It's Not About the Career

Michael Noer is either an incredibly courageous journalist, or an incredibly stupid one.

His article this week in Forbes has raised quite a stir. (Incidentally, after day one, a counter-point was added to the website, written by one of his co-workers.) Entitled, "Don't Marry Career Women," the article shows extensive research that supports the idea that a career woman may be a less ideal choice for a spouse if what you're after is faithfulness in your marriage and a happy mother for your children.

All furor aside, I think he missed a vital point. Whether a woman has a career is not the issue. Her priorities are.

I'm concerned about the implications for single Christian career women who exude so much confidence and self-actualization and independence that they leave single Christian men with little to offer them. If a 25 year old career gal earns enough to pay her way, she doesn't need a provider. If she's fit and strong and maybe a black belt to boot, she doesn't need a protector. There's a strong cult of independence, so strong in fact, that I worry it will render a lot of single Christian women unable, or unwilling, to ever become interdependent enough to want or even be capable of Christian marriage.

I'm not saying the single gal should limit herself to knitting and waiting for prince charming, but what her attitude says about her priorities goes a long way toward determining if she'll ever be getting married or forever staying single.

Does she want marriage? Does she want children? Is she open to or planning on quitting her high-powered job to raise her family when they arrive? Then she should make sure that part of her is as obvious as the driven-career woman part.

Plenty of Men to Go Around!

This week's boundless webzine features two articles of interest to our blog readers. The first revisits my homeownership series, only this time from a purely financial perspective. The second, reflected in the title above, debunks a myth that's lately gained steam. Namely: the belief that Christian single women outnumber the men and therefore doom many to unwanted, lifelong, singleness.

Thanks to Mike Theemling (see comments) for taking the stats even further. He did a little research on his own and found that not only are their more single Christian men than women, but there actually more of them -- the men -- in church. I know that won't square with what a lot of the female readers are experiencing; it's not true in every church, but it's encouraging to know it's true overall.

I suspect part of the anecdotal evidence that furthers the perception that women outnumber men comes from mainline churches where, according to journalist Allan Dobras, the pews are filled with older, more female parishioners. In "Men at Church," Dobras blames the exodus of young people, including men, on

the denial of the authority of Scripture which gave rise to an apostate clergy and the "cafeteria Christian" who selects from the Bible those portions of scripture that he/she chooses to accept.

Once Scriptural authority was compromised, it served as an opportunity to rethink human sexuality and introduce the legitimization of homosexuality, which has become the most divisive and polarizing issue in the modern church.

I'd add to that the redefining of the roles men and women play; leaving both sexes confused about how to initiate, function and progress in romantic relationships.

I'll be coming back to this issue in next month's Boundless column.

Till then, I think the best encouragement is that the perception of too few men is a fallacy and the more biblically sound your church is, the more likely it is to appeal to men and more accurately reflect the numbers.