worse. Today, more and more well-educated women have to ask themselves: Am I willing to “marry down”?

As I’ve written about before, the reason why men are not able to do well in school is because they are discriminated against by the teachers, legislators and educrats. There are almost no male teachers. Men do better with male teachers. But there is a fear among educrats of male teachers getting near children, so boys end up suffering. Affirmative action keeps many men from attending college. And then of course in the workplace, companies have quotas to fill, which shuts even more men out of jobs.

Children need to have a mother and father, and the father typically gets his authority and his role by being the primary earner. What women have done is that they have decided that it is a better idea to compete with the man for money. But this undermines the man’s authority in the home. Why would a man get married only to have his influence diluted? The threat of false charges of domestic violence or of a unilateral divorce can also easily be used to control and silence him. Why try to lead a family if you are going to be silenced and coerced?

More importantly, the more that a woman focuses on vocational skills, the less time she has for reading about marriage, education, economics and parenting, e.g. – Jennifer Roback Morse, Laura Schlessinger, Maggie Gallagher, Stephen Baskerville, etc. If a man is a software engineer, the last thing he wants in the home is another software engineer. A mother needs to teach the children everything they need to know to succeed and to have a relationship with God that will stay with them as they grow. And she must also be able to talk to her husband about his interests, like science, economics, politics, theology and apologetics.

And it’s not just a question of having the right knowledge. It’s a question of character. She has to make choices and have experiences all along the way to build up the capacity to care, nurture and communicate. That means actually doing things that cause her to become comfortable caring for others even when it goes against her own selfish interests. Being selfish disqualifies a women from being marriage material. Instead of being focused on making money, women should be studying how husbands and children work.

And I think this is why women are so anxious to throw themselves at men sexually. They are trying to get men to love them without actually having to care about men, marriage or children. They don’t want to have to take on the traditional role of mother and wife, which is what causes a man to love and need a woman in the first place. But a woman cannot make a man love her by tricking him with sex. Women can only make men love them by being willing to encourage and support him in his plan to serve God and to raise children who also know God and serve God. It’s a relationship, not a slot machine.

NOTE: When I say that women should be more focused on children, I mean while the children are not yet all in school. Once they are all in school, then women can go back to work full-time, or part-time, or work out of the home, whatever they want to do.

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France introduces bill to require boards of directors to be 40% female

Story from the UK Times.

Excerpt:

The French version of the glass ceiling has just been cracked open by parliamentary vote. With the backing of President Sarkozy’s administration, the National Assembly last night passed a bill that aims to force big companies to appoint women to 40 percent of their seats on the board.

[…]Norway introduced a 40 percent rule in 2002 when women accounted for only 6 per cent of board seats there. Spain has also just passed a similar law.

The measure will mean an upheaval because the boards of France’s top companies remain male bastions, along with those of southern Europe (see chart below). Women occupy just 10.5 percent of board seats in the 650 publicly quoted companies to which the new law will apply. Corporations will have six years to reach the 40 percent mark. After that, all board appointments will be voided if they do not maintain at least a 60-40 share between men and women.

Women today seem to prefer a pay check and government social programs over relationships with husbands and children. A relationship means that the other person may say or do things that hurt you, and that they may make demands on you to act morally or to think rationally or to take care of others. I have heard the demands of men and children described as “harassment” by women, and compared unfavorably with workplace relationships. For some reason, women have decided that the workplace is less “harassment” than the family.

Women may still marry for the spectacle of the wedding. They may still have babies to play with and show off. (But the man should change the diapers). But the willingness to accept the demands of relationships is gone. Today’s women think that life should be about their happiness all the time, and that no one should ever confront them with moral judgments and moral obligations. So a husband’s demands for a woman to spend less will be met with a unilateral divorce. And a child’s demands for attention will be met with day care.

Today’s women are just not interested in communication, relationships, commitments, and nurturing.

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How Christian women can make Christian men marry without using sex appeal

I just want to jot down a few points about this in brief – this will not be a comprehensive treatment. This is a rush job – I’m leaving things out, it will probably come across as very insulting and scatter-brained.

First, I am addressing this to women who are interested in marriage and children. If you are a woman and you are not interested in marriage and children, this will be no good to you. The reason why is because this method only works for men who are interested in marriage and children.

I’m addressing this to an imaginary Christian woman, whom I will henceforth refer to as “you”.

The wrong approach

Here are some things that women do wrong when trying to get a man to marry.

  • choosing a man based on non-Christian criteria or just selfishness
  • choosing a man based on his appearance of first impressions
  • choosing a man based on whether he is fun and popular
  • thinking that Christianity is a check box on an application form, rather than a 3-hour exam
  • thinking of marriage as bliss that will work out somehow, without planning and effort
  • not understanding what men are really like
  • not understanding what children are really like
  • not understanding what the Bible has to say about marriage
  • thinking that you can make a man love you by using sex appeal or sex itself
  • thinking that acting like a man is what a man wants

In short, marriage should be understood as a task, requiring planning by both partners, as well as study, skills and a will. You’re not picking a man, you’re picking a plan, the plan that you think will help God the most. And there is absolutely no need to resort to sex or alcohol or anything order to discuss these things. What actually works on me is writing me a good long essay about anything. Because marriage is more about communication and relationships than anything else. You can have intimacy without alcohol just by turning the conversation to topics that matter and writing about them.

The lever

Since you will not be using sex, you might as well get clear on what you can use. You can use three things.

  • The Bible, theology, church history and apologetics
  • The man’s own plan to marry and the steps he’s taken so far
  • Your own willingness to do whatever it takes to make your relationship please God

The basic idea is that you are going to find out what marriage in a Christian context is about. Then you are going to find out the man’s plan for marriage within the context of his Christian worldview. Then you are going to convince him that the most rational thing to do in order to achieve his plan is to marry you. You’re going to convince him that he will get a much higher degree of success with you, than without you. Not to mention the possibility of you bearing children and then helping him to parent children who will also count for God.

You’re the helper

Biblically, the role of the woman in the marriage is supposed that of helper. That doesn’t mean that you cannot have your own plan as well, it just means that the way you are going to have a relationship with a man is by helping him with his plan. And in order to help him with his plan, you have to talk to him about his plan. You have to show him that he isn’t going to get dragged away from his high ideals by you if he marries you. On the contrary – you are going to catapult him into the stars, in ways he cannot even imagine.

Here’s what you can do.

  • convince yourself that Christianity is true by studying apologetics, etc.
  • read about chivalry, romance and courtly love
  • get used to the idea that God comes above your own needs and desires
  • begin to view men as tools for serving God instead of tools for serving you
  • learn to evaluate men on the quality of their plans and whether it will help God
  • spend time writing and talking to the man about his plan (eye contact talking)
  • learn to hold your temper in check in order to gain his confidence
  • study to find out more about his goals, and how to achieve them
  • study to find out more about what forces are working against him
  • buy him things to help him with his plan
  • assign him tasks to do that you think will help him to serve God better
  • think of solutions to problems that he is facing and tell him
  • solve those problems and then report to him that the problems are solved
  • form his character by approving and affirming Christian/family behaviors
  • practice evangelism and apologetics to show that you care about nurturing other people’s worldviews
  • take on difficult long-term commitments like starting a business, being a missionary, earning degrees

Who wouldn’t want to have someone around who really knows them, who they can really talk to, and who is always improving their character and helping them to solve problems? The more you study what he is doing and learn things that can help him, the more he will want to have you around everywhere he goes. Every skill you get has potential for solving problems that you both may face when you start a family. It’s actually a very good idea to collect useful skills, make money and have a plan of your own. And I’ll explain why.

Nothing impresses a man more than a woman who is passionate, but rational, about some issue bigger than her own needs. Look at Michele Bachmann and Jennifer Roback Morse. Men are chivalrous. They want to protect and provide for women who are chaste and honorable. But they don’t want to waste time on women who are not engaged in some sort of noble enterprise. And they don’t want to waste time trying to commit to a woman who tries to manipulate them by rushing them into sex, either. Working on your own plan communicates to a man that you are more interested in helping God than in your own needs.

Women should be able to persuade people without getting personal or straying from arguments and evidence. Standing up for your view should be easy for you, but don’t overpower the man just to get your way. Ideally, you should win arguments with him because your ideas are just plain more effective at serving God than his ideas. Of course, if you think he’s right, then go along with him, by all means. I have actually gotten to the point with two women where arguing is a recreational activity than always ends in compliments for them about how happy I am that I can be myself with them. And that’s what a man really wants, anyway.

Marriage and children

But there’s more to being a helper than that. There’s the duties of a wife and mother. Marriage today is an enormous risk and responsibility for a man. The way to persuade a man to marry is to show him that you have studied his concerns, that his concerns are actually much worse than he knows, and that you have solutions to all of his problems. Show him that you have studied these things in detail, that you have written about these concerns passionately in public, and that you are serious about solving them. If you can’t solve the problems, (e.g. – hate crime bills, taxes for public schools), then show him that you are informed about these issues, on his side, and have at least spoken or written passionately about it somewhere public.

Here are some ideas for learning how to be a good wife and mother.

  • study what men think about wives, marriage and children
  • study threats to marriage from taxes, family courts, public schools, etc.
  • study the risks that men are taking on by deciding to marry and become fathers
  • think and write about how you can make your husband and children a gift for God
  • understand the proper care and feeding of husbands and children – how do they thrive?
  • practice taking care others – plants, cars, friends, pets, elderly, children, the poor
  • study to find out what divorce does to men and children
  • study what fatherlessness does to a child
  • study to understand the competition for liberty and resources between family and state
  • practice arguing with men about facts and policies, disregarding your own person, and focusing on the arguments
  • you should absolutely abhor feminism and argue against it at every opportunity
  • be ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice and focus your attention on your relationship

Remember, the way that you treat a man in terms of encouraging and supporting his plan is the main way that you tell him two things: 1) that you will continue to do this after the marriage, so that he doesn’t have to give up his noble plan, and 2) that you will be encouraging and supporting his children towards their goals, so that he can have complete confidence in leaving the children with you until they get old enough for him to take over more of the parenting, (say, age 6 and on). If you help him, then pleasing you will become part of his plan.

It is extremely important to a man that he can trust you to teach the children right from wrong, and the Christian faith, especially when it goes against your compassionate feminine nature. I have actually seen this done, where a mother understands parenting and child development so much that she won’t yield to a screaming disobedient child because he has to learn the habits that will see him on to a Ph.D in physics. What’s even more fun is when she explains to you why she’s doing it, and where she studied it. That what makes a man happy.

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