Are You Raising Your Daughters to Want a Successful Career or Marriage?
Every Thursday, Dennis Prager has a “Happiness Hour” on his radio program. Yesterday, he asked if parents are raising their daughters to want to be married or have careers. He has asked many women this question through the years: “If you could choose to have a successful marriage or successful career, which one would you choose?” He said the women answer 50/50.
One time he was talking to a pretty, young woman in her early thirties who was an up and coming actress. She was a believer so he asked her this same question. She answered that she wanted a successful career more than a successful marriage. He was surprised since he thought Christianity taught young women to value being wives and mothers. Sadly, it does not anymore.
During the program, he spoke about a man who had written a book about happiness and fulfillment. The author came to the conclusion that a career can never bring long-term happiness nor fulfillment, yet this is what most young women are taught to pursue. Dennis shared that when he heard that his own book had reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller List, it didn’t bring him any lasting happiness or fulfillment. Money, fame, and careers have no ability to do this. God created us for families. Careers are for men to make a way to provide for their families, not for women to find fulfillment in their lives away from their families.
Many young women are chasing happiness and fulfillment in their careers or fame. I watch Christian young mothers of many children become popular on social media then leave their children for book tours and speaking engagements, as if the money and fame from this can come close to the long-term fulfillment that raising one’s own children can bring. (I love seeing young women sharing the truth of God’s Word and biblical womanhood on social media, but this doesn’t mean they need to leave their homes and their children in the care of others!)
This quote is from Elizabeth Gougde’s book The Bird in the Tree: “Nadine was clever, there was no doubt about that, and Lucilla hoped she was enjoying selling chairs and living her own life. It was that declaration of Nadine’s, that she wanted to ‘live her own life,’ that had exasperated Lucilla beyond anything else in this whole wretched business. It was a remark frequently on the lips of the modern generation, she knew, and it annoyed her. For whose lives, in the name of heaven, could they live except their own? Everyone must look after something in this world and why were they living their own lives if they looked after antique furniture, petrol pumps or parrots, and not when they looked after their own husbands, children, or aged parents?”
I love watching the Bates and the Duggar family TV shows. The parents raise their children to want to be married and have children. How do I know? Their older children are getting married and they’re having children as soon as the Lord blesses them with them. The young mothers don’t have careers and are raising their own children. These shows make being married and having children look like a wonderful blessing instead of a curse as many see today. It’s a joy to watch children being raised in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord and desire to do His will.
I raised my daughters to want to be married and have children. I knew that this is what God ordained and what brings the most blessings. Children are called “blessings” in the Bible, yet most are taught to find freedom from these blessings through birth control, abortion, careers, daycares, and public schooling. Satan continues to deceive women the same way that he deceived Eve in the beginning of time. Instead of following God’s plan for their lives, they seek what the world calls “good” and “fulfilling.”
As you are raising your daughters to know the beauty of being a wife and mother? Let them know that you find joy in loving their daddy and spending your lives raising and caring for them. This is your great responsibility! God gave them to you and wants you to be the one training them in His ways. It’s the highest privilege you can have if you are blessed with children.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.
Proverbs 31:30, 31
12 thoughts on “Are You Raising Your Daughters to Want a Successful Career or Marriage?”
So true Lori. I wish I had known these truths sooner. I also love how the Bates and Duggar parents have raised their daughters to be wives and mothers who choose to be SAHMs. Too bad so many feminists think negatively of them and those of us who do the same.
I don’t know if it’s so much that women are chasing careers instead of marriage. Sadly, many of us chase careers out of necessity because the men around us still live at home, don’t have solid jobs, and are only concerned about video games etc.
Feminism has made women unattractive to many men. Higher education doesn’t make women more feminine and godly, that’s for sure. Feminism’s goal was to destroy the family and they have accomplished this goal, sadly.
Raise your sons with this mindset as well, ladies. Their future jobs should not become idols. They will be the spiritual leaders of their families, and how can they accomplish that if all they care about is their career? The career is a way to provide for their future family, not avoid it!
Mel, the reason young men live at home, don’t have solid jobs and are only concerned with video games is that our society is relentlessly destroying their ambition at every turn. Feminism is intent on destroying young men and it’s not even remotely hidden.
Soon feminists will have exactly what they’ve wanted, what they’ve been working and striving towards for 40 years: a society in which WOMEN have all the most important jobs, all the responsibility, and all the headaches, and men are living in trailer parks drinking beer.
Then the feminists (mostly the lesbians actually) will rule the world and everybody else, including traditional women, will be their slaves.
Normal women have gone along with this plan because they’ve been dazzled by the promises of glamor and glory. Now they are about to find out how harsh the consequences will be.
Maybe it starts that way and when I date I hear this all the time. Except I make 6 figures and don’t believe in video games. So then I ask if they would have a man that it doesn’t apply to would they change their aspirations and they usually say no.
I think its a slippery slope. Once someone gets a degree and career aspirations they will not give it up easily. Christians sending their daughters to college is the biggest problem and “we” are causing it.
Hi Kate, I agree with you 100%. We don’t have daughters, but we have 3 adult sons (youngest is 21) and have taught them how to be the spiritual leaders of their families and put their families and wives first. My mom never had a career and taught me from a young age that God’s plan for me was to be a good young mother, wife and keeper of the home. I never even considered college or a career when I married my husband (I was 19 and got pregnant on our honeymoon!) Having babies and staying home is all I ever wanted to do and thankfully that’s all I’ve ever done!
I agree with Bill T. What incentive do young men have these days to go out and get solid jobs and take on the responsibility of building and maintaining civilization anymore? Seriously why would they bother?
A few generations ago they were encouraged to do this because they had real prospects of it earning them a wife and children and being able to experience the fruit of their labor.
Today, they are told every day, from every direction that what it is that makes them men is hated and despised (“toxic masculinity”). They are told they what they want (a submissive wife who will bear them children and take care of their homes) is wrong and they are sick and depraved for having such selfish desires.
Their prospects for finding a submissive (forget submissive, just a woman they can stand to live in the same house with) wife who will embrace the natural proper distribution of labor (bear/nurture their children and perform domestic duties), lies somewhere firmly between SLIM and NONE. Even if they do find a woman who “SAYS” she wants to get married and have children is like playing Russian Roulette with 3 out of the 6 chambers loaded (over 50% of marriages end in divorce with 75% of them being initiated by the women).
Then with the unjust “family court” laws, the men get absolutely devastated in divorce court and many end up still having to work themselves to death and not even get to enjoy the fruit of their labor. They become slaves who are forced at the barrel of a gun (or have their freedom taken away in prison) to continue supporting a woman who is no longer their wife and children they are not allowed to see.
Women have the GALL to complain that they can’t find any good men to willingly sign up for this pain, misery, suffering and injustice?!? Men in droves are saying the juice is no longer (not anywhere even close to being) worth the squeeze and if women think they can do it better (in heels) then let them try. Many men are just choosing to Go Their Own Way (MGTOW).
The bottom line is that it IS mans fault that this is all happening but not the young men of today, it’s the men who agreed to allow women to vote. It’s the men who allowed women out of the houses to work in the world. Women bear some responsibility for this also for wanting and pushing for their “equality” but now that they have it, they are up for a rude awakening and civilization will be (is being) destroyed in the process.
How do you reconcile the idea that God calls some women (and men) not to marriage, but to singleness and celibacy? Is it your opinion that those women should similarly stay home?
I know that for me, I grew up idolizing marriage and having children, so when that longed-for husband took longer than expected to show up, I was obsessed, self-pitying, and caught up in the idolatry of romance. None of which was glorifying God. I think there has to be a balance- maybe just raise your sons and daughters to glorify God in all things, as opposed to focusing on career or marriage. Teach them the truth of the gospel and the wisdom of the Bible, and give them a solid foundation to apply God’s teachings and will to all their circumstances.
Here is God’s instruction to the unmarried: “The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit” (1 Cor. 7:34).
Somehow without me even saying anything my girls started telling me they were just going to—their words—find a “really hard working man and let him work while they have babies.” ? I’m amazed at how they just picked that up. My honest opinion is that women should have kids when they are very young (but still adults…no craziness), then pursue a career as wanted once the kids are older. Then she’ll know what she really wants to do—most young people don’t. She can choose work that will give her the desired work-life balance. I’m staying home for now but do plan on working part time from home at some point because that’s what’s best for our family. It will involve a “career change” unrelated to my degree—one that was fully paid for by academic scholarships so really was a blessing—but I’m ok with that. My husband is happy to have me do that when the time is right…it helps us meet some financial goals we have as a couple. Marriages mean working together as a unit and being flexible to meet the needs of the family.
I love this!!! Your blog is a shining light in a feminist world of darkness!
I own and have enjoyed The Bird in the Tree. Reading Pilgrim’s Inn as we speak.
Thank you for taking the time to encourage true Biblical womanhood.