I was blessed to be raised in a home and then marry into a family where the role of women and mothers was greatly valued. I believe that men and women have God-given traits that compliment each other. I also think that Satan works hard to make women feel undervalued or convinces them they need to be more like a man to be equal. I love how the Gospel of Jesus Christ supports womanhood.
I am concerned about what I see happening with some of our young
women. Satan would have you dress, talk, and behave in unnatural and destructive
ways in your relationships with young men. The adversary is having a heyday
distorting attitudes about gender and roles and about families and individual
worth. He is the author of mass confusion about the value, the role,
the contribution, and the unique nature of women.
Today’s popular culture, which is preached by every form of media
from the silver screen to the Internet, celebrates the sexy, saucy, socially
aggressive woman. These distortions are seeping into the thinking of some of
our own women.
My dear sisters, we believe in you. We realize that you are the
emotional (and sometimes spiritual) glue that holds families together. We
believe that the Church simply will not accomplish what it must without your
faith and faithfulness, your innate tendency to put the well-being of others
ahead of your own, and your spiritual strength and tenacity.
“I
wonder if you sisters fully understand the greatness of your gifts and talents.
One of your unique, precious, and sublime gifts is your femininity. Femininity
is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your
spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness,
gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength. It is manifest differently in each
girl or woman, but each of you possesses it. Femininity is part of your inner beauty.
One
of your particular gifts is your feminine intuition. Do not limit yourselves.
As you seek to know the will of our Heavenly Father in your life and become
more spiritual, you will be far more attractive, even irresistible. You can use
your smiling loveliness to bless those you love and all you meet, and spread
great joy. Femininity is part of the God-given divinity within each of you. Be
proud of your womanhood.”
Certainly there are trends and
forces at work that would weaken and even eliminate your influence, to the
great detriment of individuals, families, and society at large. Let me mention
three as a caution and a warning.
A pernicious philosophy that
undermines women’s moral influence is the devaluation of marriage and of
motherhood and homemaking as a career. Some view homemaking with outright
contempt, arguing it demeans women and that the relentless demands of raising
children are a form of exploitation.8 They ridicule what they call “the mommy
track” as a career. This is not fair or right. We do not diminish the value of
what women or men achieve in any worthy endeavor or career—we all benefit from
those achievements—but we still recognize there is not a higher good than
motherhood and fatherhood in marriage. There is no superior career, and no
amount of money, authority, or public acclaim can exceed the ultimate rewards
of family. Whatever else a woman may accomplish, her moral influence is no more
optimally employed than here.
A third area of concern comes from
those who, in the name of equality, want to erase all differences between the
masculine and the feminine. Often this takes the form of pushing women to adopt
more masculine traits—be more aggressive, tough, and confrontational. It is now
common in movies and video games to see women in terribly violent roles,
leaving dead bodies and mayhem in their wake. It is soul-numbing to see men in
such roles and certainly no less so when women are the ones perpetrating and
suffering the violence.
