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Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Women Aren’t “Wired” to be Breadwinners Says Lori Alexander

lori-alexander

There are way too many women I hear about who are postponing marriage and having children for their careers. Then when they finally get married, their husbands want them to continue working since they make good money. Reality is proving that this isn’t good for marriage. Suzanne Venker wrote about this. “Nevertheless, the new reality of many women outpacing men educationally and sometimes financially has serious implications for marriage.” God created men to be the providers and women to be the keepers at home. This is His plan and nothing that men and women do today will every change this.

….

No, God did NOT wire women to be men. He didn’t wire them to be the providers. Our hormones prove this. Our physical build proves this. Everything about us proves that this is not our role in society no matter how hard feminists have fought to say that it is. They will NEVER outsmart God and His plan for us. Never.

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Even though many men want their wives to continue working because they see dollar signs instead of a mother at home with her children, it harms the marriage since the husband is last on the totem pole for the wife’s attention. She only has so much energy and most of her energy must go to her work to keep it, then to her children, then her home, and nothing is left for her husband. It’s too steep of a price to pay for extra money. Way too steep of a price. Men have ten times the testosterone for a reason. They are the ones created by our Creator to go out and “slay the dragons,” as Dr. Laura always used to say. Many women who try to do this eventually suffer from burned out adrenals and ill-health.

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Half of medical and dental school students are women these days. This is tragic for the women: for the men whose jobs they are taking away, for the lack of children they will be having, and for their future marriage. Stop the madness, women. Don’t pursue a high-powered career that makes a lot of money. Marry a godly husband who wants to work hard and be the provider.

— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Wife, Women Aren’t Wired to Be Providers, November 21, 2017

10 Comments

  1. Avatar
    GeoffT

    As always when I read your posts from this ridiculous woman, I’m struck by the paradox. She’s a woman and she’s got a blog which effectively instructs others in what to do and how to behave. Isn’t that the domain of men?

  2. Avatar
    That Other Jean

    May you never be left divorced or widowed, or have a husband too disabled to work to support you and your children, you preposterous woman.

  3. Avatar
    Rachel

    Who is this woman? Does she give talks, write articles? If so, given what she is saying, she is a raging hypocrite, telling other women to stay at home and not earn while she is going here, there and everywhere and (presumably?) earning money while she does so.

    “For the lack of children they will be having”??? The planet is overpopulated!

    And when I think of the women who struggled hugely to get the chance to train as doctors, in order to be of especial help to other women, well, how sad is that? A woman in the 21st century saying that we should desist from such work and leave it all to men.

  4. Avatar
    cheezit99

    There is major classism in these elitist Christian circles where they command that woman don’t work. Their men must all have upper middle class or above professional jobs or there must be family money. They do not live in reality, that many people work including women because they have to. Marriage is not guaranteed to every woman and men die younger and there is divorce and being widowed. Her advice is insane and absurd and classist as hell.

    • Avatar
      Karen the rock whisperer

      Actually, a lot of these families–unless they’ve acquired relative fame and a nice income stream from writing “Christian” literature and such–are very, very poor. They have lots of children because these are gifts from God, and any kind of birth control is interfering with God’s will. They barely manage, and do so only because the adults are masters of stretching money and many of the mundane and not-so-mundane expenses of “worldly life” like entertainment (most entertainment is too “worldly”) or health insurance (God will heal them) are nonexistent. Their lives, except for the father, revolve exclusively around church and home.

      The real victims of this mentality are the children, who often grow up badly educated from homeschooling and have trouble making their own livings. Of course, daughters are groomed to be stay-at-home-moms by virtue of learning no marketable skills.

  5. Avatar
    Jada

    I always pick up more than a hint of envy. For many years I made a lot more money than my husband, and now he makes more. Either way, we’ve enjoyed a great lifestyle that, quite frankly, someone like Lori just can’t imagine. She also can’t imagine the immense satisfaction successful women get from their careers. All I can feel for someone like her is pity.

  6. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    I don’t understand how hormones prove that I am unfit for work outside of a house.

    My husband and I both work – I work regular day hours and he works evenings because he owns his own math tutoring business. We both do the work around the house. We consider marriage to be a partnership, not a role where he works outside the home and I as female am required to do all housework, cooking, child-rearing, plus work. That’s not a formula for a good marriage. My husband is a trained teacher and is fabulous with children. I am not good with children. Before we had children we decided that I would continue my job and he would resign his teaching position and build his tutoring business. I make more money and he’s happy about that as I have secure income while his work is seasonal. If I had quit my job to stay at home, our kids would be clean and fed, but I am terrible with entertaining, etc. He always had fun learning activities for them to do – now they’re both honors students in high school. Our philosophy is that each partner in the marriage contributes their strong points. Our “hormones” had nothing to do with our strengths and weaknesses – by Lori’s standards, I should have been naturally good with children, and I’m not.

    Despite growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical environment, my grandfather stressed to me the importance of my getting a good education, having a career, and never being dependent on a man. He witnessed my mom without education or skills becoming a divorced single mom, and he did not want that for me. I am forever grateful for his foresight and support.

    I support Lori for her right to choose how she lives her life. She should support other women for how they choose to live theirs. But, I surmise that Lori is in no way pro-choice about anything that is not exactly in line with her interpretation of what her deity supposedly ordains.

    • Avatar
      Rebecca

      I can totally relate to your response. Every situation is different. My husband and I have six children together. We’re a blended family. When my kids were young, I did stay home, and even home schooled. We also fostered special needs children. I loved it, and was very fortunate to have the income to be able to support this. When my kids were older, I returned for many years to a career outside the home in the human service field.

      I was able to choose. I think as one commentator pointed out not all women who are single moms or whose husbands may be disabled can even afford to do this.

      On top of that, many Christian women feel very strongly that God has gifted them to be things such as a medical professional or an attorney, for instance. For them, this is not incompatible with rearing children at all.

      I’m thinking of one couple at my church where the husband stays home with the kids, and his wife, a medical professional works outside the home. He is really into the outdoors, and fly fishing, and seems to have a great time with the children.

      What truly puzzles me is how folks feel that they can also use the Scripture to justify every opinion.

      I mean if I”m going to recite verses relating to women being “keepers at home”, for instance, to support full time stay at home mothering no matter what….Well, what about the ideal woman outlined in Proverbs?

      Are we all then called to operate a small business at the city gates, or to buy and sell farmland? 🙂

      It’s just a mistake, IMO, to use Scripture in this way without considering things such as context or the culture of the time.

  7. Avatar
    Kathi

    The irony about the last paragraph is that Lori’s husband is a consultant in the dental industry, specifically orthodontics. He’s perfectly fine with earning an income off of an industry where statistically a majority of the workers are women. Yet he and Lori will continue to defend their statements that women must not work outside the home.

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