Devaluing Children (and Motherhood)

Recently I had a conversation with a conservative friend I'll call Jay and a liberal acquaintance I'll call Nancy.

Nancy does contracting work with various companies, and she had recently lost her main contract. She told us how much she liked her free time, but wasn't happy about losing the income. She said her husband asked her how she likes being a stay-at-home mom. She told him, "Don't call me that. That's not what I am!" She said she preferred to be considered unemployed.

My friend Jay, whose wife is a homeschooling mom of five, said, "There's honor in taking care of children."

Nancy replied that she doesn't look down on women who take care of their children, but it's not for her. She said, "There's a reason for daycare!" Then she talked about how in the summer she has a full-time babysitter for one child and how she keeps the other child in camps all summer.

I didn't really comment to her, as nothing I could say would make her view her children differently.

Yes, there is a reason for daycare, just as there is a reason for kennels. Some people use daycare for short intervals when they need someone to watch their children, much as others would use a kennel to care for their pets while they are on vacation.

But if someone boarded his pet at a kennel for months at a time, it would make you wonder why he had the pet if he didn't want to spend any time with it. For people like Nancy who don't want their children near them any more than is possible, I wonder why they conceived children in the first place. Or why they don't make an adoption plan so their children can have parents who actually care about them.

Nancy is not alone. Our culture views children as a bother and a burden, not as a gift from God. Is it any wonder that so many children have neither affection nor respect for their parents?

No work that I do will ever be more important than the work of raising my children. While some families don't have the financial ability to have a parent take care of their children, I am thankful for the sacrifices my parents made to allow my mother to take care of and educate me at home. And I'm thankful for a wife who views our children as her most important responsibility.

Truly, "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

#

Wesley Wilson is the President of Let Her Live, a nonprofit dedicated to saving babies by showing the beauty and value of life to women considering abortion. Please learn more about the Let Her Live pro-life billboard campaign. Donations are tax deductible.

The Value of a Sparrow

"What was that about?" my six-and-a-half-year-old daughter asked.

"Shhh. Let me hear the news," I answered, hoping she would forget.

She didn't. They don't forget the things you wish they would.

After the news ended, she said, "What was that story about the boy?"

I told her that a little boy had been kidnapped and killed by bad men. Neighbors had found his body.

A week or two ago she questioned me about a news story in which a man flew his plane with his eight-year-old daughter in it into his ex-mother-in-law's house in revenge on his ex-wife. These stories about the murders of children are too common.

I try to think back to what my mother told us about similar stories, but I can't remember hearing any. In our little town even a break-in was big bad news. Most people went to bed with their doors unlocked. Children left to play in the neighborhood after breakfast and returned for lunch and supper. If my brother or I got into trouble, my mother knew before we even reached home or definitely within twenty-four hours.

What has happened?

We could credit it to many things: the breakdown of the family, the breakdown of the community, rejection of Judeo/Christian values, the fact that most children no longer learn religious values weekly in a church or synagogue, the absence of mothers in the home during the day, and the increase of pornography.

But we shouldn't leave out the devaluing of life caused by Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion declared the unborn child was not a person under the law. It allowed him or her to be disposed of like a piece of trash. It took away the influence of the child's father in deciding whether that unborn child survives or dies.

Those legal precedents had enormous social consequences. Suddenly the father was less of a father than a sperm donor. The child became a financial burden to the man if he didn't have a commitment to the mother. He had to support the kid without being involved in the decision of whether the child lived or died.

Now many men no longer receive pressure by the community to marry the mother and form a family. They no longer have to grow up, become responsible, and do the right thing. Hence we find many men who are still children at 30, leeching off whichever woman will support them and her offspring.

Because these men no longer have a commitment to their children with the woman whom they made them, many of them felt no real bond with the children they lived with. Instead, in some cases, access to the kids became part of the bargain to keep the man in the home.

As for the children themselves, if they could be disposed of so easily before birth, how precious are they really? They become tools for pleasure, tools for profit with pornography or prostitution, tools for revenge or control.

Child abuse has increased with this devaluation.

Our attitudes toward children have changed in the past forty years. With that change, we changed our actions, but God's attitudes have not changed. He says that "the very hairs of your head are numbered." He says that those who harm one of these little ones would be better off if they had a millstone tied around their necks and were tossed into the river. He sees them as his reward to parents, as examples of His image, as teachers of how to enter heaven.

Christ says, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."

When the toddler is fussy, the teenager is arguing, or the baby isn't planned, it's easy to forget how much God loves each one of them. We need to step back and see them through His eyes, to see their potential, their uniqueness, and their value to God. He cherishes them.

And so should we.

Debbie W. Wilson

Debbie W. Wilson is a human rights advocate, speaker, and author of Christy Award-winning thriller Tiger in the Shadows. Her weekly prayer list for the persecuted church can be found on the home page of Bound Together Ministries.

Just like my kids

"Oh, she's just like my kids."

My neighbor was referring, of course, to her dog. And it was meant as hyperbole.

The thing is, for many in America, it's not hyperbole.

We really care little more for our children than our pets.

Consider:

How many parents take their children to obedience school? Plenty of pet owners take their dogs.

When was the last time you turned on the radio and found a call-in show on child training? I found one on pet training a couple weeks ago.

How many owners of a purebred dog will let it wander the town freely? You wouldn't do that! It might get stolen! It might end up as the mama of a litter of mutts!

But children as young as 3 roam my neighborhood without any adult knowing where they are. Surely the 7-year-old sister is up to keeping an eye on the little one!

When we went to Orlando last year, our resort provided child care so the adults could go enjoy themselves. I had to ask myself what kind of parent leaves his child with perfect strangers in a strange city. But enough did that the resort offered the service. I didn't check what kind of background checks the workers at the day care facility went through because I wasn't going to think of leaving my children there. I'll bet the parents who did leave their children there didn't inquire either. I had just left my dog at a kennel for the trip, but I wasn't about to leave my son or daughter like that.

But this is not about how we pamper our pets.

This is about the fact that our society has devalued its children.

We treat them as pretty playthings, we push them aside when we're done playing with them, we permit perverts to destroy them and suffer only nominal punishment, and we throw them away if we decide we don't want them.

How different from the view we find in the Bible!

Children are a heritage from the Lord.

They are something given in trust, something that will outlast us. They are our legacy. They are the measure of our success as individuals, of our usefulness in society.

You will never be sorry you poured your life into your children. The time holding the infant, reading to the child, teaching him a thousand little things -- it is not wasted.

Take the time to let your children know you love them. And really love them! Don't just teach them to play a game -- teach them the value of work by having them work with you week in and week out. Don't just teach them to understand a sport -- teach them to understand life by explaining why your family lives the way you do. Don't just teach them to aspire to admirable occupations -- teach them to aspire to and achieve honorable character.

That takes time. Legacy-building always does.