“We should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed…So long as we as a nation cling to the lie that only a stay-at-home mum is best placed to assume the responsibilities of caregiver then working fathers will continue to feel insecure about stepping off the corporate treadmill to spend more time with their children.” This is the advice given by Australian journalist Sarrah Le Marquand writing for the Daily Telegraph in Australia.

Her advice comes as a result of public outcry in Australia regarding a study that recommended stay at home moms would be better off in the work place then at home:

“It’s the topic of stay-at-home mums. More specifically, the release of any data or analysis that dares recommend Australian women should get out of the living room/kitchen/nursery and back into the workforce.

So the outcry has been predictable in the wake of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) recent report which had the audacity to suggest stay-at-home mums would be better off putting their skills to use in paid employment.”

Now to be fair to Sarrah Le Marquand she has advocated for women to be able to choose to stay at home with their children until they reach school age:

“And yes, the role played by parents in the early months and years following the birth of a child is vital and irreplaceable. It also stands to reason that for many (but certainly not all) families, it is the mother who opts to take time off work during this period to solely focus on caring for her baby.

Once again, there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, that time at home should be a privilege afforded to more new mums, which is why a few years back I was a lone voice in supporting Tony Abbott’s grossly misunderstood and thus ill-fated paid parental leave scheme, which proposed all female employees receive their normal salary for six months.”

So this is Sarrah Le Marquand’s full position – she is arguing in this article that while women should have the choice to stay at home with their children while they are infants and younger, once they reach school age they should be forced by law to enter the work force full time alongside their husbands.

Near the end of the article she reveals what the ultimate goal of her advocating for forcing stay at home moms back into the workforce is:

“Only when the tiresome and completely unfounded claim that “feminism is about choice” is dead and buried (it’s not about choice, it’s about equality) will we consign restrictive gender stereotypes to history.”

The last line says it all. Forcing stay at home moms to enter the work force would be the final assault on gender roles as God designed them.

This is the logical progression of equality movements.  When you don’t get the results you want, then you use the government to force the results you want.  When you don’t have of the racial or ethnic representation in a given area whether it be higher education or certain areas of employment you force it through government quotas. When women don’t make the same amount as men you force it by taking away merit based pay systems. And when some women refuse to try and make themselves equal with their husbands by working outside the home like their husbands – you force it upon them.

Is it really better for both genders when women leave the home for careers?

I get emails and comments on a regular basis from women who after years have pursuing careers outside the home have come to regret that decision.

Recently I received the following comments from a woman that had what she described was her “dream job” as the chief editor of a newspaper only to realize the devastating impact her career had on her children and her marriage.

“Since the advent of feminism, women have in fact become slaves to the status quo and materialism. Children are being raised by institutions and strangers and, frankly, the consequences of that alone have been terrifying to watch unfold. Homes are falling apart and marriages are crumbling. Every woman struggles with going back to work after having a baby…

I am a mother to three girls, and over the past 11 years, I’ve worked and stayed home for periods of time. I am currently working in what I thought was my “dream job” as the chief editor of a newspaper, but this decision has brought my family and marriage nothing but pain and stress. My husband and I have prayerfully decided that, after the end of this year, I will stay home again and care for our family, permanently this time. I will not return to work again.

Although our budget is tighter when we don’t have two incomes, we are infinitely happier and, as this is God’s will for our family, He always provides abundantly for us.”

This woman’s experience is by no means unique. It happens to millions of women across the western world who buy into feminism’s lie to women that “you can have it all”.  When we break God’s gender roles that he has assigned to man and woman we will reap the consequences both on an individual level as well as a societal level.

But there is more than just anecdotal evidence to support the premise that the mass exodus of women from being keepers at home to career women has been bad for western culture.

See these comments from a study entitled “THE RISE OF DIVORCE AND SEPARATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1880–1990”:

“Marital dissolution for reasons other than widowhood has increased dramatically over the course of the past century. Only about 5% of marriages contracted in 1867 ended in divorce, but over one-half of marriages contracted in 1967 are expected to end in divorce (Cherlin 1992; Preston and MacDonald 1979). Scholars and commentators have consistently explained this change as a product of the changing sexual division of labor. Writing in 1893, Durkheim (1960 [1893]) pointed to the sexual division of labor as a source of interdependence between men and women, producing what he called “organic solidarity.”

…

Less conservative scholars use different terminology, but most stress the same agent of change. They argue that the rise in economic opportunities for women was a necessary condition for the increase in divorce and separation (Cherlin 1992; Degler 1980; McLanahan 1991; Ross and Sawhill 1975). According to this interpretation, women in the past who lacked independent means of support were often trapped in bad marriages; as the opportunities for female wage-labor expanded, women were increasingly able to escape and live on their own. Thus, the rising economic power of women undermined patriarchal authority and destabilized marriages…

The rise of individualism associated with urbanization and industrialization has meant increasing emphasis on self-fulfillment and growing intolerance of unsuccessful marriages. In essence, the cultural argument suggests that marriages in the past tended to be governed more by social norms and less by rational calculation to maximize individual happiness. Since the nineteenth century, increasingly individualistic values could have simultaneously contributed to rising female market-labor participation and to rising marital instability.”

The key phrase that from the analysis of women working as it relates to marriage stability is this one:

“the rising economic power of women undermined patriarchal authority and destabilized marriages”   

I would go a step further.

The Bible tells us that it is God, not man that instituted patriarchal authority:

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”

I Corinthians 11:3 (KJV)

“²² Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.²³ For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. ²⁴ Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing…

²⁸ So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. ²⁹ For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church”

Ephesians 5:22-24 & 28-29 (KJV)

^“4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵ To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

Titus 2:4-5

The Bible clearly establishes patriarchy – male headship over women.  It establishes the relationship of man to woman in clear and unequivocal terms.  Men are to be the leaders, protectors and providers for women. Women are to be dependent upon their fathers and then ultimately their husbands for leadership, provision and protection in the same way the Church is to depend on Christ for these things.

Western culture, and really the cultures of the entire world used to embrace this basic principle of society.  Only since the mid 19th century with the rise of egalitarianism which spawned feminism did the Western world turn its back on God’s design and we are reaping the natural consequences of that decision.

What if we reversed Sarrah Le Marquand’s advice?

What if instead of making it illegal for stay at home moms to stay home after their children reached school age we made it illegal for married women to enter the workforce at all? I know GASP! That is crazy right.  What if we restored by law the dependence of women upon men and reversed all the so called “progress” of the woman’s rights movement?

The fact is we know from the history of mankind that if we made it more difficult for women to work outside the home or own property husbands would once again have the help meets God designed for them and children would have their mothers back.  Women would once again be able to fully concentrate on their homes rather than dealing with the struggle between work life and home life balance that feminists like Sarrah Le Marquand think is so great but other women know has a horrible effect on their lives and that of their families.

Yes there would be some negatives. Some women would again be trapped in bad marriages or abusive situations.

But we have to ask ourselves this question.  Which was better for society? Was society worse off by having a patriarchal authority or by eliminating patriarchal authority to address injustices against women? I would argue that if the measure of a society is the strength of the family unit and not the size of our homes or bank accounts we have the answer to that question.

I have said it before and I will say it again.  Feminism will come to end one way or the other.  Either governments will abolish feminism before they collapse due to its negative effects on their cultures or those governments will collapse giving rise to new governments that will have the courage to do what must be done.