Coggins7 wrote:sunstoned wrote:The response talk sounds inspiring, uplifting and honest. The original talk by Beck is sexist, condescending and was probably written by a man. Most likely BKP or ETB.
Thanks for the substantive analysis.
Coggins7 wrote:No, I think what you bolded is precisely what I zoned in on. Of course power and influence being somehow equated to dishes, cooking, and an orderly home makes me gag a bit. I'm a clean freak with my home (I clean before my maid comes!) and gotta tell you scrubbing on my knees is not an extremely empowering job...
Strange Moniker, I don't see the references to dishes, cooking, and an orderly home in Beck's talk stand out as you do (although these are the day to day tasks of homemaking, and as someone who has essentially been a nurse and homemaker for several years, due to my wife's physical problems, I know what this entails). Here's what she actually mentions:
Mothers who know are nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness.5 To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a "house of order," and women should pattern their homes after the Lord's house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.
Is the greater doctrinal basis for the importance of homemaking now more apparent, now that the hoary June Cleaver rhetoric has been dismissed from the discussion?
Coggins, appreciation of the arts, literature, various cultures, history, tolerance, education, creativity, compassion, charity, nature, and joy are what I want to instill in my children. We immerse our children in things we wish for them to appreciate. A clean house may make life comfortable, yet, does nothing to further a person's growth in many aspects.
Spiritual growth is equated to a nice, clean house? How come I have a bunch of lil athiests running about in my clean house? How does that work, precisely?
My chest is welling up as we speak. Serotonin is rushing through my veins in lil bursts of jubilant ecstasy from my clean surroundings.
Coggins7 wrote:Coggins, appreciation of the arts, literature, various cultures, history, tolerance, education, creativity, compassion, charity, nature, and joy are what I want to instill in my children. We immerse our children in things we wish for them to appreciate. A clean house may make life comfortable, yet, does nothing to further a person's growth in many aspects.
Where do you see Beck disagreeing with the above, or her analysis leaving no room for such concerns (especially if, as more and more LDS are doing, the children are home schooled)?
Spiritual growth is equated to a nice, clean house? How come I have a bunch of lil athiests running about in my clean house? How does that work, precisely?
Buddhists, Confucians, Jains, Hindus, Jews, and Playboy centerfolds keep, I'm sure, clean houses too. I'm not sure I'm following this criticism at all. Suffice it to say, that while not all clean homes are spiritual, and whole not all spiritual homes are ordered and clean, spirituality (as well as the intellectual and psychological maturity which are its corollaries) is better cultivated in such surroundings. I see nothing remarkable in this claim at all.
Moniker wrote:Well, I'm sure plenty of remarkable theists have complete messes of homes and are decent, honorable people. That this talk emphasizes cleanliness and appearances comes across as shallow -- something that Playboy centerfolds may be.
Well, how does a clean home teach my children the appreciation of any of the things I listed above? If I wanted my children to appreciate house work I would walk around asking them to notice my sacrifice -- I don't as it's my own trip. If my home was a complete wreck I would be just as capable of instilling the appreciation of certain things I desire in my children. Of course this talk is assuming that all women should have children and stay at home with them, as well, right?
Mothers who know are nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness. To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a "house of order," and women should pattern their homes after the Lord's house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.
This talk makes it clear that a woman's import is based on that clean house, her polished looks, and how her children look to others. I want my children to be polished on the inside.
Coggins7 wrote:Well, how does a clean home teach my children the appreciation of any of the things I listed above? If I wanted my children to appreciate house work I would walk around asking them to notice my sacrifice -- I don't as it's my own trip. If my home was a complete wreck I would be just as capable of instilling the appreciation of certain things I desire in my children. Of course this talk is assuming that all women should have children and stay at home with them, as well, right?
Go back and read the paragraph I extracted and notice the italicized parts. A clean, ordered home is a part of the environmental conditions that promote a more encouraging environment for such higher things.
Mothers who know are nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness. To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a "house of order," and women should pattern their homes after the Lord's house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.This talk makes it clear that a woman's import is based on that clean house, her polished looks, and how her children look to others. I want my children to be polished on the inside.
This talk makes no such assertions and emphasizes no such points. From where are you getting this interpretation?
I have visited sacrament meetings in some of the poorest places on the earth where mothers have dressed with great care in their Sunday best despite walking for miles on dusty streets and using worn-out public transportation. They bring daughters in clean and ironed dresses with hair brushed to perfection; their sons wear white shirts and ties and have missionary haircuts.
They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home.
Moniker wrote:Coggins7 wrote:Well, how does a clean home teach my children the appreciation of any of the things I listed above? If I wanted my children to appreciate house work I would walk around asking them to notice my sacrifice -- I don't as it's my own trip. If my home was a complete wreck I would be just as capable of instilling the appreciation of certain things I desire in my children. Of course this talk is assuming that all women should have children and stay at home with them, as well, right?
Go back and read the paragraph I extracted and notice the italicized parts. A clean, ordered home is a part of the environmental conditions that promote a more encouraging environment for such higher things.
Mothers who know are nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness. To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a "house of order," and women should pattern their homes after the Lord's house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.This talk makes it clear that a woman's import is based on that clean house, her polished looks, and how her children look to others. I want my children to be polished on the inside.
This talk makes no such assertions and emphasizes no such points. From where are you getting this interpretation?
Mothers that "KNOW" will do each of the things it describes in the talk, Coggins. That housework is crucial to being a good LDS mother (even lists SPECIFIC house work), "women have the most power and influence" in that home that is clean, and then goes into detail how polished a woman that knows is with herself and her children:I have visited sacrament meetings in some of the poorest places on the earth where mothers have dressed with great care in their Sunday best despite walking for miles on dusty streets and using worn-out public transportation. They bring daughters in clean and ironed dresses with hair brushed to perfection; their sons wear white shirts and ties and have missionary haircuts.
Nothing in that talk emphasized anything other than the role of a woman in relation to her role in the house and the Church. Nothing. Her role was to create good lil children that were clean, spiffy, and would grow up to repeat the role that she and her husband play.
One aspect of the talk I find disturbing is the repeated insistence that any deviation from this "role" is somehow a failing. (If the women who "know" are the ones who are devoted entirely to pumping out kids, dusting, watering the plants, baking cookings, and scrubbing toilets, then doesn't that therefore mean that anyone who *doesn't* do these things is "not in the know," or "stupid", or "a failure"?)
This part of the talk is also disturbing:
Quote:
They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home.This seems to be saying that TBM mothers should smother their children and prevent them from fully experiencing the world: no TV (unless it is KBYU or the like); no movies (except Church-sanctioned ones); no visiting friends (unless they are LDS); etc. It is a disquieting, hive-like mentality that Sis. Beck seems to be encouraging women to cultivate.