Well this year is the twentieth anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem. If you don’t know, it was the letter written by JPII on the Dignity of Women. So, to celebrate his fantastic anthropological and theological work, there is a bit conference being held on the Dignity and vocation of women at the moment – if you’ve been following Zenit, there have been a few articles following the conference.
This week I have been thinking a little about women and work, particularly within the context of marriage. At the moment, I’m not married so I hadn’t really thought too deeply about the implications for my career if I got married (implications is a rather crude way of putting it, but I’m sure you get what I mean). Being a Catholic woman and all, one could safely assume that children are a real possibility if I were to get married and that it would have some impact on my career. In my case, I have vowed that, if I were to have children, then I would avoid working at all costs while my children were under the age of 5. Thus my professional career would come to a holt if I were to have children. Within this particular historical moment, a woman who gives up her career for children is often viewed as making a sacrifice (or rather negatively deemed as oppressed by the professional glass ceiling). While I can understand the former mentality (motherhood as a sacrifice) I can’t really understand the latter – why is the work of a stay at home mother viewed with such negativity? In my viewed motherhood is well up there with the best of professions.
I think perhaps the root cause within our society is that motherhood doesn’t generate any form of income and our society has lost a sense of the value of sacrifice. I was talking to my flatmate while writing this blog and she suggested that children are often unconsciously viewed as objects. For example, I have my car, house and all the other material goods I need, the last thing on my list is a child. Then, in order to maintain the same standard of living (prior to having children) it becomes necessary for both parents to go out to work. I realised that not every secular person thinks this way, but one has to admit this mentality is becoming more common these days.
I remember a friend, who came from a large family, saying to me that, although there were many material sacrifices made in their family so her mother could stay at home, she would never have give up her mother being there when she arrived home for school. This was truly awe inspiring and I think is indicative of the real value of stay at home mums.
Think about it. Women have always worked, contributed to society, been indispensible. Only now has western culture arranged life so that “motherhood or work” becomes a difficult paradigm. All of life is sacrifice (if you’re doing it well) but now children must be sacrificed to “careers” and vice versa. Is this something that can be changed? One presenter at the congress noted, “Don’t give away the Middle Ages too quickly.” We forsake them as “lost,” “backwards,” and “embarrassing.” What they offered were creative ways to use many feminine gifts. The whole three days were fabulous — I was privileged to go, to present, and to meet so many extraordinary women. This is a prophetic time, and we have to harness the feminine genius for the good of all. (So glad to have found your site!)
Great Post !
My wife never worked till our youngest was 7.
It was a sacrifice financially and it definitely closed off some career options but it was well worth it.
The biggest problem in NZ is that wages are so low and living costs so high due to the anti-family economic policies govwernments have followed for the last 30 years.
It simply wasn’t like that in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when a single income was sufficent to support a family and there were way more family supports.
God Bless
It will be interesting to see if the concept of income splitting becomes an issue in this year’s election campaign. My hunch is that it will be overriden by all the talk about tax cuts.
Roger Ellis from a new lobby group Parents Choice 08 offers this example.
“Income Splitting would allow a parent at home to share their partner’s income for tax purposes. This means that a parent earning $60,000 per year could split the income with their partner so that each was taxed on $30,000. This could save the couple up to $123 per fortnight in tax” said Mr Ellis.
Sure, it’s not a huge amount of money when compared with having that second parent in the workforce, but it seems to be a justice issue. Every study (well maybe not EVERY study) says that having a parent stay at home in their kids’ formative years has huge positive implications, so it should be a no-brainer. Unless, of course, a Government isn’t committed to families and children.
This is a policy United Future — and National before that, from what I’ve heard — have been pushing pretty hard. We’ll see if anything tangible happens.
I want to say this again!
Regarding home or work:
One thing that I think the old 70’s feminism did was rob us of a proper appreciation of the finality of work. Work is not an end in itself. Qualitative work certianly enobles man, but it is ultimately in service of something else. Work is for a more qualitative rest, a more qualitative milieu in order for man to flourish in a finality that is not work. Work doesn’t fulfill us or finalise us. It helps enable the necessary conditions for love to flourish more, for the gratuity of love to be less impeded by the conditioning. So a man goes off to work not to be there so much as to be home again in a more qualitative way. Now the raising of children is one of the most qualitative works imaginable because it involves the most qualitative matter: the human person. It is an effort to try to bring a little one more and more into their full self, into embracing most fully their finality in love of another person and of God. All education is ultimately ordered to this. It is not first careers education but education so that love may go further, be more real and authentic.
To denigrate the mother who is home with her young ones in order that they may know the most qualititive awakening of their personhood, in the most loving environment possible is a terrible crime. It shows a complete misunderstanding of what really fulfils the human person. The efficiency of work is ordered to the gratuity of love and not the other way around. She is not at home so her husband can be at work. He is at work so she can be at home.
That said,
I want to say something new!
I agree with Scribe that income sharing for tax purposes when one spouse is at home to look after little ones is the way to go. It is the system in France, and possibly other European countries. France then adds a state funded benefit for a parent at home of 1200 dollars per month as a further supplement and this lasts until the youngest is over 3.
NZ is usually more paranoid about the danger of encouraging people to have children, part of the phenomenal brainwashing that we pass off as education over the last 20 years.
I applaud the families like Chris’ one who have the courage to have made the financial sacrifices to give their young children such a qualitive environment to blossom in. I wish more families could do that – and think that it is indeed part of valid social justice to make that sort of thing more and more possible, because it means that the social environment would be a much better reflection of what it is essentially for: to allow people to come more fully to their finality, to their proper human growth and flourishing.
Great comments poorclear. Thank you.
Previously in one of Filia’s posts [ Tradition ] we ended up discussing whether a woman (or man) should sacrifice her/his married name, or title (mrs, mr), for the sake of getting ahead in career or professional status. I think that poorclear’s comments shed much light on today’s topic and the previous one, w.r.t married status in the work place.
http://www.beingfrank.co.nz/?p=512#comment-19758
http://www.beingfrank.co.nz/?p=512#comment-19770
Your comments poorclear, clearly show what human work, labour, and productivity are ordered to.
poorclear,
Good comments, especially on the priority and importance of raising human persons vs the secondary importance of paid work, often for private profit.
We need to have pro-family policies like France does.
God Bless
Chris,
There is not a causal link between government policy and the golden times you speak of. New Zealand was in a good position because of it’s preferential access to UK markets which were protected. The policy changes which Rogernomics brought in kept New Zealand from being a third world nation. We have 3% unemployement in NZ vs France with close to 10%. France’s policies are definitely unsustainble and they’re are making dramatic moves to change, enter Sarcozy. They’ve realised that they need to change. We still have unsustainable practices but Cullen has kept the economy from veering too far off course. Nat’s will do better next year. Perhaps North Korea will be a pleasant holiday destination. You should go in December when it’s nice and cold.
Dr Sam,
Even the extreme free market USA has very generous family support policies.
There are lump sums per child, ability to write off home loan interests, all sorts of tax breaks targeted at middle class families etc. A friend with a family in the USA says he pays almost no tax because there are so many tax writeoffs available for families.
It’s a fact that NZ is about bottom of the developed world in terms of government family support policies which actually put money in families pockets.
God Bless
Poorclear and JP3.
“NZ is usually more paranoid about the danger of encouraging people to have children, part of the phenomenal brainwashing that we pass off as education over the last 20 years”
Brainwashing, I think not. There are too many families that do not have the resources to care for the needs of their family. How can you burden the responsibilty of bringing a child into this world with out the neccessary means of keeping the child alive without sufferring. I do not think that NZ is paranoid, I think that perhaps NZers understand the work that is involved with raising a family and that they perhaps realise a career is probably the better option at first. When they have the stability to raise a family, then perhaps then is the time to begin one.
What about the fathers sacrifice??? It is amazing that when ever motherhood and career comes in the same sentence, the topic of discussion is always the ‘great sacrifice’ a women makes. I laugh at that right from the belly. Please give me a break. Don’t be a mother if you are going to whine about the career you could have had. I don’t even think that those in this category realise the gift that they have in their children and shame on those who don’t realise that. I think perhaps Filia you may want to post these ideas from another perspective, perhaps from the guys perspective. Enough of this motherhood is a great sacrifice!!!
No offense to those who believe that motherhood is a sacrifice, its just that being a women, I am tired of the focus being solely around women. It makes us look bad to be the center of attention in this debate. There are two people in the relationship, I think that sometimes we need to be the stronger one and take it on the chin.
Carol,
Plenty of fathers have made career sacrifices for the good of their families. I did.
There are too many families that do not have the resources to care for the needs of their family.
That’s a compelling argument for prioritising resources into the care of our children.
Instead, the priority seems to be what’s good for “the economy”.
God Bless
“There are too many families that do not have the resources to care for the needs of their family.”
Carol,
I would suggest that there are actually far too many families who are trying to have their cake and eat it too, and they aren’t actually prepared to make the necessary financial sacrifices that come with being open to having large families.
Yes, I think that the NZ economy doesn’t actually support families very well, and the housing market has a huge part to play in that problem* but I also firmly believe that many young parents today have a false picture of having families, with many trying to afford luxury items and kids, when you simply can’t do both on average incomes (and you don’t actually need to!)
On top of this you have all the eco-terrorists running around telling people that having kids is an evil blight on the environment, and there are many people who think that having 2.4 kids is just the perfect accessory for the batch and that HSV Commodore (AKA selfishness).
*I think we should have a capital gains tax on domestic rental properties – this would encourage investors to put their money into tax-free commercial properties, thus freeing up much needed residential properties, which would help to level off the housing market prices
This is encouraging, considering the topic at hand. The number of births last year was the highest in the last 40-plus years.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10493129
Amazing what happens when you allow more Filipinos and Muslims into the country
Scribe,
I’ve heard it said that birth rates are pretty much a function of how well the economy is doing in terms of its financial impact on the family.
Do you think that the article you linked tends to support that thesis ?
God Bless
“Amazing what happens when you allow more Filipinos and Muslims into the country”
Nice Scribe. Quite true.
Chris,
I’ve heard it said that birth rates are pretty much a function of how well the economy is doing in terms of its financial impact on the family.
I’m not sure that’s what is happening here. While my comment about Filipinos and Muslims was a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think that’s probably as much a factor as finances.
I have no empirical or anecdotal evidence to support this theory, but I suspect for some people the prospect of giving up a lavish lifestyle in exchange for the demands of parenting — they wouldn’t think about the joy of it, I’d imagine — isn’t an exciting one.
They can keep making lots of money from two incomes and going on Pacific holidays or change nappies in the middle of the night and fork out money for formula. When explained like that, one can see why they’d choose money and trips.
Of course, we’re called to have different priorities and a different understanding of our purpose as married people (for those of you who are).
Not sure if that answers your question, Chris, but it’s been a loooooooong day.
So, what is the Filipinos and Muslims effect ?
A religious tradition of openness to children ?
Cultural traditions ?
People coming from a poor country to a rich country and finding their financial improvement an incentive to have more children ?
And is it actually true that the higher birth rate is significantly fueled by Filipinos and Muslims ?
God Bless
Chris,
I think the “religious tradition of openness to children” is the main factor.
No one has released any information beyond the raw numbers, but are we seeing more of our “white” friends having lots more babies? For me, the answer is no, so I am making some educated guesses as to the reasons. It’s no secret that there are a lot more Muslims and Filipinos in NZ now, and the Filipinos I know are certainly doing their bit to increase the birth rate.
I will also say this. I don’t like framing it as the religious vs the non-religious, and there are certainly non-religious people who see it this way, but looking at children as a gift from God, or simply just a gift, surely increases the likelihood of a couple having lots of kids (if that’s feasible for them).
Wow Scribe, I think you’re being grossly unfair.
“They can keep making lots of money from two incomes and going on Pacific holidays or change nappies in the middle of the night and fork out money for formula.”
Even if I didn’t know this for a fact, I would take a wild guess from that statement and assume you don’t have children? And this is, of course, coming from someone who also doesn’t.
But from what I know and have seen – and I’m matching you on anecdotal evidence here – the financial portion of the decision for the majority of couples who have to factor this in, is not about giving up holidays for formula.
Captain,
“Going on Pacific holidays” was a metaphor for the luxuries of life — the things that we don’t need, but it’s nice to have.
Some people (anecdotal again) live in flash houses and drive European cars and find themselves in a position where they can’t afford financially to have children. Of course, if they lived in a smaller house and drove Jap imports…
Maybe we have quite different circles of friends. Yours sound less selfish than some of mine.
A fascinating question! how much financial security you have before deciding to have a child?
Enough to afford outfits from Pumpkin Patch?
Enough to afford day-care?
Enough to afford essential food, clothing and shelter?
What about the large proportion of the worlds population who couldn’t satisfy any of these categories? Are they morally wrong to be having children?
How much can you rely on God’s providence?
Is it better to be born into poverty than to be never be born at all?
What about the children being born into spiritual poverty?
Having recently been overseas, NZ was laughed at a little by the very devout people there.
They couldn’t believe people would have pets (animals) before children.
Just an example.
Three Veg:
Good point.