"I discovered the spirituality in being diligent, in creating a home in which faith could find firm footing.

I saw the devotion in Hannah’s eyes as she washed her hands or cleaned the dishes, following rituals that our people had kept for so many generations…women formed the filament of continuity, and my soul spun itself out on that holy thread.”
-from Song of the Magdalene, by Donna Jo Napoli

When, throughout the tumultuous course of the women's movement, did marriage become a scorned choice, and independence so praised? I was reading What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, by Danielle Crittenden, today, and it struck me that this society we live in now is abnormal. Crittenden writes, "Even religious conservatives, who disapprove of sex outside of marriage, accept the now-common wisdom that it is better to put off marriage than do it too early." (60) Why??? I kept asking myself as I read. And that's really the topic of this post- no insight to offer, just discussion to encourage. Why has such a negative view of one of the greatest goods on earth-marriage and family, a home, love- prevailed? We must reclaim a positive view of marriage and family, not just for women, but for everyone. Sure, that's great if Miss So-and-So wants to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a journalist, and put off marriage...but those who chose to marry shouldn't be scorned by society for doing so!

Crittenden writes, "A twenty-year-old bride is considered as pitiable as a thirty-year-old spinster used to be." (60) I saw this disdain first-hand at the wedding I attended the past weekend. One of the women who worked at the hotel, as she was seating the (mostly college age) bridal party, said, "Men sit on this side- or perhaps I should say boys?" It was not amusing- I found it offensive, and perhaps it was offensive to the bride and groom and to the many other college students attending, as well.

Crittenden points out that women have not, for the most part, benefited from this new arrangement of delayed marriage and childbearing and casual sex- men have. Obviously. As women get older, men their age aren't interested anymore, they're focused on the younger women. And, biologically speaking, a man can have a child indefinitely. Women cannot; "I often think that moderately attractive bachelors in their thirties now possess the sexual power that once belonged only to models and millionaires. They have their pick of companions, and may callously disregard the increasingly desperate thirtyish single women around them or move on when their current love becomes too cloying. As for the single woman over thirty, she may be in every other aspect of her life a paragon of female achievement; but in her romantic life, she must force herself to be as eager to please and accommodate male desire as any 1920s cotillion debutante." (68)

When did marriage become such a dirty word?



“Maybe our grandmothers weren't as stupid as we thought. The family, volunteer work, religion, shaping the hearts and minds of the next generation-maybe all that can't be reduced to just 'shining floors and wiping noses.’” -Myriam Miedzian, describing the lives of mothers who don’t have careers, in Wendy Shalit's A Return to Modesty, page 216.