It May be Rude to Make a Virtue of Necessity or Choice

Pseudo-Adrienne at Alas, a blog http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/10/14/friday-blogging/#comments
posts about a young Christian woman, Jennie, who decided that it was wrong for her to try to make it on her own and that she was meant to be taken care of by a man, either her father or her future husband. Now, I respect young Jennie’s right to make this lifestyle choice, and I would not ordinarily even criticize it, but Jennie goes so far as to say that her choice is the godly choice and that it is wrong for any woman to try to take care of herself. It is those evil feminists who had her confused and are confusing all the other women who are not completely dependent on their fathers or other male keepers.

Jennie makes her choice a virtue and all other choices vices, and this seems to me to be utterly gratuitous. If she were comfortable with her choice, it would suffice for her to declare that it is the right thing for her and might not be the right thing for anyone else. I suspect that Jennie is fending off being considered a parasite and is nervous about making an unpopular choice (or at least being explicit about it). I hear this kind of argument all the time, often when it comes to women’s roles and lifestyles. The stay at home mother declares that no decent mother would leave her children in day care to go to work, and the working mother declares that only a complete idiot would want to spend all day with mewling infants. It would suffice for both these women to declare that they are doing what they must do under their circumstances or what they want to do, and there is no good reason to tell people who live differently from you that they are sinners while you are a saint. (I tell such women that studies have shown that children with nannies do better than children without them and that it would be irresponsible to have children until I could afford a nanny. This is met with blank stares.)

Most people’s big choices are dictated by circumstances and subjective preferences, not abstract principles. The abstract principles are just there to deploy when we are called upon to explain ourselves, and I think that most of the time it would be more polite, if an explanation is called for, to say that we are doing what pleases us, if we are, or what we are compelled by circumstance to do, if we are. No need to dress it up it in virtue-speak. Doing so just kills the dialogue and makes it harder for us to understand each other.

That said, here’s what’s wrong with Jennie’s plan (she is fair game thanks to her claim to righteousness). As a back up, she might want to learn to take care of herself just in case her father dies or gets tired of her mooching, in case she never marries an adequate provider, in case she gets into a bad relationship and needs an escape route, and in case she changes her mind later on. There is no guarantee that a suitable man will be interested in keeping Jennie or that she will not find herself divorced or widowed with inadequate means. And a husband who wants to keep a willingly dependent woman might turn out to be abusive, a situation from which escape is made much more difficult if the woman has no ability to fend for herself. Her dependency keeps her with her abuser. Finally, Jennie may not always feel that her purpose in life is man-pleasing and mooching. A big gap in the resume may be hard to explain, and starting late means lower earnings later. I’m not saying that Jennie’s choice is immoral, just that it may be imprudent in today’s world.