The Effect of Feminism on Chivalry

Two years ago, actress Jennifer Aniston stated, “Women are realizing more and more that they don’t need to have a man to have a child… Times have changed and what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents' days when you can't have children because you have waited too long.” Although this is a probably the freshest and one of the more dramatic feminist actions in the movement to feminism as it is most recently, it may shed light on the absolute extreme that could come of feminism; not to mention where it’s advancement is at present. More importantly I believe, is the significance of the effect that Feminism has had on America. Females being half of the population, the question: How has Feminism impacted the minds and roles of men?

 The greatest revolution on American feminism was during the 1920’s.The progression of feminism since then was no less inordinate as the impact feminism has had on American culture and society. It was at that time that the new generation of women began to seek more independence in their lifestyles. Young women wanted to achieve a college level education and then assume a job. A shift was made from the simpler, more innocent life which many people held at the time in the country. Although these women were not the first to get jobs in United States history—for minority and low-class women had been working a century prior—they were the first middle class women to intend on changing the way society traditionally was. These women became trademarked as the young, flamboyant flappers. They casted a wave in the conservative American culture with shorter skirts and edgy hairstyles, as well as by taking up jobs typically as secretaries. This indeed was a change, however it was not only them who sought variation in what became coined as the nuclear family in the 1950’s. Older women of the twenties who had been raised and derived from the classic American home of working husbands and wives and who tended to the home and children contributed greatly to the first legal action which set women slightly higher up beside the more yielded to man. It was this group of women who began the revolution by avidly seeking and establishing suffrage.

The Desire of Parents III

The selfish want for children can be specifically driven by different things. The most usually and probably the most inclusive reason is that a couple wants’ to be responsible for another. We are made to be caring, giving, and compassionate people, and we find joy in giving to others. Children who people to us are our responsibility alone, and they cannot live without us. Humans want the joy that a child brings, even aside from the parent-dependent relationship, especially when the child is a product of us and the one person we love the most. Obviously that love will spill over. These are all good things, but they are still initially self-centered.

Other times, whether these are for good or bad reasons for having children, they are probably more subconscious than anything in most situations. Those would include wanting to have control over a life in order to manipulate it in a way that the person themselves were or were not in the past, but have the ambition to place authority over in the life of someone else. That could include things which were disappointments or points of shame or guilt that one may seek to set in correct motion in a new life where the mistake can be prevented from reoccurrence before it becomes a history. Even if these are not the motive of potential parents, they could become the intent of parents. These things can certainly be for the benefit of the child in themselves, but they can easily be for the conscience of the parent.

God’s design of the family is very amazing. Despite the intentions and desires of our early nature, whether or not those be the majority of the incentive for a family with children, God uses us through the selfless-selfish love humans have for their blood, flesh, and imitation images. The Lord will use us to bring up the people that He wants in His plan.

That brings me to the counter which I didn’t completely explore which is what it would be to desire and have children out of selflessness. If we are living for the plan of the Creator, we will desire only what is for the kingdom of God. I believe it would be the will of God for us to adopt those children who already have life but do not have parents to take care of them. Because we are all children of God, it could be considered selfish to have children of our own just because we want them to have our genes. Selfless parents would be willing to parent any child of God. Even still, He delights in all children and His will will be done either way.

The Desire of Parents II

That situation is an example of a mother who thought she was loving her daughter and caring for her in a way that would provide the very best for her daughter. By this we can obviously know that the mother truly did love her daughter. In fact that is the case more likely than not. It’s not to say that parents do not love their children with this claim, it’s just that the production of the pure existence of children may be more for the parent themselves than the child. After all, parents do not know the child to love them before they are born. The idea and God-given desire for a family complete by children, is all that two individual’s have before their descendant’s.  

The mother of that girl thought that she was fighting for her daughter in the last possible way by keeping her alive. The mother knew life was the greatest thing she could give her, and like any loving parent, she thought death would be the worst she could give her. It wasn’t in the wish of the daughter she was interested in and acting upon though. The mother’s love for her daughter benefited her own selfish desire as true love for her daughter would have been selfless, giving first to the hope of her daughter as a result. I know that it is impossible for parent’s to think of agreeing to death, even if that would essentially be better for their child. With that kind of love, a parent would obviously be loving selflessly because they cannot even imagine this worst for their child. I don’t deny that, but my claim is that the intent of having children may be lout of selfishness many times.

The father’s love for us is selflessly given, and that is why our god is jealous for us. He wants back for His own, but selflessly he also have us the choice to life of death (literally and not as a continuation to the story).  Therefore—because we are made in God’s image—it is no wonder that parent’s could then love selfishly or jealously. For Christ-follower’s the drive to have a family comes with honoring God by doing so—contributing to His mission field by raising children who will fear Him and share what He did for us. Even within this, I believe selfish reasons are in the greater likeliness as the motive for children.

The Desire of Parents I

After thinking about relationships of marriage among society, I began to consider the desire for children in life. Of course the life of not every child is expected, however when they are expected or initially intended upon it is with some motive or desire that they are. Because I am a teenager- still a dependent and not a parent myself, I offer the lesser of the two positions for this perspective and although I look from the outside in, I am not under the suasion of bias on the investigation of why these desires may be.

When we are little, we just know that our parents love us. It is as we grow and have experiences where we get so frustrated and the only issue in the world is the one at the present moment that we wonder why we are there. When we are little, we don’t realize that our parents wanted us to have life because they wanted to experience the joy we would bring. God told us that children are precious gifts and that they ought to bring joy. He told the people of Israel to go and multiply and that those who rose up his children on earth would be specially honored for being parents. Indeed we are sinful people and it is in the sin that we reproduce by sexual desire, although that too was given us by God to be enjoyed between a husband and wife.

It is a common rule that children come of the love between two- which is part of the desire for children, however it could still be out of intention and out of love that a child be produced of selfishness. Ironically, as I sat down to write this, my point in doing so was affirmed in a sort of way by the moral on the story called “My Sister’s Keeper”. Based on a true story, the movie showed the miserable struggle of a young woman with cancer. When she was diagnosed with cancer as a toddler, her parents genetically selected a sister that could be born to help preserve the life of their first daughter. The younger sister loved her elder and endured pain of her own in order to provide the blood and marrow for her sister. When the cancerous girl no longer wants to fight her disease, she asks her sister to sue their parents for the right to her own body, for it was the mother who clung to her daughter’s life and not herself. It would be by law that the girl could finally have her will of death over the suffering in the disease after sixteen years of her mother’s wish for her life despite disease.