A Practical Way to Say “Happy Mother’s Day”
Excerpt from the booklet: “Overcoming the Marriage Blues” by Dr. James Dobson)
There are two main sources of depression among housewives and stay-at-home mothers. This article outlines the important responsibility husbands have in building up their wives’ self-esteem.
Q. Dr. Dobson, in your book What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, you state that many American women are depressed or agitated today. Can you tell us why?
A. There is a tremendous turmoil going on among women today. Everything traditionally feminine has been challenged in the last several years, and that has created self-doubt – even among many Christian women. Housewives and mothers are asking themselves, “What am I doing here? Who am I? Who cares…who loves me? Who needs me?” You could say that they are facing an identity crisis.
Q. I’ve heard women say that part of their frustration comes from the inability to understand their role as it related to Scripture. Do you feel Scripture puts women in a secondary or inferior role?
A. No! I feel that Jesus related to women as equals. We are equal in human worth, but that does not mean that we have equivalent roles. In other words, I feel that we are ordained for different kinds of responsibilities, but one sex is not inferior to the other. It is important for us to reaffirm that men and women are unique and different.
Q. Going back to the topic of depression, what is its main cause?
A. I think it comes from two sources: (1) The role of the housewife has been stripped of its dignity and respect, so that women who are raising small children and doing the job they feel God gave them to do are made to feel inferior. They are taught to believe that they are being cheated and that life is passing them by. There is an attitude coming through the media that says a woman who is a housewife is a pitiful victim. This not only generated anger, but also the “stepsister” to anger, which is depression. (2) This depression has to do with the breakdown in the relationship between husbands and wives. One of the ways males and females differ is in the way we develop self-esteem. A man develops self-respect primarily from his job, from being respected in his work, from “building an empire” and earning money, from being respected by his employees or employer, or his clients or patients. On the other hand, a woman at home with small children develops self-respect primarily from the romantic relationship with her husband, and that puts a totally different orientation on the marriage. She has needs that he often fails to understand because his viewpoint is different.
Q. Are you saying that the woman at home develops esteem from her marriage?
A. Yes, because she is often cut off from regular contact with other adults. Therefore, her husband plays an extremely important role for her that she doesn’t play for him. He’s with people all day, his needs for human contact are met. She depends on their romantic relationship to say, “You are a worthy human being.” And that’s why she’s trying to pull him out of Monday Night Football and why she is trying to get him to put down the newspaper. She is saying, “Why don’t you ever talk to me?” That’s also why the anniversary is so much more important to her than it is to him.
The core of a woman’s emotional life, her self-esteem, depends on hearing her husband say, “You are doing a very valuable job of equal worth to the job that I’m doing. I love you for it. How can I help you with it?” Many men are not expressing that respect to their wives. As a result, depression is almost inevitable.
Q. We’ve defined the problem. Now can you offer some solutions and suggestions?
A. The solution involves, I think, the role that God has given men to provide leadership within their own families. God has given men a responsibility to do more than just earn a living. Part of their obligation is to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). That’s not a mere suggestion – that’s a divine commandment, that see our wives as a tender extension of ourselves, that we cherish them and instill that sense of worth and purpose that only a husband can bring.
Q. What if a wife has professional skills but her husband doesn’t want her to work – he wants her at home in the role of mother and home-maker? How do you feel about such a situation?
A. Whether or not a woman is employed outside the home is a matter for individual families to decide. My concern is for the woman who remains at home because she chooses and because she feels this is her responsibility. What I really want husbands to recognize is that if they appreciate the jobs their wives are doing in the home – of their children are important enough for her to spend her time with them – then it is extremely important for the husband to reserve time, effort and energy for her romantic needs. He should take her to dinner, build her up in the eyes of the children, bring her flowers, express to her: “I really do care about you and I value what you are doing here.” It is the only way a woman can do that job with satisfaction.
Q. What responsibility does the father have to the whole family, apart from him wife?
A. Here, again – from my Christian perspective – I feel that the husband has the responsibility for commitment of himself, wherever the need lies. If his wife is having trouble in discipline, that becomes his problem as well as hers. Most of all, he should provide the stability in the marital relationship by being committed to her welfare. That is what is missing in marriage today.
Q. Dou you think the children pick this up?
A. Sure, they do!
Q. If they see that the husband doesn’t really have this interest in his wife (or wide in her husband) does this have a detrimental effect on them?
A. There is nothing that creates insecurity faster in a child – and I mean nothing! – than a feeling that the marital relationship is about to disintegrate and sensing the lack of that commitment between parents. We are being told today that marriage and love without commitment are more successful. My nominee for one of the silliest songs of the ‘60s is Glen Campbell’s “Gentle On My Mind,” which says (and I’m paraphrasing): It’s not the inkstains that re dried on some marriage certificate that keeps me here with you…that keeps my bedroll stashed behind your couch. It’s knowing that I can get up and leave you anytime I want to. It’s having no hooks in my hide, that keeps you gentle to my mind. That is love without commitment past tomorrow, and it won’t work!
Q. Do you feel, then, that commitment is even more important than role?
A. I hate to put them in opposition to each other because they should be complimentary. Commitment involves playing the role that God gave us as an expression of that kind of love.
Q. What if a person says, “I’m tired of commitment. I don’t have the feelings for this person that I once had”?
A. Feelings are ephemeral – they come and go. Even in the best of marriages there are times when you feel great, times when you feel apathetic, and times when you feel admittedly negative. There has to be commitment of the will that provides long-term stability. You see, the will is the engine for the train, while the feelings are merely the caboose. The emotions are still part of the train, but they are being pulled by the will. The emotions can never pull the entire train.
Q. You mean we have reversed that order today?
A. I heard of a wedding the other day where the couple changed the wedding vows to read, “I promise to stay with you for as long as I love you.” I wish them luck, but they’re already in trouble. Their marriage won’t make it past the fifth year. The commitment is not there. Once, when I was with my dad – he has always had a great influence on my life – he took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and shared it with me. He had written a statement to my mother more than 42 years ago. He expressed these thoughts to her verbally before they were married, then he wrote them down. The language is a little formal, but it expresses what I was just saying:
I want you to understand and be fully aware of my feelings concerning the marriage covenant that we are about to enter. I have been taught at my mother’s knee, and in harmony with the Word of God, that the marriage vows are inviolable, and by entering into them, I am binding myself absolutely and for life. The idea of estrangement from you through divorce for any reason at all (although God allows one-infidelity) will never at any time be allowed to enter into my thinking. I’m not naïve in this. On the contrary, I’m fully aware of the possibility, unlikely as it now appears, that mutual incompatibility or other unforeseen circumstances could result in extreme mental suffering.
If such becomes the case, I am resolved for my part to accept it as a consequence of the commitment I am not making, and to bear it, if necessary, to the end of our lives together.
I have loved you dearly as a sweetheart and will continue to love you as my wife. But over and above that, I love you with a Christian love that demands that I never react in any way toward you that would jeopardize our prospects of entering heaven, which is the supreme objective of both our lives. And I pray that God himself will make our affection for one another perfect and eternal.
Copyright © 2011 Focus on the Family Middle East. All rights reserved.
