“You’re Playing Like a Bunch of Girls!” Parents and coaches need to rethink the way we talk

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by Marta Oti Sears in coaching, gender, sports, youth sports

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I wrote this article for Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog. It’s featured on Christianity Today’s homepage today by the title “You Play Ball Like a…Sexist.”

Last week NFL offensive lineman Jonathan Martin left the Miami Dolphins because of alleged bullying and racial threats from his teammate Richie Incognito.

The story caught my attention because it’s about sports and justice—two things I’m passionate about. As a coach and parent, I’ve become increasingly concerned about another form of injustice taking place in locker rooms, living rooms, and around water coolers across the country.

A frustrated middle school boys’ coach calls a time out and yells at his players, “You look like a bunch of girls out there! Come on ladies, get your heads in the game!” A dad says to his five-year-old son, “You’re throwing like a girl. Let me show you the right way to throw a baseball.” A high school football kicker misses a field goal that costs his team the game. The next day, he opens his locker and finds it full of tampons.

There’s a common message in all of these scenarios. Femaleness is equated with being weak, passive, and a loser. The accompanying message associates maleness with strength, aggression, and victory.

Sadly, kids and adults are as likely to hear this message at home and at the church picnic, as they are to hear it on the school playground or the local youth sports league. It’s the same kind of language we’ve heard for decades, kids calling each other “sissies” and men calling each other “pussies.” But in 2013, we can do better.

Coaches and parents, please ask yourselves the following questions:

Is denigrating women in order to motivate male athletes the best I can offer as a coach? What kind of character am I modeling and developing in my athletes when I demean their mothers, sisters, and fellow athletes?

Does belittling women align with God’s heart toward women? Did Jesus make disparaging remarks about women in order to motivate men or otherwise?

As a Christian, am I called by God to love all children—male and female? If so, how can I love girls as wells as boys with the words I choose?

In his book Setting the Captives Free, pastor and domestic violence educator Ron Clark says “labeling feelings and behavior as male or female” keeps men from becoming like Jesus. We stunt the social and spiritual development of boys and men in our churches when we offer a narrow, impoverished view of masculinity. Similarly, we constrain the development of girls and women when we offer constricting ideas about what it means to be feminine.

“The NFL has a masculinity problem,” said Michael Geertsma in a recent article on the Dolphins incident. “The same could be said of the church.”

If we want to raise boys and girls to become healthy, whole men and women who live and love like Jesus, we must release our gender stereotypes and embrace the complexity and paradox of being human. As image-bearers of God we are all strong and vulnerable; brave and fearful; aggressive and peacemaking.

People have told me that I’m “ballsy.” One of my mom’s friends once said that he imagined her strapping on her cojones(Spanish for “balls”) each morning before going out to take on the world. Isn’t it interesting that we choose to name a sex organ, even one a person does not possess, rather than choosing to name the character quality we see in that person? Courage, boldness, strength and tenacity are gifts of character that come from God, not from a pair of testicles.

When male athletes aren’t giving their best in practice, don’t say they’re playing like girls; tell them they’re playing sloppy or lazy. Be precise with your language. Then find a way to inspire them to work harder that doesn’t involve throwing half of humanity under the bus. As your athletes observe your on-going love and respect for women, they’ll gain a role model they can truly respect and emulate.

Speaking of “the tongue,” Jesus’ brother James said, “Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God” (James 3:9 NLT). Think about the cumulative effect that sexist language will have on a girl over the course of her life. The words we choose matter; they have the power to bless or to curse.

Some Christians write off all discussions of language as “political correctness” or “language policing.” In doing so they excuse themselves from the hard work of empathy, self-awareness and theological reflection. My hope is that many more followers of Jesus will take seriously our responsibility to use the power of our words to make our culture, particularly our youth sports culture, an empowering place for all young women and men.

‘Loss of Self’ & the Evangelical At-Home Mom

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Marta Oti Sears in at-home mom, gender, invisible mom, loss of self, Whole mom

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at-home mom, gender, Invisible mom, loss of self, Whole mom

At-home mothers who identify themselves as evangelical often suppress their callings to things beyond the sphere of home.

They often suppress their desire for intellectual stimulation, their need for connection and community, and their desire to be seen and known for the unique, gifted, complex persons that they are. The cumulative effect of this suppression often results in a ‘loss of self.’

Caryn Dahlstrand Rivadeneira, former managing editor of Christian Parenting Today magazine, says that the moms who contacted Christian Parenting Today struggled with identity issues and felt as though “they’d lost themselves and their abilities and dreams in the midst of motherhood…These moms were convinced that no one knew who they really were and, worse, that no one cared.”[1]

“Read a mom-oriented magazine…and you’ll hear it: again and again moms rate loneliness and loss of self as two of their biggest issues.”[2]

Part of the problem stems from a lack of guidance and truth-telling in the evangelical community on core issues of a woman’s worth and identity. One mother describes her experience this way:

I was beginning to listen to the common teaching that a woman’s chief role is to be a support to her husband in his ministry, be a homemaker and raise children to follow the Lord. I was a woman at war with myself. While I tried to agree with my conscious mind to a view that limited a woman’s contribution to the kingdom, my subconscious revolted within me. …Trying to fit into the role of submissive homemaker, I felt myself losing my identity.[3]

This mother’s internal struggle resulted in many months of undiagnosed sickness and a deep depression.[4] Her experience, both the internal wrestling and the fact that the emotional turmoil manifested in physical symptoms, is not uncommon. “Emotions show up as body responses,”[5]says Dr. Virginia Todd Holeman, professor of counseling at Asbury Theological Seminary.

“Many women focus so much on pleasing other people that they are out of touch with their own desires and needs,” observes spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton. She continues:

A married woman may feel that her purpose in life is only to support her husband in the priorities of his life or to help her children find their niche—rather than finding one of her own where both husband and wife are encouraged and supported…[6]

Another reason evangelical mothers tend to have an underdeveloped sense of self and identity is because evangelical culture has misjudged and mislabeled the development of self a ‘selfish’ pursuit.

Thinking about “who we are and who God made us to be isn’t selfish and doesn’t mean we’re sacrificing our children on the altar of the god of Self. To the contrary, wanting to be known and loved as our true selves, as the complete, gifted, purposed women God created us to be, is a God-honoring way to live,” observes Rivadaneira.[7]

Holeman states, “Finding your self is a key to being able to truly give yourself fully to others—just the opposite of selfishness or self-centeredness.”[8]

Do you feel like you’ve lost parts of yourself since becoming a mother? How do you combat the gravitational pull toward loss of self? Right now, jot down three ways you can be more intentional about developing your self, then share them with a friend and/or in the comment area below.

[1] Caryn Dahlstrand Rivadeneira, Mama’s Got a Fake I.D.: How to reveal the real you behind all that mom (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2009), 3.

[2] Rivadeneira, Fake I.D., 35.

[3] Ruth Haley Barton, Longing for More: A Woman’s Path to Transformation in Christ. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 31.

[4] Barton, Longing for More, 31.

[5] Virginia Todd Holeman, Reconcilable Differences: Hope and Healing for Troubled Marriages. (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 105.

[6] Barton, Longing for More, 33.

[7] Rivadeneira, Fake I.D., 37.

[8] Holeman, Reconcilable Differences, 97.

Betty Draper, Richard Nixon & Evangelical Stay-at-Home Moms

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Marta Oti Sears in "traditional" family model, at-home mom, gender

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"traditional" family model, at-home mom, gender

I just finished a research paper about the tension that exists between evangelical stay-at-home moms’ expectations of motherhood vs. their actual experience of motherhood. What I learned was too good to keep to myself, so I’ll be sharing it over the next few weeks in bite-sized pieces. I hope you’ll find it affirming, challenging, and empowering.

Consider this statement from journalist Carla Barnhill, former editor of Christian Parenting Today. “For many evangelicals, the 1950s are the epitome of all that is good and holy in family life—Dad at work, Mom at home, the three-bedroom house with a yard, a dog, a station wagon, and two happy, smiling children. This is the family we are trying to live up to.”[1]

Evangelical scholar Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen says:

…the kind of family many Christians regard as normative is actually historically quite recent…the present, idealized role-structure of the nuclear family—father as commuting bread-winner, mother as full-time homemaker and childrearer, children seen as tender plants in need of special shelter and carefully-paced education—is largely a product of the nineteenth-century urban middle class.[2]

What evangelicals today consider the model of the Christian family has little to do with scripture and more to do with the agendas of past politicians like Richard Nixon.[3]

Barnhill observes, “In an effort to make the American way of life appear superior to Communism, mid-century American political leaders promoted the idea that in America, every family could own its own home, that jobs were so plentiful and lucrative women had the luxury of staying home, that capitalism allowed every family to own a car and a washing machine.[4]”

Historian Elaine Tyler May explains:

For Nixon, American superiority rested on the ideal of the suburban home, complete with modern appliances and distinct gender roles for family members. He proclaimed that the ‘model’ home, with a male breadwinner and a full-time female homemaker, adorned with a wide array of consumer goods, represented the essence of American freedom.[5]

Ignorant of the political history behind this model of the family, most evangelicals have mistakenly assumed that the model is rooted in scripture and therefore have adopted it as God’s blueprint for the family.[6]

In this model, the prescribed support role of the mother revolves around helping her husband and children reach their full potential and discover their unique gifts and contributions to the world. Her own gifts, potential, and contributions to the world outside of her family, however, are not encouraged or affirmed.

Spiritual director and author Ruth Haley Barton observes:

I know women who have spent a lifetime adapting to their husband’s life and calling—enduring financial hardship so he can go to school, holding down the fort at home while he travels, managing the household while he spends long hours working, studying or ministering, being tolerant of the stress all of this places on the marriage and family—never thinking of asking for the same opportunities for themselves. Somehow they feel that the privilege of having that kind of support in life goes with being male, not female.[7]

We need to move away from husband-centered and child-centered theologies of family and, instead, embrace a more Trinitarian theology of family that values and supports each member of the family equally. We must also correct the misconception that the 1950s breadwinning male and homemaking female model is the ideal, most ‘biblical,’ or most ‘Christian’ model of the family.

I believe it is crucial that evangelical churches stop imposing a one-size-fits-all 1950s political model onto families.

Churches have a unique opportunity to promote a powerful message of freedom: Every couple is free to discern, between themselves and God, what arrangement is best for their family—based on their unique needs, temperaments, gifts, and opportunities in a particular season of life.

Couples should also be encouraged to re-evaluate their arrangement regularly to make sure that no one’s mental or physical health is suffering, and if so, to make some minor or major changes.

Van Leeuwen summarizes this need for freedom well:

There is nothing unbiblical about traditional family roles, provided the family is healthy in other ways. But neither is the traditional family the only (or always the best) way to organize such roles for marital health, adequate parenting and kingdom service. So let us, in this vocation as in others, be prepared to exercise responsible Christian freedom and allow others to do likewise.[8]

Let me state clearly that I’m not against being a full-time at-home mom. I’ve been one for eight years. I believe, however, that it’s important to understand the political roots of the “traditional” family model so that we don’t mistakenly embrace it as “God’s model” and, therefore, force ourselves into it, or force ourselves to stay in it longer than is beneficial or healthy for us or our families.

For further reading on how wealth and privilege play into the prescribed model of the Christian housewife, check out How Much Money Does it Take to Be A Good Christian Woman? by Jenny Rae Armstrong.

___________________

[1] Carla Barnhill, The Myth of the Perfect Mother:: Rethinking the Spirituality of Women. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004) 17.

[2] Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Gender and Grace: Love, Work & Parenting in a Changing World. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 169-170.

[3] Barnhill, The Myth, 18.

[4] Barnhill, The Myth, 18.

[5] Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1999), xv-xvii.

[6] Barnhill, The Myth, 18.

[7] Ruth Haley Barton, Longing for More: A Woman’s Path to Transformation in Christ. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 34.

[8] Van Leeuwen, Gender and Grace, 185.

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