An "alpha girl" grows up; or why we still need feminism

One year ago my husband and I went to the alter fully committed to nurturing a loving partnership in marriage, a partnership in which we envisioned supporting each other equally in our professional pursuits, sharing housework, and engaging together in social activities that we value. This vision, a wonderful ideal, seemed like the natural way to govern a relationship. I belong to what has recently been termed the generation of “alpha girls” – the highly educated and achieving women who only learn that they can be anything they want, but not everything, when they hit the workforce. And my husband, surely, is an equivalent alpha male. We were both products of an era largely committed to gender equality, whatever that means.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one year of marriage has schooled me in how difficult it is to achieve the kind of partnership we wanted – a partnership that involved mutual support for each other in all areas of life rather than dwelling in separate spheres. I was certainly unprepared for the change in how various people perceived me that came as a consequence of marriage and for how soon cultural assumptions about gender roles – assumptions I naively thought my generation was beyond – cropped up.

Like most upper-middle class young woman today, I was prepped and prime for educational success. Education was an investment in future earning power and citizenship whose importance was emphasized again and again. But marriage changes things. Soon after my marriage, many of the family and friends who had supported me so strongly in my education suddenly seemed to assume that having a career follow that education was simply not so important. My husband was the “primary” breadwinner; my career, if I chose to have one, was “secondary.” I needed to place my husband’s career first, because he would feel the burden of providing. My education, apparently, was not necessarily intended to lead to successful employment in my field; I could find fulfillment in volunteering or working part-time instead. People looked at me differently. Certainly, one day I (or my husband) might choose to stay home or work part-time, but some people seemed to place me on that track already. Despite all the talk of equality in marriage, no one outside of our marriage looked at my husband's future differently.

Unfortunately, under the immense pressure of this ideology, I, a life-long feminist, began to crack. I began to think about my professional goals (goals that really are important to me) as if they were secondary. I began to “support” my husband’s work at the expense of giving full justice to my own. The psychological costs, both to him and to me, were enormous. I felt depressed, resentful, and dependent. My husband felt all the weight of the assumption that he was the family’s primary resource. I did the all the housework, mostly because I was trained to care about it more, but also because I felt it was wrong to ask him to do more work. I sold myself short, and was socially applauded, and miserable, for it. (Okay, this paragraph exaggerates binaries and feelings, but to make a point.)

Of course, there were many people who supported my goals. The people I work with in my field have always been there to develop my talents. But, I also learned that the workplace simply doesn’t easily accommodate two working spouses. Certainly, I feel our church carries a significant amount of blame for these gender ideologies in my life, but it also seems to me a significant social problem that in the secular world we educate our girls to believe in their talents only to force them out of work when they start a family, because we are so slow to evolve workplace policies. This has enormous economic and psychological costs.

Most of the year I felt caught in a bind between those who expected me to put my husband first and between systems that are not designed to accommodate two spouses. The issue of work-life balance is more real than I knew; ideologies about gender roles are still pervasive; the need for feminism is very much alive. Regardless of how the future plays out, I have determined to return my goals to the center of my life and to continue striving for a marriage based on partnership.

The singles ward: one year out

This January marks the first anniversary of my marriage and also my exit from a singles ward into a family ward. Looking back on my time in the singles ward from this vantage point, I find myself waxing nostalgic.

Certainly, there were a number of points about the singles ward that I didn’t like. When in college, I felt the dearth of anyone else my own age in my ward (there were occasionally no other undergraduates); similarly, I often missed having a calling, since there were often not enough to go around to the women in the ward when primary, nursery, and young women’s didn’t exist (that’s another topic). But, mostly, I disliked the humiliating imbalance of women to men that thrust the reality that many of us women would not marry a member of the church upon us every Sunday. My husband tells me that being an older, eligible male in a singles ward is no pleasant task either, since no one understands why they are not married. But people at least assume men have multiple chances.

In many ways, a family ward has eliminated those stresses. Most of the members in the ward are not worried about marriage, there are ample opportunities to serve, and there is a much wider age range of people to associate with. My current calling with the young women has been one of my most fulfilling.

And, yet, I find myself sorely missing the advantages of the singles ward. Mainly, I miss the people and the social events. I expected that married life would be more limited in its social scope than being single, but I have found that it can in no way replace my need for thriving friendships. But, such friendships are much harder to come by in a family ward than in a singles ward. Callings often separate you from other women in Relief Society and duties to spouses call, but the strongest barrier that I have felt has been the divide between those who have and/or stay home with children and those who don’t. Granted, I have made some amazing friends with children, but it is much harder to maintain those friendships than with single friends. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have a child just to fit in. (Don’t worry, I’m not, yet.)

The reasons for this barrier are pretty obvious: those who work during the day tend to be unavailable for many RS activities or informal get together’s, people are simply at different stages of life with different preoccupations, and children can’t be left unattended. But when I look at the amazing women I would like to know better, I can’t help wishing that some of those barriers were more permeable.

Life in a family ward has been lonely. It has made me wonder often what it means to be part of a community when we are so often, necessarily, wrapped up in our own families. Surely these families come with blessings, but a year into married life I have come to realize that families alone can never, for me, be enough. Never have I felt more the benefits that I derive from interacting with a whole range of people with different perspectives and interests– single, married, young, and old. When I was in a singles ward, I missed the benefits of the family ward; now, I miss my single friends. In both situations, I have found myself frequently wishing that there could only be one ward where both singles and married couples could mingle, wondering what my life would be like if we valued, like Jane Austen, our relationships with our literal and metaphorical brothers and sisters as being inextricably bound up with our relationship to our spouse.

Judgment: a dilemma for individualistic Mormons?

For many years, I have been perplexed by the question of what I am required to do and believe as a latter-day saint. Confronted by a long and often contradictory history of commandments and culture attitudes within the church, the process of sorting out commandments from suggestions was nearly impossible. Finally, I settled on the belief that I am primarily accountable for acting upon only those precepts I have learned by my own experience to be important. While I respect those ideas that I do not now agree with, I have faith that God will hold me accountable only for acting with the best of my ability upon those concepts I personally know to be correct.

I find this position the only consist one I can take with respect to believing church doctrine. Moreover, I like placing myself as the central authority over my own life and beliefs, because I find that this heightens in my mind the significance of the commitments I make. And, yet, people can and do point out that a position that allows one to place on hold some church teachings undermines one’s membership in the church. Do I think there are any commandments that are binding on church members? What does it mean to be a member of the church once one says one’s own authority has more importance in determining one’s life than, say, the prophet’s?

(These are difficult questions, and I’m not ready to give answers. There are some basic commandments like the Word of Wisdom that I believe church members are accountable to try their best to keep (granted, for some, this might not be possible), because these commandments identify us to the world at large and it reflects poorly on the entire community when some members break them. If we choose to be a member of a community, then we should try to respect its standards. But, in general, I think that the purpose of commandments is to help bring out our best selves and that activities that prevent us from developing are those that we need to amend or repent of.)

I raise this observation, because I feel that many of the posts and comments on By Common Consent, particularly Kevin’s excellent “You Make the Call Series,” keep raising again and again the tension between feeling that we are the chief authorities in our own relationships to God and the obedience we owe to church authorities. Because I think most of us on this blog share the belief that our relationship to God takes precedence over another authority’s views about our life, I occasionally sense in some comments and posts the feeling that when we are in positions of authority that we should not judge or interfere with the decisions our acquaintances make.

I want to suggest that our reluctance to interfere with others stems not only from a belief in our individual freedom but also from the way in which perceive judgment. When we speak of judging others, our language typically seems to imply legalistic standards, condemnation, and punishment. But, what if judgment meant not condemning others, but discerning what people stand in need of in order to become their best selves. Such a view of judgment is not punitive, nor does it co-opt individual authority and freedom to determine one’s idea of the good. Instead, it aims to give people the resources they need. We need to practice being discerning judges, resisting the impulse to impose our own ideas on others and developing the capacity to truly look at another.

When people are breaking commandments, it may well be wrong to condemn them or layer them with guilt. But their behavior does seem to suggest that they are struggling with questions in their own lives. Discerning their needs and providing them with resources might well be what they need. In my opinion, to not intervene positively and to offer desired support in people’s lives because of our own fears of condemning others is a service to no one. Allowing people to harm themselves, struggle with questions alone, or break commandments that reflect poorly on the entire community are not answers. Neither is condemnation. But, making a good faith effort to bring out the person our neighbor aspires to be might help.