Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
During the last election, one of my very conservative friends took off of work to vote. When he arrived back after lunch, his rather liberal co-worker was joking with him that they both could have saved the bother, since his vote cancelled out the other guy’s.
“Not for long,” my friend chuckled. When the co-worker looked quizzical, my friend replied, “You see, buddy, I’m raising eight voters. You’re only raising one.”
And it’s true. That particular friend has eight amazingly behaved children. I have another friend with nine, several with eight, and a couple with seven. My girls are even friends with two sisters who are growing up in a family of fourteen. I always bring the average down when we go anywhere with these families, with just my measly two.
But it occurs to me that perhaps my friend is right about the impact of demographic trends on our culture. For instance, the reason our fertility rate in Canada has dropped below replacement level is not because families over the last few decades are shrinking. It’s that fewer women are actually having children in the first place. Of the women who do have children, the number of children is actually creeping up slightly.
We’re diverging into two different cultures: one that has children, and one that does not. And those who are likely to have many children are also those who were more likely to come from big, intact families. While there obviously are exceptions, such as the very dysfunctional mom who has six kids with five different men, on the whole the nuclear family is growing where there is a commitment to it.
So the question is: which culture will end up ahead in the days to come? Will the conventional family make a comeback, or will marriage and childrearing continue to be devalued?
Our culture is betting on the latter. Media tells us that children are a drain—they cost money, emotional energy, and time, and they rob us of the fun we could be having! When friends like mine go out in public with their brood, they get the dirtiest looks, as if having a pile of kids is somehow wrong (even though none of these families is on social assistance).
Yet let’s think about this logically. The next generation will be made up of those who are not yet born. Where will these kids come from? They’ll be born to the people who are actually reproducing. The next generation is likely to resemble the people who are actually having the kids, not the people who are making the movies.
People who don’t value kids and don’t value the nuclear family don’t tend to have children—or if they do, they have very few. People who do value children do tend to have children—and they tend to have more. And then this is repeated. That’s one of the reasons why studies in the United States, for instance, have shown that attitudes against abortion have steadily hardened since Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973. Prolife people tend to have more children, and so their values have been passed on more frequently.
This does not mean, of course, that the children of large, intact nuclear families will necessarily turn out well. It’s just that statistically they’re likely to be wealthier than average, more likely to get married, and less likely to end up in jail. That culture that values family, that passes on family traditions, and that yearns for a lifetime commitment has great staying power.
So perhaps my friend with the eight children is right. The traditional family may look bleak now, but I think it’s set for a comeback. And I’m gearing my own girls to be ready for it.
Don't miss a Reality Check! Sign up to receive it FREE in your inbox every week!
I really hate the term "verbal abuse". It came into vogue in the 1990s when studies show that children who were yelled at repeatedly had just as poor outcomes in many cases as some who were beaten. The thought went, then, that since yelling is just as bad as beating, we can call yelling "verbal abuse".
But that's not necessarily true, and verbal abuse is such an amorphous term. I have known women who have left their husbands who justify it, saying he was "verbally abusive" towards me and the kids, because the church allows you to divorce for abuse. But when questioned what they meant by verbal abuse, they would say that "he picked at little things all the time", or "he never said anything nice to me", etc.
I've seen other cases in my husband's pediatric practice where a divorce has occurred, and one parent has claimed "verbal abuse", convincing their children that their dad is abusive because he gets loud. And they start cowering in front of him.
So I'm not big on the term. I do agree that words can be as damaging as blows in many cases, but to me, context matters. If a person has a short fuse, but they're also really affectionate, then we're not going to interpret what he says in those moments when he's angry as really reflecting his feelings. On the other hand, if that's ALL he ever said, then it is abusive.
And so, with that background, I'd like to revisit that whole "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" thing, because some really interesting things came out of the comments last week. For those of you who didn't see that original post (and you really should read it), here's the low-down: Amy Chua, a Chinese mother, published an editorial saying Chinese moms are better because they push their kids towards excellence and don't accept laziness or failure.
I said that doing anything without God is wrong.Our job as parents is to equip kids to do what God wants them to do, not what we want them to do. But we do need to equip, which means teaching things and expecting their best effort. Chua's problem is that she's expecting "success" defined very narrowly, and basing worth on that.
Anyway, others smarter than I have commented on this essay, too, and I want to draw your attention to just a few things before making a larger point about parenting styles (and verbal abuse!). First, Kejda Gjermani writes in Commentary that Amy's whole parenting style seems to breed socialism/communism. It's really interesting, but it boils down to this:
To be the master of oneself and one’s passions, to understand the rightness of one’s moral law and to obey it out of a sense of inward affinity to what’s good and natural; to practice virtue as its own reward, freely; to view one’s sense of duty serenely and make it one with one’s will and desires; and to stand firm in the face of hardship or even annihilation, without bending to coercion from tyrants or losing oneself in any frenzied mob — this is the ideal of discipline that cuts against the grain of the Chinese method, which, despite the good intentions of many of its practitioners, must be recognized for what it is: i.e., the relic of an authoritarian and collectivistic, however stable, culture and a tool for the perpetuation of the same.
Wow. That's just one sentence long. That's a very DEEEEEP and LOOOONG sentence. But what Kejda is saying is this: The Chinese method doesn't produce beauty and grace and virtue; it produces obedience and a lack of creativity, the very opposite of what we want. And then we wonder why China lives under a Communist government.
That's the intellectual critique. Now let's go for a more practical critique, by Katie Granju. She writes:
I reject Chua’s assertion that her children are necessarily “superior” to their classmates being raised in a more relaxed, western fashion. That’s because Chua’s definition of success for her daughters is extremely narrow, focusing as it does on music (classical only, and only on acceptable instruments), academics (specifically math and science) and complete acceptance of parental domination. The only way Chua’s hypothesis of superior parenting producing superior children is if you accept this very limited definition of success.
So true. The only success Chua thinks counts is academic and classical music. She is the dictator demanding what the kids must do.
Which brings me to a larger point, and back to verbal abuse. In one particular instance Chua recounts in her essay, she had to bully her young daughter to perfect a piano piece for a recital. She called her names, yelled, stole toys, and threatened. But the girl got her piece right, and Chua sees this as success.
Is this verbal abuse? I don't know, but it does seem like in other areas of her life Chua is affectionate, so I'd hesitate to call it that. Context matters. But what Chua is doing is trying to use Power to force her children to do what she wants.
We can operate, as parents, from a position of either Power or Authority. Power makes a child do something; Authority makes them want to do it. When someone has moral authority over you, they may not hold any strings over your life, but you want to live up to their expectations. You want to do the things they want you to do. When someone has power, they can make you obey, but they can't touch your heart.
God has ultimate Power and ultimate Authority, but He chooses to lay aside His power to exercise His authority. He could zap you when you do wrong. He could compel you to do right. But He doesn't. He would rather we freely choose it.
As parents, that's what we need to be working towards, too. We start out with power, yelling, "No!" and slapping a wrist if a toddler walks too close to the stove. But as they get older, we use raw power less and work on developing a relationship so that we have moral authority.
If we exercise only power--constantly grounding kids and punishing kids and yelling at kids--then when they leave home, they're very unlikely to go in the direction we want because they haven't internalized any of our values. They've been made outwardly to do things, but not inwardly to want to do them.
We must parent with a mixture of power and authority, and as children age, the power must grow less and the authority must grow more. That doesn't mean that we don't discipline; only that the environment in our house must be about a free exchange of ideas, so that children feel as if they are free to choose their path, and free to explore what God wants for them, outside of what we want for them. They shouldn't be under our thumb, in other words.
Ms. Chua doesn't give her children any choices, and I don't think that's healthy. It may not be abusive, but it does rely too much on Power and not enough on Authority. The problem is that authority takes a long time to develop. You have to spend time with kids, show you love and value your kids, show you want what's best for them, so that they want to follow you. When you haven't built up that relationship, all you have to go on is raw power--and that's when parents and teens get into these power struggles, where the teens go off the rails, and the parents try to clamp down really hard. They have no other leverage.
Don't do that. Don't try to control your kids like Amy Chua does, because you lose your authority. But also spend time really getting to know them, showing you value them, and leading them to God. Then you do have authority. It has to start when they're very young, but the more you do that when they're 2-5, they more they'll listen to you when they're 12-15.
Parents, do not exasperate your children, as Paul wrote in Ephesians. Love them and lead them. Don't force them into a mold. Don't ignore their feelings. And you just may find that they WANT to follow where you lead. UPDATE:I've been getting some comments that I'm being too hard on Chinese culture--they have to be strict because there is no leeway in their society. You fail as a teen, and your life is severely restricted. I understand that, and I understand the need for discipline. I just want to reiterate, as I said in my first article about this, that I don't consider myself a "Western" mom, I consider myself a Christian mom who probably leans more towards the Chinese model than the lax Canadian one. I also consider my Asian brothers and sisters in Christ closer to me than the North American parents who buy into the consumer mentality. So this isn't a West (ie. Me) vs. Them thing--it's just a comment on culture without God, which both the West and Asia currently have.
I should also note that I have plenty of Korean/Chinese friends who came to Canada to escape the pressure on their children. And my own half-brother is half Asian, raised in similar methods to Amy Chua. So I am not trying to make a racial judgment, only a cultural one. And I speak as one who does not consider myself really part of Western culture in particular, but part of a bigger global culture, which encompasses my Chinese/Korean/Japanese brothers and sisters.
While the big news is still the tragedy in Arizona, another story hitting the airwaves is the change in passport applications. No longer will there be Mother and Father, but Parent 1 and Parent 2, reminiscent of Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat.
Well, while you Americans are gnashing your teeth, we Canadians went through this three years ago. And I dug around and found the column I wrote on the occasion. I thought you might enjoy it (it's still one of my favourites).
This week I joined the frenzy of Canadians applying for passports. With our southern neighbour’s change of rules, multitudes are scurrying to secure the over-priced blue booklet, complete with the photo in which one must not smile, but must attempt to look like a terrorist. I didn’t think the process would be that difficult, as I am not new to such applications. But this time around I found myself rather perplexed by some of the questions.
Name and address: so far so good. But then they started getting really nosy. How much do I weigh? they wanted to know. Well, that depends. Am I PMS’ing, or not? And do they want to know how much I look like I weigh, or how much I actually weigh, because the two are not necessarily synonymous. I can hide stuff pretty well.
Nevertheless, I filled in my weight, rounded down to account for wishful thinking over the next five years, and then moved on to height. I’m 5’5”. How many centimeters is that, anyway?
Having to record my daughters’ heights, though, was an exercise in futility. My oldest has grown an inch and a half over the last month. Her height right now will not be her height when the passport office finishes with our applications. I really think you should be allowed to put down ranges on height and weight. At least it would be closer to the truth.
Nothing, however, prepared me for the next line of questions. They wanted to know my hair colour. That is a dangerous thing to ask a woman. This is an Official Government Document, so I have to be accurate, but the truth is I have no idea what my hair colour is. Do they mean natural hair colour? I think I’ve forgotten. If they want me to be precise about my colour right now, some of my highlights are Wella #5RV, and some are Wella Bleach Blonde, but I’ve always wanted to try Wella #5RR, and sometime in the next five years I’m bound to. But all that won’t fit in their little box.
They want you to write “Blonde”, “Brown”, “Black”, “Red”, or “Grey”. I think a man wrote the passport applications, because men think in black and white terms, so to speak, when it comes to colour. For instance, most men will call navy, indigo, aquamarine, teal, turquoise, cobalt, and azure all “blue”. But women know that’s far too constricting. It’s the same with hair colour. My one daughter is blonde. My other is not. But your guess is as good as mine whether she’s closer to blonde, brown, or red. It really depends what light she’s in. Maybe I should just take some leftover Wella Bleach Blonde and pour it all over her head and then we could be done with it.
As mystified as I was by these questions, though, I was really thrown through a loop when I came to the “parent” section of the children’s applications. It used to be “Father” and “Mother”. Now it’s “Parent” and “Other Parent”. So I am officially “Other Parent”. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Mommy”, does it?
In all government paperwork, the words “wife” and “husband” have been stricken in favour of “spouse”, and “mother” and “father” have disappeared in favour of “parent”. But I am not my children’s “Other Parent”. I am their mom, and I have the stretch marks to prove it. Besides, mom is personal. It means loving, and caring, and hugging, and kissing boo boos. Parent does not. I know that family forms are changing, and the government wants to accommodate them. But it seems sad to me that my unique relationship with my children is now officially erased, and turned into something generic.
When I arrived at the box where I had to state my relationship to the child for whom we are applying, I was supposed to write “parent”. But I didn’t. I wrote down “mother”. I may not know my hair colour, and I may be in denial about my weight, but I do know who I am. I’m a mom, and I always will be.
If you liked this post, will you hit "Like" on Facebook below? Or save it to Stumbleupon? Thanks!
Ever get the feeling you're living in a parallel universe? Where the things that you see can't possibly be true?
I had that feeling this week. My husband is a physician, and as such, the Canadian Medical Association sent him a ton of their consumer magazines to put in his waiting room. And there, on the front cover, was prominently advertised the article "Pole Dancing: For Fun and Fitness".
I thought this was strange, so I tweeted about it. And the CMA tweeted back.
Get a load of this (my initial tweet is on the bottom. Theirs is on the top):
Where to start?
First, they didn't pick pole dancing because it was a great exercise trend. They picked it because they wanted to put something about sex on the cover because sex sells.
Second, pole dancing is something which married couples are not exactly famous for. It's what the young twenty-somethings do in their promiscuous days. Pole dancing = promiscuity in most people's minds. I mean, honestly, how many of you with kids own a pole in your bedroom? Can you imagine what those kids would think? "Cool! Mommy and Daddy want to play fire station! Can we slide down the pole, too?"
The only people who have poles are those who are pretty much immersed in the promiscuous lifestyle. And call me crazy, but I kind of assumed the promiscuous lifestyle was a little, well, unhealthy, what with all those diseases and all.
So is this really something the Canadian Medical Association should be touting?
Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against having fun in the bedroom as a married couple. But that's not what this is about.
I haven't figured out how to respond yet to that tweet. If you have any good response that's under 140 characters, leave it in the comments! Or just tell me what you think!
(And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm right here!)
According to my email this morning, I have won the European lottery (6,700,000 euros); I am the sole heir of a man who died last year in Sussex, U.K., and they want to give me millions of pounds; and someone from Sri Lanka has millions in a bank account they want to split with me. I am a lucky person indeed.
Last night I was sitting in a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant waiting for our take-out order with nothing to do but read the Sports section of a newspaper. It was all Tiger, all girlfriends, all the time. To tell you the truth, I really don't care. I don't.
Today, on the news, there's talk of health care, and scandals, and debt.
There is so much noise. So much noise that brings us down and overwhelms us, until we almost become immune to it. But we don't completely become immune, because I don't think we know how to live without the noise anymore.
We had our nephew over for dinner last week. He's an only child to divorced parents (just like I was), and we like including him in things, especially since he's the same age as my oldest. He had a great time. We ate a good meal, which lasted about half an hour because we were talking and joking the whole time. Then we read a particularly gross part of the Bible (we're reading through Judges with the kids after dinner, so since we had a 14-year-old boy as a guest we decided to read about Ehud, who plunged the sword into the fat king Eglon and "he was so fat the his fat closed around the sword." ). Then we played a game, and everyone helped clean up. It was a riot.
But it was also "quiet". There was no talk of movies, or Tiger, or scandals, or contention. It was just sharing relationship.
I find so often that when you get together with people it isn't much better than the noise we hear on the internet. We all talk about all the same stuff. We discuss Tiger, or we discuss movies or TV shows, or the latest diet craze, or video games. We talk about all the noise. Why don't we just talk about REAL things, like relationships, or life, or jobs, or school, or fun?
I was at another family event recently where the conversation did revolve around noise-items. I came away not really feeling like I knew anyone better, except for one sister-in-law that I always get along with and always talk to. I guess noise-subjects are safe, because few fights break out over them, unlike, say, politics or religion or something. But they're also impersonal. It's as if a wall has been built around so many people's hearts, and you can't ever get any deeper.
My kids see it, too. Sometimes they meet new kids that they just can't talk to, because they only things they want to talk about our pop culture. Katie will say to me, "I tried to change the subject, and asked about her siblings, or school, or her dreams, or whatever, but I really don't think she thinks about anything other than movies."
And undoubtedly, for many people, that's true. There is just too much noise.
I find sometimes that when I'm one on one with people I can break through it and talk about something meaningful, but in a group it's just so hard. And then I wonder why I'm there at all.
I suppose I'm just cynical after too many Christmas outings that seem to have little to do with Christmas, but do you ever feel that way? And do you have a solution?
As for me, I'm simply going to keep inviting my nephew over for dinner more. We had a great time, he had a great time, and there was no noise. Sounds good to me.
Every Friday, my syndicated newspaper column appears in a variety of papers. Here's today's!
Earlier this week, singer Taylor Swift was accepting an MTV award when rapper Kanye West leaped on stage, grabbed the microphone, and pronounced that singer Beyonce should have won instead for her video Single Women. Apparently he thinks Taylor Swift may be cute, but she won’t endure. Beyonce’s message, to him, is timeless.
Obviously West does not live in a house with teenage girls.
When I was a teenager, we all idolized red-headed Molly Ringwald, who played down-and-out characters rebelling against their parents’ generation and writing their own rules on love. She was cool. She was hard. She was edgy, and we adored her.
Today edgy is so passé. After all, you can’t get much less edgy than nineteen-year-old Taylor Swift, but her music has taken the female world by storm. You may not know who Swift is, but you’ve likely heard Love Story, her own version of Romeo and Juliet, while out driving or shopping. You can’t avoid it.
And while all Swift’s songs talk about love—and how if you don’t love the real me forever, you’re not worth my time—something strange happens whenever Love Story plays and teenage girls are in proximity. The girls don’t just sing along; they belt it out. And then, just when you think they can’t get any louder, the decibel level suddenly shoots up for the line: “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said, MARRY ME, JULIET!!!” In Swift’s world, and to these teen girls, Romeo and Juliet doesn’t end in tragedy. It doesn’t end in edgy relationships, or “shacking up”, or in a fling, either. Instead, Juliet gets the whole white dress treatment. Romeo even asks permission from her father to marry her—and the teenagers don’t flinch at this “archaic” throwback! Romance, tradition, and marriage, are back in style.
Movies for girls this age mimic Swift’s preferred storyline. Last year’s Enchanted left my girls—and many of their friends—swooning. A fairytale comes to life, with various characters bursting into song to declare their undying love. Then there’s Penelope, Pride and Prejudice, or the more mature but still wedding oriented 27 Dresses and Bride Wars. Younger kids are getting in on it, too. What about High School Musical? It may not include wedding bells, but the romance is awfully squeaky clean. This is no Degrassi Junior High. Even in music for the pre-teen set, the mega-selling Jonas Brothers are about as far from gangsta rappers as you can get.
Our culture has told our teenage girls from the time they were born to dream, and to dream big. You can have it all! But what they keep coming back to is that white dress. They want the happily ever after.
It’s a noble dream, but there’s a problem. There’s no point in standing up there in your white dress unless there’s somebody standing next to you in a tux. These girls need boys to buy into the “happily after” as well, and that can be tricky with video games demanding all of their attention. And all of us need to learn that wishing and dreaming about love isn’t enough; a marriage is successful not just when we marry the one we love, but also when we continue, day by day, to love the one we marry. After all, real life isn’t a fairytale. It’s hard work, but that just makes it more rewarding.
Maybe we could all use a little more “love story” and a little less cynicism. If all we do is dream, though, and we don’t live it out, then perhaps Kanye West is right and Swift will be swiftly forgotten, along with the romance she tried to revive. Somehow that doesn’t sound like much of a happy ending at all. I really hope my girls, and their friends, do better.
Can anyone relate? Does anyone else have teen girls who go crazy over Love Story or You Belong to Me? I have to admit to singing quite loudly at Love Story, too!
Don't miss a Reality Check! Sign up here to receive it FREE in your inbox every week.
Every Friday my syndicated column goes out to over a million people. Here's this week's, about events of last week. Enjoy!
When I was eight I wanted Farrah hair. I was forever leaning forward and then throwing my head back to achieve that wind-tossed look. It never worked.
Michael Jackson, though, I never tried to emulate. I may have attempted the moonwalk a few times (though I didn’t grab my crotch), but that’s as far as it went.
The two will be forever connected in our memories now that they share the date of their earthly demise, but they had something in common already. They were both icons. Farrah was the pinup; Michael was the King. And both of them, as large as they were in stardom, were somehow stunted in life.
Michael left this world by accident. By some accounts, he chose the wrong combination of painkillers. A tragedy, reporters declared, just as he was attempting a comeback.
Certainly it is a tragedy to die at fifty. But what if in those fifty years you squandered millions to feed your own obsession with childhood? To me it seems like a waste of a life. Perhaps the real tragedy was his horribly dysfunctional childhood, which led to his horrible choices about how to live.
Farrah, on the other hand, chose a bizarre way to die. Certainly she didn’t choose cancer, but she did ask to die on reality television. I don’t know if and when such a special will be aired, but I can’t help wincing at the creepiness factor. One’s final days are sacrosanct. They’re your last chance to make peace with your family, yourself, and your Maker. But Farrah wanted to share it with millions, because if she was doing it alone, it wasn’t real.
In the last few weeks another woman died on TV, and she actually was watched by millions. Beautiful, lively sixteen-year-old Neda Soltan was brutally shot as she observed the protestors in Tehran. Her death was caught on video, which then spread virally over the internet. The regime, alarmed at the sympathy and anger her death caused, stole her body, buried it without informing her family of the whereabouts, threw the family out of their apartment, and prohibited mourning for the girl. They also forced the father onto television to proclaim that it was the protestors, and not the regime, who killed her.
After Jackson died, some enterprising Iranians created a video of Iran using “Beat It” as the soundtrack, to tie in to the Western preoccupation with Michael that was sucking the energy out of their news cycle. But while we were all Michael, all the time, in the rest of the world Neda still mattered. All over the Middle East and Europe people held up signs declaring “I am Neda” as they stormed Iranian embassies. Thankfully no one’s holding up a sign saying “I am Michael”.
In fifty years, who will the majority of the world still remember? Will it be Neda, who served as the iconic martyr of what I hope is the beginning of the real Iranian revolution, even if it takes another ten years? Or will it be two aging stars who never came to terms with their place in the world?
The world is filled with tragedies, but when it comes to these three deaths, Neda’s seems to me like the biggest one. Hers is a tragedy of humanity’s brutality. The tragedy of the other two is that they lived their lives in such strange and counterproductive ways—and even worse, we ate it up. Perhaps that’s because we live in a culture that no longer has Nedas. Hopefully one day Iranians will have the luxury of idolizing bizarre celebrities. Until then, the world will have plenty more Nedas to mourn, and that is a tragedy indeed.
Don't miss a Reality Check! Sign up here to get it free in your inbox every week!
"The more I see of the world, the more dissatisfied I am with it." Elizabeth Bennett, Pride & Prejudice
I remember thinking that sentence, over and over, this week.
When we live in our own little bubble it's easy to think the world is a beautiful place. We're with our children, and as annoying as they may sometimes be, we know that they are gifts from God and that they are precious. They make our lives richer.
We live in our hometown where we may know good people, and sense people's kindness.
But sometimes, when you travel, all those illusions are taken away and you come face to face with the world we really live in.
I've been traveling a little bit this week, and I've just felt this strong malaise. It's not that where I am is worse than my hometown; it's just that when you drive by things day after day you stop seeing them. But when everything is new, you see the ugliness in all its glory.
What do you see when you walk through an airport lounge? I saw magazine after magazine of women in bathing suits, or barely any clothing at all. I saw headlines about lifestyles that are truly gross.
I saw novels displayed called things like "The Skinny B****" , and a bunch of other things that were quite ugly.
The people who were waiting for the airport shuttle "entertained" us with stories of trying to find drugs in Europe, and watching a movie about quite disgusting sex acts (which they explained). Both husband and wife were in their mid 50s and looked quite respectable on the outside.
I saw people talking on cell phones about how to make more money (not that there's anything wrong with money, but in the context it just seemed like everybody was greedy). I saw ad after ad for how vacations and money and cars will make you happy. The news was on every TV around me, and I heard about the subway shooting in Toronto, and about the glee that many Americans were expressing because abortion restrictions would finally be lifted.
And I saw young people in their late teens and early twenties getting away south, obviously prepared for a rather inebriated week.
I know I sound like a prude as I write this, but I just wanted to see two married people with their arms around each other, or someone having fun with their children. None of that.
Sleaze is everywhere. It is the norm. And whether we like it or not, we start internalizing the messages about sex, about fun, about happiness. Even if we are Christians, this is the culture in which we live. The messages are everywhere. And unless you fight against it, it's going to permeate your consciousness, too.
One of the comments left this week on one of my posts about sex was went something like this. A woman was abused when she was a child, and became promiscuous because of it. Now she's married, but she finds she doesn't enjoy sex. It was more fun when it was anonymous. What does she do?
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Our society teaches that it's anonymous sex that is fun. It says that what is sexy is having everybody that you can. And when you combine that with actually acting it out, you rewire parts of your brain that respond sexually. Your body starts to associate the wrong things with arousal. And now what are you going to do?
One of the problems that men have when they're trying to break a pornography addiction is that while they may have stopped looking at porn, and while they may even have stopped focusing on the images in their heads, it's still hard to make love to their wives because that's not what arouses them anymore. So they've banished the bad, but they can't bring the good in. They're stuck in no-man's land.
And we women can face the same thing, though for a slightly different reason. The arousal function in our brain doesn't work.
It's there. It really is. It's just been buried. So here's how to attack the problem:
1. Pray about it. I know it sounds weird to pray about sex, but God knows what you're doing anyway, and He wants you to enjoy it!
2. Banish anything that tells you lies about sex. Stop watching television that promotes anonymous sex, like Friends or How I Met Your Mother.
3. Keep trying to enhance the intimacy in your marriage. This post on How to Awaken Love describes it in more detail, but what you need to do is make the spiritual connection that we feel when we make love with our spouse sexy again. That's at such a deep level, and nothing else can compare to it. So we need to start truly experiencing that kind of intimacy. So do what I said in this post. And take your time making love so that your body can respond properly. It may mean drawing it out for a long time until you start responding. But don't give up!
This isn't a problem that it going to be solved overnight. Think of it like physical therapy after an accident. You have to work at it consistently for a long time to retrain your body to act properly. That's what we need to: retrain our bodies to act properly, to the signals from our brains. It's going to take a while. But don't give up!
We live in an ugly world, and that world can wreak havoc with our emotions, our goals, our dreams, and even our sexuality. We have to fight it. Fill your homes with beautiful things. Make the messages in your life beautiful. And pray. You just may find that life really is beautiful again!
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
Stumble It!
