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Since 2002, LAF has refuted the follies of feminism and promoted a strong, intelligent, biblical view of womanhood. We love femininity and are delighted to share the beauties of the womanly virtues with women all over the world. New to LAF? Start here! Looking for older articles? Please visit the archives!
May 13, 2012 | Author: Kelly Crawford
My mother has had over three dozen children. She gave birth to two, but giving birth isn’t really what makes one a mother, is it? It’s the hard stuff. The stuff my mother has done over half her life, with little accolades and with no earthly payment. The mother-stuff.
And the most important of her jobs? BEING THERE. Being available….the heart of what it means to serve.
Read the rest on my blog.
May 13, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
From Lauren Casper’s blog:
There are so many women in our lives who are hurting and who dread Mother’s Day. We may not even recognize them but they are there. They’re the ones who dread church on Sunday morning and perhaps choose to stay home. They are dreading the sermon that will inevitably be geared toward mothers. They are dreading the moment when all the mothers are asked to stand while they remain seated. They are feeling like they are somehow less of a woman because they haven’t been awarded that badge of honor that comes with being called “Mama.”
The pain is real and searing. Let’s not forget these women in our excitement over cards, flowers, gifts, and breakfasts made by little hands. Let’s not forget that we live in a broken world and while we might be living our dream there are so many who feel like their dreams have been tossed in the dirt and stomped all over. Let’s be a little more sensitive to those around us on Sunday. Let’s open our hearts and our arms.
Read the rest HERE.
May 13, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
On this day when we celebrate moms, it’s amazing there are women in the world who think motherhood is denigrating and without real worth:
Simone De Beauvoir famously said that being a full-time mother should be illegal because too many women would enjoy it. Badinter does not advocate criminalizing motherhood. She just wants to keep it heavily stigmatized. Motherhood, when it is trumpeted as something fulfilling and pleasurable, gives the cause a bad name.
To modern mothers, Badinter hurls the accusation of betrayal. The enemy is no longer only men; it is other women. They have set up an impossible ideal of close, all-natural mothering.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines status as the “relative social standing or professional position.” It is one of those buzzwords in the feminist phrase book. To a feminist there is no such thing as status that is not accompanied by professional success, or at least economic independence. Badinter believes women must collectively march toward universal “status.”
Read the full piece at The Thinking Housewife.
May 11, 2012 | Author: robinphillips
In an article I wrote for the Colson Center, titled “How Gay ‘Marriage’ Became Plausible”, I explored some of the issues that are upstream of the same-sex marriage debate. What are the plausibility structures that have led to a state of affairs whereby people are even willing to discuss something as absurd as changing the legal definition of marriage?
In my article I suggest that one key factor in bringing us to this state of affairs has been the persistent erosion of the gender polarity that occurred throughout the 20th century. Throughout the last century feminist writers kept telling us that gender is irrelevant in man-woman relationships, including the relationship of marriage. What happens if you consider gender to be a functional irrelevancy long enough is that suddenly same-sex marriage, in which gender is a formal irrelevancy, starts to seem a lot more plausible. (more…)
May 6, 2012 | Author: Mrs. Wayne Hunter
“Homemaking is not simply housework. Housework is keeping a house clean; homemaking is creating a pleasant home for one’s family. The aim and greatest reward of real homemaking is a happy, contented family.” ~ Quoted from an entry titled “Homemaking” by Ida Bailey Allen, Page 2875 of The Book of Knowledge, Volume Eight, Copyright 1962 by Grolier Incorporated
Time + Devotion + Nurture = Womanly and Familial Integrity
To become a homemaker rather than a woman who merely does housework requires that a woman does more than the bare minimum that is required to get her many jobs in the home done–more than just enough to get by. She goes the extra mile in homemaking to do these jobs excellently, not in mediocre ways. A homemaker adds homey touches and does her job with loving and caring devotion to not only her family’s physical health (having a clean home is very important to that), but their total health: mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical. She knows that everything she does or doesn’t do in the home has an impact that is, at least in part, affected by the care she puts into her work – she nurtures herself and her family. Her family, including herself, is wholly cared for and loved.
May 6, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
From Boundless.org:
Young evangelical leaders at the recent Q conference in DC were asked, as part of a panel on reducing abortions, this question: ”Do you believe that churches should advocate contraception for their single 20-somethings?” The “yes” crowd was 66 percent large. Only 34 percent said no.
Wow! What does one make of this?
What’s remarkable and discouraging to me is the Q attendees are not back-pew slackers, but a gathering of influential leaders in the coming generation of evangelicalism. And a strong majority of them not only believe that it is fine for single Christians to use birth control, but that the church, Christ’s bride, should get busy encouraging it if not directly supplying it. But advocating contraception to cut down the number of abortions is not a rationale.
Read the full piece at THIS LINK. Many people mistakenly believe that contraceptives reduce the abortion rate, but even Planned Parenthood’s own research debunks that myth. Encouraging more promiscuity doesn’t reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies or the subsequent abortion rate.
May 6, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
From Boundless.org:
A year and a half into our marriage, we were walking on the fair grounds, commenting on the young couples in love: teen girls carrying bears won by their boyfriends at the clown toss, couples nestled in the seats of a Ferris wheel, others dancing to the live band, a few making out behind the vendors’ stands.
“Remember when we were that in love?” David said to me.
Were? The comment bothered me. It was the same thing my parents had said, jokingly to each other and with smiles in their eyes, when they watched David and I fall in love. At that time, we were so in love that I couldn’t imagine that there would ever come a time when I would not want to spend hours cuddling, lost in long conversation about everything under the sun. I had always believed we would keep the inloveness alive long after the wedding, despite what I heard older folks say.
To me, it was a problem that our feelings were changing. And I’m not the only one in our generation to feel that way. We know people who have broken up because they were concerned that their feelings would not stand the test of time. And the young adults that we spent two summers interviewing for the Love and Marriage in Middle America Project expressed the same fears about losing “the spark” after the wedding day….
David and I wondered what people who had been married 50-plus years would say about all of this. So we gathered together a small group of senior citizens at the local retirement community and hosted a “Town Hall Meeting on Marriage.” What we heard is that, for these folks, marriage is not primarily about feeling perpetually and passionately in love, but about “companionship” and “having a family, children, a home.”
Read the rest HERE. This is an excellent piece that highlights the richness of a mature married love. I am here to testify that the love my husband and I have for each other is far, far deeper than the initial newlywed “spark,” though, at the time, we thought that was incredibly intense, deep love. But over time and through the births of children and the many ups and downs of daily life God has taken us through, that love has carved a deep channel in both of us. The new-love spark is wonderful, but it’s not all there is, and it is so worth the investment of time and emotions in our spouse to see love grow and weather the storms of life.
May 6, 2012 | Author: robinphillips
May 6, 2012 | Author: Mrs. Wayne Hunter
“What’s wrong with women nowadays?” is a question that many other women may ask after seeing grown women who are angry, cruel, and seemingly unable to be very good wives and mothers. Maybe these women argue with their own children like children themselves; maybe these women are hollering at their husbands or boyfriends; maybe these women are griping about many things. What is “wrong” with many of these women is that they are terribly, terribly frustrated. It is not up to us who have found the keys to overcoming womanly frustration to judge these women, but to offer to help them. (more…)
May 5, 2012 | Author: Anna T
May 2, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
This is an good piece from Mercatornet’s Family Edge:
Some of the most interesting debates on family policies are taking place in the European countries of the former Soviet bloc. In 2008, Lithuania passed legislation to define “family” as the married union of a man and a woman together with their children, adopted or biological. The point was key in terms of who gets the money the state earmarks to support families….
Lithuania is, of course, not without its “family diversity” champions, but a majority of MPs so far seems to support the move to enshrine a traditional definition of the family in the Constitution.
Read the full piece HERE. It is refreshing to see that more countries are waking up to realize that, without solid foundations that do not shift on a whim, their nations and cultures will “degenerate.” The prime minister also noted that redefining the family is not an issue of choice, saying, “No one is proposing to ban anything. If people want to live unmarried and have children, they will continue to do so freely, but why should that be called family?” This is precisely how biblical ethics work. You cannot pass laws to eliminate immorality, because people are still sinners. However, that doesn’t mean you remove all definitions and laws and have an “anything goes” policy. The results are chaotic and tend toward ruin, as we see happening all across the West now.
May 2, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
From Mercatornet’s Demography is Destiny blog:
I thought today that I would follow up Shannon’s blogpost from last week about China’s demographic decline. This piece from the Economist shows that the inexorable rise of the Dragon will be hindered by its demographic Achilles heel. According to the UN medium variant population projection, China’s population will dip to below 1.3 billion in 2050 (assuming that its very low fertility rate starts to recover). However, if its fertility rate remains at about 1.5-1.6 children per women then China will have less than 1 billion people in 2060. Thus, China can no longer be considered the factory of the world – its workforce will actually start to shrink in absolute terms after 2013. If China wants to continue to supply its hungry factories with hands then it will need to look offshore for workers. Who knows what problems large scale immigration will bring to China, it is, after all, a country that does not have a history of integrating migrants in large numbers in recent times….
I thought today that I would follow up Shannon’s blogpost from last week about China’s demographic decline. This piece from the Economist shows that the inexorable rise of the Dragon will be hindered by its demographic Achilles heel. According to the UN medium variant population projection, China’s population will dip to below 1.3 billion in 2050 (assuming that its very low fertility rate starts to recover). However, if its fertility rate remains at about 1.5-1.6 children per women then China will have less than 1 billion people in 2060. Thus, China can no longer be considered the factory of the world – its workforce will actually start to shrink in absolute terms after 2013. If China wants to continue to supply its hungry factories with hands then it will need to look offshore for workers. Who knows what problems large scale immigration will bring to China, it is, after all, a country that does not have a history of integrating migrants in large numbers in recent times.
Read the full piece at THIS LINK.
May 2, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
Visionary Womanhood is sponsoring a giveaway of an excellent new book!
To kick off the month of May and our theme of Women and Dominion, I’m really excited to introduce you all to a book I’ve been waiting for MONTHS to be released. It’s finally here! And Leah Smith’s Diapers, Dishes and Dominion: How Christian Housewives Can Change the World is everything I knew it would be!
Pop over to Visionary Womanhood’s latest update to read about the giveaway!
April 28, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
This is a thoroughly thought-provoking article from Jennifer Roback-Morse. I realize this is a touchy subject even among Christians (Does the state have any legitimate role in marriage, or is marriage essentially a private covenant between individuals and God?). However, I think the author makes a compelling case for the necessity of marriage and the need for the state to back one-man-one-woman marriage instead of undermining it with “no-fault” divorce laws and new definitions of what constitutes marriage.
I decided to rethink the whole business of a free society, starting from the child’s point of view, with my 2001 book, Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village. The fact of childhood dependence raises a whole series of questions. How do we get from a position of helpless dependence and complete self-centeredness, to a position of independence and respect for others? Are our views of the child somehow related to the foundations of a free society? And, to ask a question that may sound like heresy to libertarian ears: Do the needs of children place legitimate demands and limitations on the behaviour of adults?
I came to the conclusion that a free society needs adults who can control themselves, and who have consciences. A free society needs people who can use their freedom, without bothering other people too much. We need to respect the rights of others, keep our promises, and restrain ourselves from taking advantage of others.
We learn to do these things inside the family, by being in a relationship with our parents. We can see this by looking at attachment- disordered children and failure-to-thrive children from orphanages and foster care. These children have their material needs met, for food, clothing, and medical care. But they are not held, or loved, or looked at. They simply do not develop properly, without mothers and fathers taking personal care of them. Some of them never develop consciences. But a child without a conscience becomes a real problem: this is exactly the type of child who does whatever he can get away with. A free society can’t handle very many people like that, and still function.
In other words I asked, “Do the needs of society place constraints on how we treat children?” But even this analysis still views the child from society’s perspective. It is about time we look at it from the child’s point of view, and ask a different kind of question. What is owed to the child?
Children are entitled to a relationship with both of their parents. They are entitled to know who they are and where they came from. Therefore children have a legitimate interest in the stability of their parents’ union, since that is ordinarily how kids have relationships with both parents. If Mom and Dad are quarreling, or if they live on opposite sides of the country, the child’s connection with one or both of them is seriously impaired.
But children cannot defend their rights themselves. Nor is it adequate to intervene after the fact, after harm already has been done. Children’s relational and identity rights must be protected proactively.
Read the full piece HERE. (Not for young readers.)
April 28, 2012 | Author: Jennie Chancey
From Boundless.org:
It’s widely held that when dealing with abortion, rape and incest are special cases. Most people will say abortion is the closest thing to a solution in such cases. Even those who disagree — who point out that an innocent child shouldn’t perish for the sins of his father — often share the popular assumption that abortion would be something of a relief to the woman who’s been victimized. In short, the notion is that the interests of the woman and her child are in conflict: What’s good for one is bad for the other.
But is that true? Some Harvard students thought otherwise, and they decided to put forth their dissenting view in a very public way.
Read the full piece HERE. (Not for young readers.)
