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In my reading today of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ms. Friedan critiques college classes that were designed to prepare women for lives as wives and mothers. On pages 161-162, she discusses their conservative bias:
The discussion on premarital intercourse usually leads to the scientific conclusion that it is wrong. One professor builds up his case against sexual intercourse before marriage with statistics chosen to demonstrate that premarital sexual experience tends to make marriage adjustment more difficult. The student will not know of the other statistics which refute this point; if the professor knows of them, he can in the functional marriage course feel free to disregard them as unfunctional…
So the sex-directed educator promotes a girl’s adjustment by dissuading her from any but the “normal” commitment to marriage and the family. One such educator goes farther than imaginary role-playing; she brings real ex-working mothers to class to talk about their guilt at leaving their children in the morning. Somehow, the students seldom hear about a woman who has successfully broken convention—the young woman doctor whose sister handled her practice when her babies were born, the mother who adjusted her babies’ sleeping hours to her work schedule without problems, the happy Protestant girl who married a Catholic, the sexually serene wife whose premarital experience did not seem to hurt her marriage.
These quotes brought to my mind five topics:
First, about a year-or-so ago, a study came out saying that many women who have had an abortion do not feel guilt about it. My impression was that these “unbiased” AP articles were parading this to refute a prominent pro-life claim: that most women who have an abortion regret doing so, and suffer psychological trauma as a result of their decision. But I thought the same thing that these college classes say about the women who engage in premarital sex: maybe women who had an abortion should feel guilt over having their unborn baby killed, and the fact that many don’t is an indicator of how cold our society has become. God can still forgive a woman who has an abortion, though.
Second, does premarital sex take away from the sexual fulfillment that a man and a woman will find in marriage? For years, I heard that it does. In junior high school, a woman from the Crisis Pregnancy Center spoke to us, and she used the students as a visual aid to make this point. A group of male students lined up, and the female tore off a piece of a paper heart, giving it to each boy with whom she had sex (in the skit, not in real life). When she arrived at the last boy, the one she married, she couldn’t give him her full heart, for she had given pieces of it to her previous sex partners.
In college, I met with the Intervarsity sponsor, and he made this same point. He said that, if I have premarital sex (not that the opportunities were there for me, but let’s pretend), my future wife will wonder continually if she’s better in bed than my previous lover, and that will sully my marriage.
The first time I heard this view challenged was when I was taking a college seminar. I made the point that I heard from the Intervarsity sponsor, and my professor tactfully replied that it’s not necessarily true. He said that, if I love my wife, it doesn’t matter if previous partners were better in bed than she is. The fact is that I love her, and our sex is an expression of my love for her.
I have to admit that the professor makes sense here. And that’s probably the situation many are in, for how many people getting married can truly say that they are virgins? Still, I somewhat admire the old days (or at least the myth of the old days), in which sex was special, and the wedding night was a time to enter into a new and mysterious stage of intimacy with one’s spouse.
Third, Ms. Friedan talks about ways in which a mother and a wife can juggle her home duties with a career. Perhaps that’s what she thinks women should do, as opposed to totally ditching their families in the name of self-fulfillment. According to Ms. Friedan, a woman can rely on extended family to help her, as well as juggle her responsibilities. On this, she somewhat overlaps with Phyllis Schlafly. I say “somewhat” because Mrs. Schlafly seems to prefer for women to stay at home with her children if they can, but she acknowledges that some women can do it all—wife, mother, and career—as difficult as that may be. In her book on child-care, Who Will Rock the Cradle, she and some of her conservative contributors support a child-care plan recognizing that many women prefer for their extended family to take care of their children while they (the women) are at work, rather than a federal day-care center. Nowadays, after the emergence of Sarah Palin into the national spotlight, there is increasing conservative assent to the notion that women can effectively raise a family and simultaneously work outside of the home—through reliance on extended family, time-management, etc.
Fourth, Ms. Friedan’s reference to Catholics marrying Protestants shows that such was frowned upon in influential circles during the 1960’s. I don’t have much to say about that. Her statement was just an interesting insight into the culture back then.
Fifth, I thought about schools presenting both sides of issues. Ms. Friedan asserts that the college marriage classes were one-sided, in favor of the conservative position. As I read Mrs. Schlafly’s Power of the Positive Woman, my impression is that Phyllis Schafly would respond, “And that’s how it should be!” Mrs. Schlafly supports prayer in school, but not secular humanism. Why? That doesn’t look fair! Is she inconsistent here? She probably wouldn’t say so. In her eyes, the Christian religion is right, whereas secular humanism is wrong, so the first should be taught in schools, and the second shouldn’t be. Period. I guess where she’s inconsistent is that she criticizes the Supreme Court decisions banning religion from public schools, yet cites them approvingly when the issue is prohibiting public schools from teaching secular humanism.
I have read articles, however, in which she’d support a little more balance. She’s stated that libraries should abide by some sort of Fairness Doctrine, in which different sides of controversial issues are represented in their choice of books. I have to agree with her on this.
The issue of balance has recently crept up in my thoughts because of a Texas school board’s attempts to impose right-wing standards on history curricula—and, remember, as Texas goes in its choice of textbooks, so goes the nation! See Izgad’s posts, Young Earth Creationists Want Your History Textbooks Too and Insanity at the Texas School Board, as well as Joel Watts’ post, Will the Texas Textbook Decision Force More to Homeschooling?. As someone who grew up resenting my liberal history books, I surprisingly find myself disliking a right-wing bias in curricula as well. I’d like for students to be exposed to a variety of positions.
Yet, a part of me can still identify with Phyllis Schlafly: students should be taught some things and not others because there is such a thing as right and wrong, good and bad. I wish that our society saw sex as something sacred, as an expression of love between two people who have made a commitment. I look around me and see the disastrous results of the opposite extreme: teen pregnancy, STDs, and a cheapening of sex. Consequently, I have problems with teaching abstinence as one option among many, while passing out condoms after the “abstinence is preferable” lecture. To the part of me that says that people have different worldviews and need to protect themselves if they find themselves having pre-marital sex, I can hear Phyllis Schlafly saying, “But you wouldn’t teach kids how to use drugs safely, would you?”
The same goes with offering abortion at public schools and college campuses. Sure, there are different sides to this issue, and there are women who may want that option to be available to them. But I have problems with pluralism going that far, for I see abortion as the taking of a human life. Yet, I’m open to students debating Roe vs. Wade in their social studies classes.
For some reason, I’m a little more pluralistic when it comes to homosexual groups being allowed on schools. I mean, how can I say that religious groups should be allowed in schools in the name of diversity and freedom, while banning homosexual groups? As for the issue of how homosexuality is presented in classes, I don’t think that Heather Has Too Mommies should be forced on kids, nor do I believe that schools should teach that gays are sick and immoral. I’d like for students to learn that there are different perspectives on this issue, as well as the reasons for those viewpoints. And they should also hear the lesson that, even if they disapprove of somebody else’s lifestyle, they should still treat that person with love and respect, not abuse. What is it that Jack Sherpard says on Lost? “Live together, die alone”?
