Stay at Home Daughters?

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I read a few religious / traditional blogs (sad I know - my version of watching the soaps I guess) and there is this movement about girls staying under the authority of their parents until they marry.

strivingtoserveathome.blogspot.com/2010/09/redeeming-our-time-as-daughters-at-home.html

Kind of interesting to me as I wonder what happens to those girls / women who don't get married - do they just stay with their parents forever? The blogs I read sound happy enough but there must be a lot of their potential that they are just ignoring.

westernconservatory.com/products/return-daughters-dvd

It seems weird to read about all this religious stuff as it seems to be the norm in America much more than here anyway. It seems to be a big thing over there - almost like stepping back in time. There are websites, blogs, on line shops, dvds and books - so much marketing. Packaging this as THE way to live.

Regarding girls remaining under the authority of their parents, the fact that a phenomenon is appearing a fair amount on the internet does not mean that a lot of people are doing it, just that those who are are articulate and internet-savvy. Small extremely counter-cultural minorities tend to band together online.

I think "packaging" says it all really. It's a nice neat way to avoid the "problem" of women having any individual freedom, so it suits those who consider it to be a "problem" by selling it as a choice, approved by God, rather than admitting it's about control.

I'd imagine any women who don't find a suitable husband, or wake up and realise they're missing out on life, will end up caring for their parents till they eventually die. Then spending the rest of their life as quiet spinsters, active in the church, looking after nephews/nieces, and otherwise not rocking the boat.

I'm not exactly a fan of female submissiveness, but it seems sad to define a life focused on caring for others as 'missing out'. Its unfair that caring for the young and old is disproportionately women's work in some cultures, but its still a hell of a lot more valuable than 90% of what society tells us to value.

Like the blog!

It seems a bit sad to me that there are these daughters out there that are miserable but that feel that they have no power to improve things. I think that being told the same things over and over for years (women are weaker / feminine / submissive) you would believe it and not think you were capable of more.

I stayed at home until I got married... but I got married at 22 years old, so I suppose that isn't like I stayed home till I was in my 40s!

Here's another blog with a Christian/feminist way of seeing the world.
blog
It's written by me so I'm being shameless in my self-promotion.... hope MNHQ allows that.

Dworkin's Right Wing Women is interesting. I mean really interesting, when it comes to this topic, and she analyzes why women go down this route, or more particularly why mothers would encourage their daughters to choose this particular survival strategy in a patriarchy.
There is a three-part blog series on it. The woman who writes the blog is super-clever and sometimes it takes a few re-reads before you can get what she's saying, but it's worth persisting. SHe has scanned a lot of Dworkin's book so you can read it first-hand.

Right Wing WOmen Part 1

Right Wing Women Part 2

Right Wing WOmen Part 3

I'm pretty certain they will all get married. Men invented marriage after all! It's men that want wives not the other way round, despite what they have managed to convince us. Women pair with men because it's economically sound to, but I really believe that if we had other economic options, for example if it was possible to raise your children while living in a flat with your best friend, then loads of women would choose that option. As it is, the only economically viable option is to live with the father, in most cases. This is done deliberately, of course.
Anyway, what bothers me more is not whether they become spinsters (as that is not a bad fate in the grand scheme of things) but whether their husband loses his job. WTF are they supposed to do then? T A homemaking career requires money, and a lot of it! That'd be a swift wake-up call, surely!

I don't think it is the norm in America - from what I gather, the groups of people who tend to adhere to stuff like 'stay at home daughterhood' number in the tens of thousands, rather than it being the case for most Christians. If you look at pictures of some of the conferences put on by Vision Forum, the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, etc, it seems as if they have several hundred delegates and that many of the families are good friends. I think even a lot of pretty conservative Christians in the US are fine with daughters attending college, having a job etc before marriage.

If you read around on some of the blogs of these families, some of them do have daughters around the age of 30 or so who are 'still' unmarried and showing no signs of a 'courtship'. I feel for them because it seems like they have no other options - they have to look after younger siblings, help around the house and work on appropriate projects (baking, sewing, etc), while they wait for a man to show interest so they can finally fulfill their 'calling' of being a wife and mother. It's never an option for them to pursue a relationship as it's up to the man and their father whether anything can get going.

There are quite a few blogs springing up written by women who left that sort of lifestyle and are carrying a lot of pain as a result of their former beliefs. On the other hand, there are plenty of young women who seem to be 'delighting' in being SAHDs, although of course they're not given any other options - no university, no job, no living away from home etc. I remember reading one blog where a woman was discussing how excited she was for her 22 year old daughter, who was getting married that week. She explained that her daughter had been feeling depressed for a long time because she had not envisaged having to wait 'so long' to get married.

raisinghomemakers.com/2011/preparing-daughters/

Getting married at 22 sounds early to me - not like a looooooong wait!

That blog is a parody, surely. It reads like one.

I don't know if it is. I thought it was weird but real.

raisinghomemakers.com/2011/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-stay-at-home-daughter/

raisinghomemakers.com/2011/the-content-pillar%E2%80%94a-post-for-daughters/

Wow! They have HUGE blog link ups for other blogs like theirs.

raisinghomemakers.com/category/homemaking-link-up/

Must be real!!

Interesting links, sakura.

I guess in an odd sort of way, this world view is pretty internally consistent - albeit based on the premise that women are essentially limited to the role of "helpmeet" by the will of god, which of course most of us would simply refuse to accept.

If you subscribe to the view that women need male headship - or even if you just accept male headship as a fact of life - I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense.

On the other hand, I've always felt rather ambivalent about religious feminism - at least with regard to the abrahamic religions. Of course there are interesting approaches etc.; my problem is that I can't help but see them as post hoc rationalizations of a system that is inherently sexist and misogynistic. I'd even argue that inherent sexism is present in much of (supposedly woman friendly) neopaganism.

Then again, of course I'd say that because I'm an atheist, ...

"Mother and daughter can work along side one another chatting and thinking of ways to help daddy become successful."