Being a Wife and Mother is a Woman’s Highest Calling

too bad the calling doesn’t offer a 401K

There was a time I would have applauded the misogynistic commencement speech given in May to the 2024 graduates of Benedictine College. The speaker, Kansas City Chiefs kicker, Harrison Butker, used the opportunity to opine aplenty on gender roles. And of course, being, a man he is qualified to address the topic specifically as it applies to women.

Forgive my snarky tone but reading the transcript just boils my blood.  Haven’t seen it?  Here you go. I’ll just continue in my people watching at the coffee shop while you read.

If you’d rather not, I’ll give you a little break down. Oh hell. I’ll just give you a quote (emphasis is mine):

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world,” he said. “But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabel would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today, and able to be the man I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”

A Catholic himself, Butker seized the opportunity to address other issues including taking a swipe at Pride month, calling out abortion and a taking a swipe at those who pursue infertility services (which he also referred to as a “disorder.”)

He also urged the men to be “unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men.”  (Read: Your helpless little women are just waiting to be rescued.)

I can’t imagine sitting there listening to this bovine scatology as a graduate who has just slogged away for four years to become an engineer, nurse, or scientist. I mean geesh, the school offers over 50 undergraduate programs, two Master’s degree along with a slew of other programs like pre-med or pre-law.

I can testify, if there’s one thing Catholics have done right, it is their commitment to quality education. I know this firsthand just from my early school days. When I transferred to a public school for 5th grade, I tested way above grade level compared to my peers.

While I have long left the Catholic faith, my training as a Spiritual Director came through a Benedictine Monastery. Over the course of the two-year program, I came to regard the sisters as Bad Ass Nuns. They didn’t even kick me out of the program for my potty mouth. (The director even joked about putting Theresa “Bad Ass” Winn on my certificate.)

I imagined their reaction to the comments and thought it would be similar to the nuns at the college who pushed back on the idea that being a homemaker is a woman’s highest calling. So. Lemme see if I got this right.  The nuns who’ve spent their lives devoted to nursing the sick, educating children, advocating social justice, and advancing science missed the boat, did they?

Oh my. The snark is heavy with this one today, eh?

It’s with good reason. I was once solidly in the “highest calling for women is in the home” school of thought. Not that I ever dissed women who followed a career track. But I’m sure my view was sullied by not a small amount of pride because, uh, duh, the HIGHEST CALLING is in the home. But I kept those views private.

How the hell did I get into that camp, coming from a home where mom was the breadwinner and dad was the drinker?  That fact that I was a highly traumatized young woman coming from a chaotic home with undiagnosed ADHD would play a huge part in decisions I made.

I did what I was supposed to do. I enrolled in Uni. Then I quit. Then I transferred to a private college in another state. Then I bounced over to another state and did another herky jerky term at yet another school.

My major changed almost as often as the schools.

I fancied dreams of nursing. Or maybe Spanish. Then again communications looked fun.

I truly couldn’t grasp what it would look like to knuckle down, focus, graduate and build a career for myself. (I find it curious that even though my mom was the breadwinner in our home, neither I nor my sisters ever pursued a career path.)

Making it more difficult was the fact that I have always been quite driven.  (Hello, trauma response.)  

My life felt like I was in a clown car stuffed full of ambition and ideas, pedal to the metal and snackies on board!  What fun!

Only problem? This clown car had no designated driver. I was going nowhere. Fast.

Looking back with the wisdom forged from 60 years of living, I realize I was indeed seeking something. It was a bigly something.  But it wasn’t a place.

It was safety.

Kind of hard to make life plans when your early experiences have taught you the world is a dangerous place and as a result, your nervous system is locked into flight or fight mode. Every. Single. Day.

Enter my religious conversion from Catholicism to fundamental Christianity. I landed on the doorstep of a nondenominational church that was in the same city where I was attending school.

I was 18, confused, and reeling from my sister’s death due to leukemia a few months earlier.

The open arms, kindness and sense of belonging was just what I needed. I loved the people and they loved me. They even invited me to join in with the music with my guitar. And there was something I’d never seen before in real life.

Is this what a scientist feels like when they discover a new species in the Amazon jungle? Wh-wh-whaaaat is this? It was…

A stay-at-home mom. Not just one.  Many stay-at-home moms.

Wait, what?! Full stop. Stay at…what?! What is this strange aberration?

This was like Alice in Wonderland without the anthropomorphic creatures.

Little pangs of jealousy would arise in me when I saw kids not much younger than me who were raised with a mom at home. It was something I had wished I had growing up.

I was a latchkey kid before latchkey kids became a thing. My childhood was a bit feral, minus kindly wolves.

There were times I wished I could come home from school to a parent and the smell of freshly baked cookies. Truly a fantasy compliments of the Brady Bunch because up to that time in my life, all the women I knew worked outside the home. And ain’t nobody had an Alice.

I tapped the brakes on the clown car long enough plug into this community. And it wasn’t long before my world view would change. And become smaller. And above all else I would find what I was seeking…a sense of safety.

Safety. It met my need. At the cost of hobbling my future and stifling my potential.

To be continued… 

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