Joyfully At Home: Chapter 12 - Part Five

The next question in Jasmine Baucham's "Joyfully At Home" in the chapter on trying to explain why you are a stay-at-home daughter (SAHD) to everyone who thinks the young woman is crazy makes me laugh. 

To recap, the first question was "Shouldn't you be training for a career or a job?" was answered with "Nope, the only training I need is to be a wife and mother!". 

This was followed by the question "Ok, but what if you never marry or are widowed or need income as a married woman?" which was answered by "I'M GETTING MARRIED!  I WILL BE A HELPMEET!"

Personally, I'd probably wander off at that point. There's only so much you can do when someone has picked their hill to die on.

For someone who stuck around, the next question is surprisingly insightful - and not one I would have thought of.  Jasmine asks herself "But isn't being a helpmeet something that women are only supposed to do as a wife?".    That's a pretty important question in CP/QF land.  The Botkin Sisters - who were at one point good friends with Jasmine Baucham - spent a great deal of time in "It's (Not) That Complicated" explaining that women should be very careful around men because we tend to just attach ourselves as helpmeets randomly and wantonly to any single guy we meet.   Women are, apparently, closer to the free-living stage of molluscs than women are to being sensible adults.  Or perhaps we're more like leeches.  Hard saying - but not an attractive picture.

Jasmine avoids implying that women are really dumb - but still gets lost in the detail section.

Yes, being a helpmeet is something only a wife can do.

But being a helper is something that is innate and womankind-- it was what we were created for. While the nature of a young man is often seen as something fixed and transcendent-- men are to be leaders, providers, protectors-- the nature of womankind has been given a flimsier definition. If a woman is a wife, she is to be provided for, protected, and led -- she is to be bent towards her home. If a woman is single, however, she is to be... a man with a potential to become a woman if ever she should marry. (pg. 146)

I think Jasmine has the whole definition thing wrong way 'round. 

CP/QF men have a definition that is huge and encompasses the entire realm of possibility outside of a small sliver known as "women's work".  Men are expected to be priests, prophets, protectors and providers.  They can make any choice they want about the religion of their family as priests.  Men can make any decision they want about the direction of their family as prophets.   Men can choose almost any career on the planet as providers.  Men also can reject any objections from his wife and unmarried children under the cloak of protector.

Women, on the other hand, are restricted to a tiny sliver of human experience that is referred to as "wife and mother" which is shorthand for a contented stay-at-home mother of children.  Honestly, that's it.   In most societies, women have at least a wider range of women's experience that encompasses a woman's youth, adult age, and elder status - but not in CP/QF.  I don't know if it is the natural outcome of the obsession with breeding children or just an attempt to keep women from ever receiving any power - but CP/QF land idolizes women of reproductive age while ignoring the young and old.   Perhaps CP/QF has been infiltrated more by the Western obsession with sexualized beauty than they realized.

In fact, Jasmine doesn't recognize the flaw in her own logic. 

Jasmine reflects a series of assumptions about the role of married women that lead inexorably to married women being SAHWs.  Only a married woman should be a helpmeet.  A helpmeet is bent towards the home.  Therefore, a married woman should be bent toward the home.

That hangs together well enough - but it all falls apart when she tries to reverse it.  A single woman should be bent towards her home.  A helpmeet is bent towards the home - so a single woman is a helpmeet to her father.

I guess it's better than being a directionless limpet - but not by much.

This is followed quickly by Jasmine's attempt at straightening out that inconvenient Scripture verse about how married women care too much for husband while unmarried women care about God:

We unmarried women are to be anxious about the things of the Lord. As we do not have husbands to care for, our hands are free to serve within the context of our homes and churches. Single women have been called " the secret weapon of the church", ready and willing to sacrifice their time and energy to aid those in need.

What woman has more time on her hands to minister to the church? The one with the full college course-load, who has devoted her time and energy into becoming an independent, autonomous agent? Or the one who has made it her life's ambition to cultivate the gifts and talents that will aid the brethren, should she remain single, and bless her home should she become a wife and mother?

My innocent conjecture would be that the latter would be of more aid than the former. (pg. 147)

I've never heard single women being called the secret weapon of the church.  Not once, not ever.  I've heard WOMEN being called the secret weapon of churches since they take on scads of unpaid, low status jobs that keep churches running along with all of the detail work.   In every church I've attended, the lion's share of the work is done by adult women - usually married adult women - who are not in the middle of raising a bunch of little kids.  Do unmarried single women do a lot?  Sure - but usually not until they are in their 30's or 40's like the rest of the adult women.

The rest of the quote is a badly thought out red herring.

I ministered to the church all through my college career - while pulling a 19 course double major and working 20+ hours a week.   I was able to do it because I knew how to plan my time thanks to years of balancing a rigorous traditional school academic schedule with extracurriculars at the same time.   In my case, I taught junior high CCD on Wednesday nights.   I planned all of the lessons and executed them myself.  My students definitely benefited from having someone who was learning some of the arts and mysteries of teaching running their weekly religion class. 

They definitely benefited from my college studies more than if I had been babysitting a bunch of small siblings while writing a magnum opus in my spare minutes; our classes weren't based on child-care or writing.

The broader red-herring is assuming that single SAHDs who are training to be wives and mothers bring a different set of skills to the church than the wives and mothers who are already running the church.    Logically, the SAHDs are less skilled in the magical skills that make a wife and mother because they haven't done it yet. 

Equally bizarre is the assumption that the skills the church really needs from women are the exact same skills of homemaking and raising babies that CP/QF idolizes for women.  That's a very sketchy reading of the Bible - and ignores all of the skill sets that college educated women can acquire.  My church offers free blood pressure screening by LPNs and RNs after Mass; that's a great service to screen and monitor hypertension for anyone who shows up.  The church has pro-bono social workers who help anyone who calls get connected with emergency services for food pantries, domestic violence, mental health issues...the list goes on.  We've run Habitat for Humanity teams for decades using electricians and plumbers who are women.  A local ministry that provides food, blankets, lockers, and lots of social workers for the local homeless population has been funded by various people who work in business getting more wealthy people interested in the ministry.  That same ministry has one day a week filled by various people who can take a day off a month to run the kitchens.

None of this denigrates being a wife and mother; after all, most of the women in the last paragraphs are wives - and the majority are wives and mothers.  There's just more ways to be a good Christian wife and mother than CP/QF teaching allow.