Mothers Should Not Work?

One of the most fundamental principles upon which the modern Christian Right bases its agenda is the role of women in the family and society. For conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, women belong in the home raising families rather than in the workforce competing with men for jobs and careers. This is the task assigned to women by nature and by God; undermining it has been one of modernity’s and liberalism’s greatest sins.

Jim Brown writes for Agape Press about Suzanne Venker‘s recent book 7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and (Most) Careers Just Don't Mix:

The former school teacher says while balancing a full-time career and rearing kids leaves many women unhappy and their children at a disadvantage, it is silly to say that mothers should never be in the workforce. "That doesn't mean we can stretch that reality to accommodate all women who simply choose to opt out of doing the work of motherhood and claim that they have to do it when we are richer in this country than we have ever been in history," she observes. She adds that it never seems to occur to anyone how "strange" it is that that phrase -- "mothers should never be in the workplace" -- would come about now, when it would be far more likely that it should come around during the Depression, for example, when women were forced into the workforce.

According to Brown, Venker’s basic argument is that a woman “can never be successful” if she tries to work full time and raise children — a position that seems contradictory to the above statement that “it is silly to say that mothers should never be in the workforce.” Unless, of course, what Venker has in mind here is part-time work. Thus, the position might be described as: while some mothers might manage part-time work, no one who wants to be successful should ever try to raise children and work full-time.

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• Fundamentalism
• Religious Right
• Evangelicalism