Do you think it’s okay for mothers to work full-time outside of the home? According to John Piper, “it can be” but it’s a complex issue:
Is it biblically acceptable for a mother to hold a full time job outside of the home?
It can be. It is like the alcohol question, it can be.
Having said it can be, I want to discourage it because mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs. [...]
And, just being able to focus on the home where ministry can happen—not being enslaved by anybody’s clock—you can say, “I want to work my tail off for king Jesus, but I don’t want anybody to pay me for it. I’m going to do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband’s connections and my connections. We’re going to lavish grace on people’s lives.”
So, I’m calling for ministry full-time when I say “don’t work full-time if you have a family.” Turn your family into ministry. Turn your family into a global dream for what this family might become, or what this man might be, or what we might be together as we are home.
Here’s the video:
So he’s discouraging women from working full-time outside of the home, and instead to “work their tails off for King Jesus” at home. Good ol’ King Jesus, always distributing advice from the lips of men.
Is it okay for women to work outside the home? Of course! Is it okay for them to stay at home full-time? Of course! Is it okay for men to stay home full-time and have the wife work full-time? Of course!
You’d think people would realize we’re not in the 16th century anymore.
I guess the next question to ask is, “Is it OK for women to walk outside without a burqa and hijab?” Enlightened minds want to know! What does the holy text say??
Male chauvinism that blatant should be punishable by castration, it really should.
Ja.
And I love how they beautifully cover it up with all the nice Christian wording:
“mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs. [...]
[...] you can say, “I want to work my tail off for king Jesus, but I don’t want anybody to pay me for it. I’m going to do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband’s connections and my connections. We’re going to lavish grace on people’s lives.”
This kind of verbal manipulation really burns me because I remember how – to people in the faith – it can all seem quite reasonable. And it almost feels like they’re hinting that by NOT doing it (house-wifing) you are doing something incredibly heinous and neglectful.
Wonder how many mega-church pastors would have that attitude.
Something tells me this is a “do as I say, not as I do” case.
For that matter, does John Piper, Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church, work his tail off for Jesus without anybody paying him for it?
But he’s not a woman! ;)
To be fair, I think Rick Warren works pro-bono.
He says he lives off 10% of his income and gives the rest away. I think that’s great, but it’s also easy to do when you’ve earned hundreds of millions of dollars just through book sales.
how much money should he give away before you’d be ok with how much he makes?
As much as his deity says he should.
I don’t think Daniel is saying giving away 90% of your income is not enough, only that he is still not working for free like apparently all women should. Besides, he is only giving away 90% of his wages, and none of his much greater book profits, so he tends to exaggerate that a lot.
you realize its only 10%, right? he’s giving away 90%.
guilty until proven innocent? Do you have any evidence that he’s lying? any at all? or is mere speculation evidence enough for you to condemn him for being a charlatan?
He says that, yes – but his income is exempt from IRS audit, so who knows if he’s telling the truth?
Why isn’t he encouraging science, logic, reason, and equality?
Can i get an Amen?
RAmen
Wait. I thought it was King James, not King Jesus. I’m so confused.
What does the “holy” text say??!! What holy text? Wasn’t that a misprint? Maybe it should read “holey”?
Perhaps he was simply pointing out that the scripture is wholly text?
Because there are no pictures in it.
“…mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs.”
Yes, I definitely agree that they are, if that is what a free, independent woman chooses to do with her life. But the fact that a woman can work her tail off for herself rather than King Jebus seems not to have occured to Mr Piper. But then why would it? The guy´s a mysogynistic fuckwit.
I must have missed the part where he said a mother “should not” work full time outside the home. I read where he discouraged it, but I also read where he allowed it to be a matter of opinion – not a command or an order. It seems like he was just throwing his 2-cents in there, as a matter of opinion – not doctrine.
Mothering is an important job! He never said or even implied that it was the ONLY job a mother can have. In his honest opinion, he thinks it can be more important and can be more beneficial to the family unit to have a full time mother than two incomes.
Last I heard, “discouragement” wasn’t synonymous with “disallowing.”
It is when churches do it. He is obviously trying NOT to sound like a completely backward chauvinist who thinks this is the way women must be while at the same time making it clear that the really oughtta be doing as he says because it’s what Jesus would want. The result is not only misogynistic, it’s disingenuous to boot.
daniel – i was referring to the posters who were saying he was misogynistic for believing that a woman’s work at home was a really important job. Based on what posters were writing, it sounded like they thought he said it was the ONLY job a woman can have.
but it does seem to be a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” on this message board. He gives 90% of his income – “Well, he must be lying or that isn’t enough.” He offers an opinion on full-time mothering – “He’s guilt tripping people at best, and is a 16th century male chauvinist at worst. He shouldn’t even be giving opinions anyways because he has a strong influence and people listen to him.”
I’m not saying I always (or even occasionally) agree with Piper, or that I even like the guy in general. I do think that if one wants an argument to be considered rational, it takes more than quips and sarcastic jokes ignoring the details of the article to do so.
i was referring to the posters who were saying he was misogynistic for believing that a woman’s work at home was a really important job.
Can you quote one? This is a long running debate, and not many people are still making that argument. Everyone agrees that working to raise children can be an important job, whether it is done by a male or a female. It’s simply that we want it to be recognized as one option or several, and not automatically “women’s work”.
He offers an opinion on full-time mothering – “He’s guilt tripping people at best,
I’m sorry, are we not allowed to offer our opinion on his arguments?
And I didn’t say he was “disallowing” it (not sure how he could even enforce such a thing). I said he was “discouraging” it.
That’s a standard trick. They don’t forbid women from working outside the house but just guilt tripping them into thinking that by doing that they are not good mothers/ wives.
Wow. Missing the mark, much?
The problem, whether intentional or not, when someone as respected as Piper is (and not just by his congregation) discourages working outside the home is that it sets up a war of “spirituality” among women. By saying he discourages working outside of the home, he is essentially stating his opinion that it is the “better” option for the kingdom of God. And so, having heard these comments from Piper, those women who can and who choose to stay at home are likely to feel an air of spiritual superiority over those women who can’t stay home or who have chosen to have a career. This puts the women who have chosen to work whether by choice or necessity into a situation where they will either feel guilty about having chosen to work, or, if they are working out of financial necessity, they may likely feel resentful towards those women who have the financial ability to stay home. They may also resent their husbands for not making enough for her to stay home. This is not just theoretical for me, by the way. My wife and I experienced these things 1st hand when we were going to church, and especially when we were in the homeschool movement. The same goes for other “ambiguous” things like drinking alcohol, or listening to secular movement, etc.
Perfectly acceptable, as long as the kids have someone else at home for them, at least some of the time.
My boyfriend’s parents both worked full time when he was a child, his mother went back to working when he was about 7 or 8 and his brother was 10. Now he tells me how much he regrets his mother’s decision – he felt he had a really crappy childhood because he basically had to grow up and take care of himself at age 7.
Doesn’t matter which parent, but someone should take care of the kids. But it should not always be the mom.
Not to be a jerk, but your boyfriend sounds like a whiney butt. Most (75%) children don’t even get a stay at home parent at all much less for 7 years. And when he was in school, what did it matter if his mom was sitting at home or not?
To me he looks like Larry David, except that LD’s theology makes more sense.
That’s a manipulative tactic. Raise a question even if it’s nonsense or an affirmative answer can’t be supported. Just get the question and doubt into people’s minds. It’s probably what gets called a leading question in court.
“Do you think homosexuals have the right to walk the streets without being jailed?”
“Do you think blacks are fully intelligent as whites?”
“Do you think women are fully intelligent as men?”
“Do you think people who don’t go to church have the right to do so without a jail sentence?”
“Do you think people have the right to choose not to have children?”
These are not valid questions. But as a manipulator, just ask them anyway; *make* them valid questions!
I don’t understand why these people always say women have to be the ones who have to give up any hope of having a career because they have children. My mother made 4x as much as my father. My dad was a teacher so he was home with me and my brother during holidays and after school. They love to discount women as viable bread winners. Also, with the super expensive cost of living these days, I don’t understand how they expect a woman to stay at home. Just “he-man” stupiditity like always.
Another problem with this that I haven’t noticed anyone bring up is the huge amount of privilege he is spouting. Not every woman with children can afford to not work. To ignore this is to erase an entire demographic of people who have to work their butts off every single day just to ensure their kids have enough food. You would think Christians would honour Jesus’ teachings about helping the poor instead of pretending they don’t exist, but of course many of them would rather wallow in their bigotry and misogyny.
While his message does tend to come across in a “get back in the kitchen and make my breakfast, b^tch!” kind of way, it may be something some women need to hear. (GASP!) We’re raised and socialized, at least in theory, to desire to work outside the home, to be equal to men, to achieve anything we want, to have a career, to work, to get paid, and that is considered what it means to be important in the world, to be taken seriously.
In case you haven’t heard, there is something out there called the “mommy wars,” in which stay-at-home (SAHM) mothers and work-outside-the-home (WOTHM) mothers are engaged in a raging discussion of who is better and what’s best for the kids. At least in some sense, all these women have sorted themselves into the category they’d like to be in, although in the case of many WOTHM, it is also by necessity that they earn an income. Likewise, some SAHM feel trapped in a juvenile and unexciting world and try to keep up a brave front, what they are sacrificing for the good of their children, or defending an unglamorous choice. Clearly, some of these women are trading what they’d rather for what they need to do or think is best. Notice it’s women against women in this debate, and regardless of where a woman works, it’s by and large women who do the parenting (mothering) and home-making — this attitude is changing more slowly than the liberating effect of encouraging women to have careers outside the home.
I guess my point is, staying home can feel like “defeat” to some women in this era when they’ve been trained to seek a career outside the home, even if being a SAHM is what they would choose out of any job in the world, and really does not score any points to challenge fathers to do as much parenting or housekeeping as they should if both parents work outside the home. It’s still, regardless of the misogyny implied, a valid career choice (if not an outright privilege). Disregarding the ministry for king jesus part, being there and dedicating your daytimes and sacrificing a paycheck is nothing to be ashamed about.
I would also call on men, husbands and fathers, to appreciate this effort rather than to diminish it, contribute as much as they should, as well as call on women to recognize whether they are doing more harm than good at home. Some people are not cut out for this and their kids really are better off in daycare or with a nanny. Children who grow up with both their parents at work should also try to assess honestly whether that was financially necessary before they gripe about being raised by a stranger, or what life would be like if they did have one parent at home all day who didn’t want to be there, and maybe a little incompetent, neglectful, or half-assed. Just being a parent does not make you a hero. My mother got a job in the school system after my younger sister entered 1st grade, so was always home when we were home, and well, to put it kindly, sometimes I wish she wasn’t. Just putting that out there.
Well said Kodie. I’m glad you brought up the “mommy wars”. That’s what I was trying to point out in my post above. Piper’s discouragement of working outside the home only adds to the conflict. It’s such an individual choice, and I think it’s ludicrous for people on either side of the debate to think that their way is the only right way, or even the best way. Like you said some women have no choice but to work. Some women don’t have to work, but choose to anyway, and the world would be worse off if they weren’t contributing their skills and talent to the workforce. Some women stay home because they want to. They’re all valid choices and each family has to decide for themselves which is the best choice for them.
Of course the “mommy wars” are not just about whether or not to stay at home, but also about how to raise the children, such as the whole public school vs private school vs home school debate. Again you’ve got people on all sides of the debate who think their convictions are the right convictions as if it’s a one-size-fits-all type of choice. Christians of course, are often driven to private religious schooling (if they can afford it!) or homeschooling based on their religious beliefs, and as a result can’t help but to look down on anybody who would send their child to public school. Again, I know this from experience. We were once in the homeschool movement.
Is it so bad to let people do what they think is best and just… y’know… stay out of other people’s business?
Funny that you mention people who shouldn’t stay and take care of kids, though. My sister is one of those; she works, she’s just recently had a baby, and she’d love to stay home and care for her baby… except I personally think that’d be bad for the baby, because she tends to be overprotective and a bit suffocating. I’d rather her baby face daycare than stay with her and be spoiled rotten, for sure.
But then, it’s not my baby.
I think in cases where people think they would make a wonderful parent, that’s their choice, even if you think they’re messing it up. I’m more talking about people who suffer parenting, don’t feel natural at it, and take their emotions out on their children, but stay home anyway because they believe their presence is better for their children all-around than ditching them at daycare all day. In an ideal world, the second group would find work outside the home that’s going to help them feel better and realize that’s ok too. Taking care of yourself helps you parent better, and if being around your own kids for 24 hours a day with no breaks is driving you crazy, it’s likely to drive your kids crazy also.
I pretty much wrote my response to people who feel guilty or indulgent or letting down the aspirations of their gender by choosing to stay home. The part of this guy’s message that examines it as a worthwhile job to have is important, given the lifetime training girls and women seem to have to go out and get a job alongside men. It’s a very tricky topic, as those same women are trained from birth to want babies, to the point where, if you don’t have one or don’t even want one, people judge you for that as well.
What hasn’t caught up either is men sharing the child-rearing and household duties in equity with women. I hear men all the time claim they are pitching in their fair share, and honestly, I don’t see it. I do see gender roles in the division of labor and time-frame devoted to it, where a man may do a lot of hard or messy jobs in a weekend; for as many very handy women I hear about (and I am one), I know mostly they stick to “their part” of the housework, while men come home and turn on the tv and wonder what’s for dinner. I know that is a generalization, but it’s still more popular for women, and I mean wives, to work outside the home than for men (husbands) to do half the housework, or the hard part of raising children. Playing with them and entertaining them is easy.
A lot of what it comes down to is – it’s expensive to raise a family, much less in an ideal environment like a suburb with good schools and a high cost of living, and the requisite SUV because heaven forfend anyone see you in a station wagon or drive around in a 4-door sedan so you can’t carpool ballet class and little league. That’s privilege. It’s also, I think, a really hard job for two people to have a family and manage time with them and keep a house clean. It still seems to make a lot of sense for one parent to stay home so it doesn’t become an unmanageable chore for (usually) ONE parent to continue working after work, while the other one takes a load off. That is super-privilege! Having it usually be the mother is not necessarily a misogynistic plot against women — women themselves usually choose this (if someone must stay at home), so I would consider it more patriarchal socialization, perhaps partially biological (?), that they select themselves to raise their children rather than leave that to the man so they can go out and earn the funds.
Religion may have something to do with patriarchy – it seems plain to me patriarchy is built into most religions, and then by religion spreading, so things are taught with backing and remain taken as a matter of tradition if not even considered “nature.” This guy’s opinion aside, king jesus is not the only influence people have for this gender standard, but I do think it’s ok for women to choose what they want, but if they do work outside the home, it’s more than ok for men to help out a lot more.
the bible states that women are to be keepers at home. men are given the command to toil the land .2 different jobs, neither of which is easy , neither which is superior to the other. if a woman works outside the home she can’t give her full attention to her God given sphere- the home. if a man works part time or not at all then he can’t give his full attention to his God given sphere- the workplace.
why does “everyone” demean the keeper at home? why does “everyone” think that a homemaker’s job isn’t meaningful and important?
if you don’t believe the bile that is your choice- but don’t say that it says something that it doesn’t. you may not like it but that doesn’t change what is written .
stop twisting the Word to suit your own beliefs.
why does “everyone” demean the keeper at home? why does “everyone” think that a homemaker’s job isn’t meaningful and important?
Who exactly is this “everyone” you keep putting in scare-quotes?
…if you don’t believe the bile that is your choice
Now that is an unfortunate typo!
A homemaker’s job IS meaningful and important – and so is medicine, agriculture, law and everything else. Not every woman wants to be a homemaker (such as myself) and not every man wants to ‘toil the soil’, so to speak. I’ve a friend whose father was a stay-at-home dad and whose mother was a nurse. My mother is a single mother and worked out of home. We both grew up just peachy.
Also, the Bile (hee) is silly. Whoever cares what bronze age goat keepers said or didn’t say, anyway?
Woman, it is not your place to teach men about Gods Werd. Stop twisting it to suit your beliefs.
Get back into the kitchen, bitch.
“the bible states that women are to be ….”
“if a woman works outside ….”
“…says something that it doesn’t…”
Show me where it says lecturing strangers on the internet is part of a homemakers duties. Woman it’s not your place to teach men about Gawds Werd, stop twisting it to suit your beliefs!
Get back into the kitchen and take those shoes off, its unseemly!