Career vs Calling

I well remember hearing a female ship captain speak when I first joined the Navy. She had no husband and no partner, but she had decided she wanted a child. So she found a sperm donor, conceived, and prepared to give birth – and shortly thereafter deploy for ten months. Her child was not a priority for her; he was something she wanted to make herself happy. Then and now, this strikes me as one of the most selfish things I have ever heard.

Career and Calling

I recently read an article published by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.* It was written by Dr. Dorothy Patterson, wife of Paige Patterson, the former president of Southwestern Seminary (where I studied for my Master’s in Theological Studies). The argument of the article, in brief, was as follows:

As a woman, your calling in life should be to serve God by raising children, supporting your husband, and caring for your home. Doing these things necessarily includes day-to-day chores like cooking, cleaning, and full-time childcare; anyone besides the wife and mother doing these things is harmful to the home, the husband, and the children.

If you have a career, these areas – the laundry, the dishes, the ability to be there all the time for one’s children – will suffer due to simple lack of time. Thus, while having a career in itself is not wrong, it is impossible for a woman to have a successful career without failing in her primary duty to God and her family. Since the only reason to desire a successful career is for “power and pocketbook,” choosing to have a career is a clear case of allowing your selfish desires to overrule your duty to your family and to God. Therefore, you should not have a career.

I certainly agree that we need to take our responsibilities in the home seriously and think long, critically, and creatively about balancing them with a career. That said, this argument is highly problematic.

A Few Questions

First, it is nowhere in the Bible that only the wife and mother is allowed to do the laundry or that it is damaging to a husband to help out with household chores. The Proverbs 31 woman, cited here as an excellent example of homemaking, doesn’t do her own dishes; she has maidservants.

The article, in fact, seems to have missed a great deal of this chapter. Proverbs does not, as the article claims, cite her weaving of linen and purple cloth as proof that she spends her time looking pretty for her husband; these are, rather, part of what she “delivers to the merchants” as part of her thriving cloth trade. She is an entrepreneur; she “provides food for her household” by entering a variety of businesses and working diligently at them. All this activity does not take away from her husband and children; on the contrary, they praise her.

Second, why does the wife’s career place the home in jeopardy, while the husband’s career strengthens it? Both take the parent away from the child for long periods. The wife, we are told, is responsible for her children; is the husband not responsible? Overseers of the church are charged to do God’s work outside the home and maintain order inside the home; these two things complement each other.

Yet I know many families hurt by fathers too busy with “God’s work” to spend time with them. If Dr. Patterson knows women who have nagging doubts about neglecting their children for work, I know just as many men with the same doubt. If a husband can hurt or help his family by pursuing God’s call outside the home, why not the wife as well? This is a question of personal balance and discipline, not of gender.

Third, who said that all women who want careers outside the home are only out for themselves? Who said that a woman’s calling can only include homemaking? Doesn’t Paul say that remaining single helps us more devotedly fulfill God’s purpose for our lives? Doesn’t this make it clear that a woman can have a call from God not related to raising a family, and can’t this call complicate family duties while still being from God? Is it in any way appropriate to say that such a woman “took sons and daughters whom [she] bore to [God] and sacrificed them as food to the idols…” or has “prostituted the creative purposes of God”?

Mrs. Patterson cites Hannah to demonstrate that motherhood was the primary goal and calling of all Old Testament women. But what about Deborah? She was married, but she spent her days judging Israel as a prophetess and going with Barak to battle. God clearly called her to a vocation outside the home, a position of spiritual and political authority. What of her?

I could go on, but to do so would be superfluous. This argument is riddled with assumptions about womanhood, calling, and career. I am accused of willfully ignoring the Biblical facts in favor of my own selfish desires. But I am not the one ignoring inconvenient Biblical passages.

Give and Take

This is not to say that Mrs. Patterson and I disagree on everything. I have immense respect for stay-at-home moms; I acknowledge both the work they put in and the value they provide. My mother gave up her career when she married and took care of me full-time, and I will always be immensely grateful for that. I agree that the husband should be the head of the family, and it would be highly unnatural under most circumstances for the husband to stay home while the wife worked.

I also agree – returning to the ship captain who spoke with us – that we need to do better when it comes to balancing a career and a family. It certainly is unhealthy to ignore one’s children except for a couple hours after work every day. But the fact that women like this exist does not mean we can casually lump together all women who work as shallowly chasing fame and fortune at the expense of their families and duty to God. If we think about the women around us for more than five minutes, it becomes obvious this is the not the whole story.

It takes diligence and creativity to ensure that one does not neglect one’s children in favor of one’s career, but as society recognizes this and grows more flexible with work hours, work locations, and childcare options, it is increasingly possible to sacrifice neither one’s family nor one’s calling. With commitment, innovation, and some help from employers, friends, and family, it can be done.

Does this mean the solution will be perfect? Of course not. There will always be give and take in this world; we are all shackled with competing demands, and it is not humanly possible to gilve everyone all they deserve all the time. That is what it means to be finite and fallen (I have written at more length about this). The situation – as most human situations – is complicated. All the more reason not to oversimplify. Let us look closely at both sides of the story if we want to reach the truth.

*In 2004. A while ago, yes, but I have found that these ideas are still prevalent in many circles today and so still need to be discussed.

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