The Blessings Of Being A Mom

Sermon Notes May 12, 2013 FBCam

The Blessings of Being a Mother

Happy Mother’s Day! As we celebrate our mom’s today, I found the following humorous reflections on the differences in the way mom’s respond to their children as the second and third child comes along. (Source: sermoncentral.com)

Your Clothes

1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your doctor confirms your pregnancy.

2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.

3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.

Preparing for the Birth

1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.

2nd baby: You don’t bother practicing because you remember that last time, breathing didn’t do a thing.

3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your 8th month.

Worries

1st baby: At the first sign of distress--a whimper, a frown--you pick up the baby.

2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.

3rd baby: You teach your 3-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.

Pacifier

1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.

2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby’s bottle.

3rd baby: You put it in your mouth and suck it clean, then pop it back in the baby’s mouth

Diapering

1st baby: You change your baby’s diapers every hour, whether they need it or not.

2nd baby: You change their diaper every 2 to 3 hours, if needed.

3rd baby: You change their diaper only after it is sagging to their knees.

At Home

1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.

2nd baby: You spend a bit of every day watching to be sure your older child isn’t squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.

3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.

IT’s NOT EASY Being a MOM!

One thing that makes it difficult is that some people think being a mom is second rate.

Seminary president, Al Mohler wrote an article describing a “Good Morning America” program that devoted two consecutive daily segments featuring the arguments of Linda Hirshman, a prominent feminist thinker. Source:http://www.albertmohler.com/2004/03/24/time-magazine-and-the-new-stay-at-home-moms/

This well known and published feminist was concerned by an amazing trend– large numbers of highly educated young women on elite college and university campuses indicated that they did not intend to pursue a career outside the home, but to give themselves to being wives and mothers.

Concerned by these statistics, Hirshman decided to undertake some research of her own. She selected a sample of young women who had been identified as brides in the “Sunday Styles” section of The New York Times for three Sunday’s in 1996. Hirshman believed that “the brilliantly educated and accomplished brides” of her sample would be indicative of the way this generation of young women is approaching career, marriage, and motherhood.

As Hirshman relates: “At marriage, they included a vice president of client communication, a gastroenterologist, a lawyer, an editor, and a marketing executive. In 2003 and 2004, I tracked them down and called them. I interviewed about 80 percent of the 41 women who announced their weddings over three Sundays in 1996. Around 40 years old, college graduates with careers: Who was more likely than they to be reaping feminism’s promise of opportunity? Imagine my shock when I found almost all the brides from the Sunday at home with their children. Statistical anomaly? Nope. Same result for the next Sunday. And the one after that.”

“Ninety percent of the brides I found had had babies. Of the 30 with babies, five were still working full time. Twenty-five, or 85 percent, were not working full time. Of those not working full time, 10 were working part time but often a long way from their prior career paths. And half the married women with children were not working at all.”

(End quote from Hirsham)

Mohler remarks Linda Hirsham clearly believes that housekeeping and child-rearing are not interesting and should not be socially validated. She doesn’t buy into the arguments of many homemakers who say taking care of the family is the “most fulfilling thing they could imagine.” She accuses stay at home moms of “bearing most of the burden of the work always associated with the lowest caste.” She identifies these tasks as “sweeping and cleaning bodily waste,” and condemned mothers who were described in a press account as “vigilantly watching their babies for signs of excretion 24-7 as “untouchables by choice”

Make no mistake–Hirshman does not want women to have any real choice in the matter. “Choice feminism” is an abysmal failure, in her view, because it validates what should never be validated–motherhood.