Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The cost of her divided heart

The United States newborn survival rate ranks low. That was a news headline that I read yesterday and for about half a minute I was actually shocked to read it. Then I started thinking about it. In this country we women aren't really allowed to really give our hearts to caring for our children and husbands the way that we should....we are condemned for it by a society that values the woman's ability to earn a dollar over her ability to mother and care for her children. I would be willing to say that the US divorce rate and the rate of children born out of wedlock is also a contributing factor to the problem of babies not living long enough to leave the hospital.....and also results of women with divided hearts.

When a woman leaves the duties of the home to go find work or to go to school she is forced to divide her heart between her worldly pursuits and the love of her home and family. She is immediately in a position to have to choose every minute of every day which set of priorities she will serve....it usually will end up being the one that brings in the paycheck or promises some other glittery reward, rarely the supposed drudgery of being the invisible force that keeps a family running smoothly along will win out. Not that her intentions are that way, it just works that way and rarely does the poor thing see it coming when suddenly a child is very ill or a husband begins to stay away from home later and later.....then she feels literally torn apart in trying to be all things to all people in all situations and who wouldn't be depressed about that?! Has anyone else noticed that new anti-depressant medications are released every few months as the tolerance to the "old ones" has built up to the point that they are no longer effective?....and could all of those medications be affecting the survival rate of newborns? Hmmm.

I also notice that the most common thing that I hear from working mothers to be is that they don't want to foster "too much of an attachment" with their new babies to make the return to work easier at the end of maternity leave. As a result they don't hold and cuddle their babies as much as moms who stay home and they don't breastfeed them either at all or primarily via pumping. Yet people don't seem to understand this "phenomenon" of post partum depression skyrocketing. To fit in with the world we must immediately begin to distance ourselves from our babies the minute that they are born. We have to teach them to attach themselves to daycare providers and teachers and before they are even potty trained kids are looking for SOMEONE to just love them the way that their mothers should....yet we act shocked when 13 year old girls get pregnant or when 7&8 year old girls start talking about boyfriends. People... children are lonely and hurting and trying to fill the holes that are left by her divided heart.

I am sick to death of the feminist rant that women who stay home aren't achieving what they should be. What pure trash! I've watched countless marriages fall into ruin (nearly my own included) and I don't want to think about how many girls under 18 and without husbands I have know who had babies and we really don't want to talk about how many kids I've seen get locked up either in detention or mental health facilities or both.....all because a women somewhere felt the need to divide her heart, her time and her attention between what God has given her and what the world made her think she could have. If you are fortunate enough to have never fallen into the trap of the world and left your family to go to work then be very very thankful for that.....if you are one of the ones who is trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together like some very good friends of mine just cling to the truth of the matter and pray hard. The next time someone tells me that I need a job I'm liable to slap them a couple of times in an attempt to knock some sense into them.....I have the job that the Lord has given me and I love it.

The world tries to blame the poor rate of infant survival in the US on things like race, poverty, lack of adequate access to birth control and poor sex education for young folks. The truth is that the US has forced the family to splinter into fragments that must function (dysfunctionaly) individually and in positions that the Lord never intended. Our nation has become such a liberal run society that it no longer is willing to accept that things like divorce, juvenile crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, alcoholism and poverty are all preventable and that by and large those are consequences of families being forced into unnatural states of being rather than "just today's society" or some other such nonsensical saying.

I wish I could apoligize for ranting but not this time. I will apoligize for my rant having been poorly written but nothing more. To my sweet and precious friend who I talked to this morning....may the Lord bless you as you and your hubby try to put your lives back together, I'll be praying.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You hit the nail right on the head! Couldn't have put it better myself.
Love Angela