Redeeming The Feminine SoulНамуна

Today’s “Problem With No Name”

Today, women assume that what fulfills men also fulfills women. It doesn’t. Yes, women enjoy work as men do, but it fulfills us to a lesser degree. What fulfills us most is close relational connection. A unique forty-year study called the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) provides evidence of this. The study tracked more than sixteen hundred mathematically gifted boys and girls from their childhood in the seventies to their midlives in 2012. The study found that both the males and females achieved similar levels of education, but when they began working, a significant gender gap developed.

The men in the study worked on average eleven hours more per week than the women, who generally adhered to a forty-hour work-week. Not surprisingly, the men in their middle-aged years made significantly more money than the women made during their same time of life. But what was especially revealing was why the men and the women made the different life choices they did. When asked what they valued most, the men said full-time work, making an impact, and earning a high income; the women said part-time work, community and family involvement, and time for close relationships.*

Men and women do not want the same things, at least not equally. Regardless of what culture says, women want close relationships more than they want careers. We want husbands and children and deep personal connections.

Rather than fighting these natural urges, maybe we women should start cooperating with them? Maybe we need to accept that God wired us to find our greatest fulfillment in nurturing others and pursue that?

God has given all women a special gift to love and nurture, and none of us—married or not, childless or not—should let this gift go to waste. This is the normative call for all women. Rather than feeling an obligation to work outside the home, we should feel an obligation to love and to nurture—and to bless society with this unique gift God has given us.

As women, we must show the glory of the feminine to the world. God has manifested this aspect of Himself in us, and if we fail to honor it and cherish it, we impoverish our world.

* Rebecca Adams, “Why Men May Not Try to ‘Have It All’ the Same Way Women Do,” Huffington Post, December 8, 2014, accessed January 10, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/08/women-success_n_6219586.html.