A Bride
They say that a girl who marries in June is a bride all her life. But what of those who marry in the remaining 11 months of the year? What are the rest reduced to: Wife? Mother? What?
Now, I can possibly see the attraction of being a bride forever. Who doesn't, at least at one point in their life, wish to be young, pretty, doted on forever? It is a normal wish, especially of those who are of the gentler sex. I, however, do not wish to be such forever. To remain so would be to forfeit all of the joy, sorrow, hardship, and victory which comes through living out a normal life.
One of the greatest fallacies propagated by our world today is that a woman who becomes a wife somehow degrades her status as a human being. For a woman to bind herself to a man, to take his name, to depend upon his livelihood rather than her own is to loose herself, her identity as a person. Especially if the couple has children -- the general perception is that the identity of Jane Doe is engulfed by that of "Mom". So, the World tells girls to do all they can to keep their independence and identity: "Go to school, find a career, put off serious relationships as long as possible, and when you find yourself in one do all you can to maintain your independence -- different friends, different interests, develop yourself apart from your man. When the children come, don't let them keep you away from your life as an independent being. Smother that mothering instinct. There are day cares and nurseries which can raise your little ones for you. And as long as you keep them busy with activities and sports, there will be no time for either you or them to realize that something may be wrong with your relationship. And when things fall apart during those inevitable teenage years, it's not your fault. You did all you could, gave them all that they could have wished for."
Such are the kinds of things which are widely promulgated by our society today. In much of the media output now a days, the independent woman is the one who is held up as a great role model, while the woman who is a housewife and homemaker is portrayed as backwards, unfulfilled, and obsolete. Such a backwards contrast! The independent woman is supposedly the woman who changes the world; but it is really the wife and mother who actually does, through the children that she raises.
George Washington: "All I am, I owe to my mother. I attribute all my successes in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her."
James Russell Lowell: "That best academy, a mother's knee."
Henry Ward Beecher: "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."
All going to prove the adage: Who rocks the cradle, rules the world.
*A girl is Innocence playing in the mud; Beauty standing on its head; Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot.* -Allan Beck
Now, I can possibly see the attraction of being a bride forever. Who doesn't, at least at one point in their life, wish to be young, pretty, doted on forever? It is a normal wish, especially of those who are of the gentler sex. I, however, do not wish to be such forever. To remain so would be to forfeit all of the joy, sorrow, hardship, and victory which comes through living out a normal life.
One of the greatest fallacies propagated by our world today is that a woman who becomes a wife somehow degrades her status as a human being. For a woman to bind herself to a man, to take his name, to depend upon his livelihood rather than her own is to loose herself, her identity as a person. Especially if the couple has children -- the general perception is that the identity of Jane Doe is engulfed by that of "Mom". So, the World tells girls to do all they can to keep their independence and identity: "Go to school, find a career, put off serious relationships as long as possible, and when you find yourself in one do all you can to maintain your independence -- different friends, different interests, develop yourself apart from your man. When the children come, don't let them keep you away from your life as an independent being. Smother that mothering instinct. There are day cares and nurseries which can raise your little ones for you. And as long as you keep them busy with activities and sports, there will be no time for either you or them to realize that something may be wrong with your relationship. And when things fall apart during those inevitable teenage years, it's not your fault. You did all you could, gave them all that they could have wished for."
Such are the kinds of things which are widely promulgated by our society today. In much of the media output now a days, the independent woman is the one who is held up as a great role model, while the woman who is a housewife and homemaker is portrayed as backwards, unfulfilled, and obsolete. Such a backwards contrast! The independent woman is supposedly the woman who changes the world; but it is really the wife and mother who actually does, through the children that she raises.
George Washington: "All I am, I owe to my mother. I attribute all my successes in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her."
James Russell Lowell: "That best academy, a mother's knee."
Henry Ward Beecher: "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."
All going to prove the adage: Who rocks the cradle, rules the world.
*A girl is Innocence playing in the mud; Beauty standing on its head; Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot.* -Allan Beck
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