First Thoughts on Lies our Sons are Taught

This may seem off point. We’re a homemaker group, not a Mom Group, Homeschool Group, or Wife group, but specifically a homemaker group.

Why would we talk about sons?

Sons, nephews, grandsons, boys live in our homes. As much as the world is beating down on our daughters with lies about the subjugation of women, the oppression of homemaking, and that fulfillment can only be found in working a job outside your home, they’re also beating down on our men. Sometimes subtly and sometimes loudly.

Take a moment to notice commercials. Price and I were watching TV in our hotel room over vacation and all the ‘domestic’ commercials for things like washers and dryers and dish soap had men managing them. I heard a commercial on Spotify featuring a stay-at-home dad. When I worked at Nordstrom there was a string of commercials featuring weak-looking men discussing how to get grass stains out of play clothes and ketchup out of capes. That used to be us, us women.

Today it’s acceptable to be a stay-at-home person and even be praised for that choice as long as you are a slightly effeminate man.

This is the subtle indoctrination of your sons. They aren’t to be strong providers and protectors, but gentle and quiet, tame homemakers. The Bible teaches us that that’s not only mixed-up but wrong.

Men aren’t called to be makers of homes.

As we become more comfortable with our tame men, we shouldn’t be shocked by the rise in the porn industry. Our culture has made everything about sex. I listen to the lonely young people and I think, get to work, get married, raise a family. But men who want to be with women are told they’re rapists, and women are told not to want a home and children. We have a pandemic of short marriages, or just forever boyfriends and girlfriends. We have abortion to support lives of meaningless sex, and we have rampant mental health issues and suicide. It’s heartbreaking and sad. The umbrella of manhood and womanhood, of homebuilder and homemaker, is so vast and diverse as to be able to take all our uniqueness and individual providences and keep things snuggled together. We have taken that generosity and like a toddler, stamped on it because, even though it’s the broadest of fields, it does have a fence.

Aren’t men stupid and incapable? Of course not! God is sanctifying us and that means he gives men inclined to be lazy the job of provision, which they won’t want to do because it’s hard. They’d much rather stay home and not be responsible for leading and providing. To us women, God gave the job of tending when we want to be independent. The struggle is good for us. (A truth the world has largely forgotten: struggles are good for us.) Men are conquerors. It is in their very nature. Women, from tomboys to princesses, are domesticators. Are there exceptions? Of course. Life is filled with amazing exceptions, but in our culture, the exceptions have been elevated into a tyranny of the normal. Everything is centered around the exceptions to the point of making the exceptions the center of life, instead of what is normal. We’re ruled by the rare instead of patiently dealing with their rarity.

When the natural makeup of men and women, how we were created, is denied and the exceptions are made the rule, an abusive society is created. Women bitterly and shrilly imprison everyone into inescapable boxes to keep them safe. Men lash out physically and turn to porn. Children grow up in worlds where women are encouraged to be masculine, if not straight-up male, and men are encouraged to be feminine, if not straight up forced to be female.

Sound familiar?

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Does this mean men shouldn’t do anything in the home? I think it’s wise for mothers to teach their sons all the domestic duties. You never know how long it may take your son to find a wife, or if that wife will develop health issues, or have difficult pregnancies, or need help just because of lots of kids, and at the very least it will help your sons appreciate their wives’ labor.

Another subtle attack is that the generation of young men growing up don’t even consider the fact that their wife might be a stay-at-home-wife. It is just assumed: I’ll have my career and she’ll have hers. You see this in our stories, couples who agree that they won’t get in the way of one another’s careers even if it means living in separate places. The wife doesn’t even have to have a high-profile career. Men just assume their women will work a paid job with set hours or own their own business. Men just assume this. It’s a given. Dr. Laura has to regularly advise women wanting to come home on how to best discuss this with their husbands because men are taught that her working is what she wants to do, is normal, is how you make your wife happy, and that it is selfish or insensitive of them if they don’t let us work.

Granted, an outside-the-home, paid job is fulfilling. It is. It’s great to be on a team, pulling for the same thing and tangibly see the fruit of our labors. It’s great.

But it can also take you away from your calling. It can be boring, empty, and unfulfilling. It can cause strain in your home and marriage. I’ve done both, career and homemaking, and as I’ve fixed my sights on the home and grown to understand it, homemaking is far more fulfilling for me than anything I’ve ever done before, and it pays huge benefits. It’s a wonderful challenge and keeps me both comfortable in my routine and constantly growing.

We live in a time when rearing sons is all about making them effeminate and lazy. Why? Because then they're safe. We’ve taken the teeth from the wolf and the claws from the bear. We’ve neutered them into docile geldings. We’ve tamed men. And we all love it. Men get to be lazy and women get to be independent. Men get to avoid their responsibilities and women get to avoid theirs. We get to throw off the shackles of home and they get to throw off the shackles of provision and protection. We’re all happy because we have what we want. But we will pay for it…we already are. Women become cold and murder their children. Men become weak. We’re ripe for being conquered. Women become hardened, and men become angry and bitter. Freedoms are eroded in the name of making sure everyone is safe and taken care of, and men become violent and hate women.

So on one hand, we have this subtle brainwashing of our sons, that they’re to be soft tenders at home (despite the very natural proof that they’re the ones with the physical strength) and we women are to be the hardened providers. On the other side, we have the outright abuse of men. Men are told that for them to lead, to stand up, to take charge, to use their God-given formidableness is toxic and abusive. For a father to discipline and instruct his child in the sometimes scary way a man can is abusive. For your son to stand up to a bully is abusive. To go to work, hold the line, be masculine in any way is abusive. Men are told all the time that they’re stupid and dangerous with no hope of redemption. Shockingly, we’re seeing a rise in both homosexuality, transgenderism, and suicide. Shocking.

Instead of teaching our boys how to control their strength, harness their power, control their sexuality and their emotions, we tell them cat-calling is rape.

Have you noticed how many single women there are in our circles? In our families? In our churches? The number of single women is drastically higher than when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Women who want a husband, home, and children can’t find a man. Men who want a wife, home, and children can’t find a woman.

What did we expect when boys are being taught that every form of flirting is abusive and equal to rape, or that their tendency to be aggressive is abusive, or that they’re just terrible because they’re male, not to mention the abortion culture which says there are no emotional consequences to sex, and the fact that men are told women don’t want husbands, homes, or children. We’re surrounded by weak, completely unattractive men and wonder why women can’t find husbands. Girls think boys are stupid and dangerous, and boys think girls are not interested and hate them. Men are terrified to take the lead, flirt, or even open a door for a girl because they might get yelled at for being misogynistic.

Do you want to know what is good and wonderful? When a Texas man dressed in his boots, jeans, and hat opens a door for you, nods, and makes direct eye contact. It’s so nice to be treated with respect and deference simply because I’m a woman. This used to happen regularly. Now, it’s once in a blue moon. It’s made me happy to be older, from an older generation, because I still get treated as special by the men in general whose mother’s taught them good manners. This isn’t demeaning or threatening. This isn’t misogynistic or patriarchal. It’s not saying I can’t open a door or that I’m a lesser human, nor is it rape.

Our world says it is.

Homemakers, we’re the front line in tending our husbands and encouraging and training the next generation of men. At this rate, we will find our churches and homes filled with more and more lonely, disenchanted single women, heartbroken infertile women, and weak men.

Raising our sons and daughters is a warzone. They’re bombarded with lies that have long-term, damaging effects. They’re paying the price of men giving up manliness and women giving up femininity.

How you raise your sons is part of tending your hearth and hearths to come. How you uphold your husband, respecting him and following him is tending your hearth.

Do you want to be radical, rebellious, and unique? Tend your hearth and the people gathered around it. We need to see, really pay attention to, what our kids and our husbands and we are imbibing. Stay on guard.

If the Lord allows us to continue down this path, men will continue to be abused, and more and more women will be single. We will lose hearths and homes. The world will be dark and cold. We will be singled out for going against the flow and so will our men, our sons, nephews, and grandsons. This isn’t an easy time to be a man.

HearthKeepers, we tend our hearths, light the way back home, hold the line, stay in the fight, and love our men. Raising our sons, respecting and obeying our husbands, and generally standing by the men in our churches, families, and circles is our work.