Equality for Women & Men--What About the Children?

“So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.” Deuteronomy 11:18-19

The last day of Write Tribe’s Festival of Words-3 happens to fall on International Women’s Day, so we’re supposed to write something that goes along with that theme. Doesn’t sound too tough, does it?

Except for when I read this prompt on Thursday night I thought, “International Women’s Day? What the heck is that?”

You can read some history on International Women’s Day here, but basically it’s a day to push for women’s rights across the globe.

I’m all for women’s rights and the advancement, I believe it says, of women.

I have a full-time job outside of the home. I am looking to move into management in my line of work. I serve (have served and intend to do it again) in volunteer positions where I lead and teach others--many times as the chairperson, president, or just generic term of leader. I am the secretary, treasurer, events coordinator, and any other management/support staff title you could give me of two children who have been involved in every sport, extracurricular activity, church/youth group activity, civic organization, and community program that exists in our areas. 

I don’t spend a copious amount of time cleaning house. It needs it, but I’m too busy doing the above mentioned things. My husband does as much, if not more, than I do.

I cook 23.6% of the time we need to eat. Not per week. Per year. The other 76.4% is split between dining out and my husband doing the cooking. Dining out probably equates for 50% of the time. Ok, my made up statististics are probably off a little. I think we eat out more than 50% of the time.

My teenagers do their own laundry and do all the dishes. 

So, do you get the idea? I am for, even living, women’s rights.

However, I’m probably one of the few who lives the dream, fights for women and girls on a regular basis, who questions if we should have done everything we’ve already done.

I wrote some posts about submission last February that you can find at these links:

Sometimes A Woman Wears the Pants
Radically Submissive Wife
Consequence of Not Submitting
Pearls & Pigs or Lamps & Light
Submission as Service Not Sacrifice

I see too much. Too many broken families. Too many kids raising themselves. Too many homes in the same state (or much worse) than mine. Too many families that don’t know what family time is, what it’s like to eat a meal together, to go to church together, to have a parent at a school event. 

I’m not saying that dads can’t do those things. It just seems that somewhere in making all of us “equal”, we’ve made kids less than in the equation.

Kids aren’t the future of our society: they are the present.

What we are to them now sets the tone for what they will try to change in the future. 

I may have missed this prompt by a mile, but I write my heart, and this is where my heart is…

photo credit: Emerald Coast Children's Advocacy Center via photopin cc