Even the idea that anyone might have an opinion about “how to be a good wife and mother” will probably drive some women to apoplexy. And yet, if one is to be a wife and mother, shouldn’t you do a good job in that role? Does anyone suggest that you should be an employee of a company, and not be a good employee, but rather, a bad one? Does anyone suggest that you be a student, and not be a good student, but a bad one? Or that it doesn’t matter? Any woman who rejects, in principle, the idea that she should be a good wife and mother, rather than a bad wife and mother, is unfit for marriage and motherhood. Unfortunately, these women often get married and have children.
At the same time, there are millions of men who lament that the women in their lives are not good wives and mothers, or lament that it is hard to find a single woman with some promise of becoming a good wife and mother, but these men rarely ever express what it is that they seek, except that it might involve making sandwiches. Probably, they don’t know themselves, in a rational way, and just assume that these women’s mothers will tell them. It is “woman’s stuff” that we just expect women to know how to do, like apply eyeliner. But do these young women’s mothers even know themselves? I think they do not.
Thus, one of our goals around here is to express, in a fashion that a fourteen year old girl can understand and apply, what it means to be a good wife and mother — how to excel in that role.
If women don’t want to be wives and mothers, that is OK. Then they don’t have to be good ones. If 20% of all women were unmarried and childless, by their own choice and design, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. But, it seems that women almost universally want to become wives and mothers.
Cornerstone 