I wish that someone would buy this book for me. I read McMinn’s “Growing Strong Daughters” some time back and gained a new perspective on how we can condition our daughters to the ways of the world when we could be nurturing them to be the unique strong individuals that God has created them to be.
McMinn (professor of sociology at George Fox University in Oregon ) doesn’t dance around the feminist-vs- SAHM tree(haven’t we had enough of that?), but clears the underbrush and helps us see the path . This book is for women who are bent on being, well, women.
Women’s discourse has long been held up against the communication patterns of men, often as inferior or in the case of the r-feminist-superior. In both cases however, women’s discourse is seen as the Other -significant no doubt, as postmodern pc-ness would have it be. But why be an Other? Why not just BE ?
I overheard several women sometime back in church, extolling the virtues of “the objectivity of men’s minds” versus the subjectiveness of women’s thinking i.e.mushy minds. This line of thinking shows ignorance of the power of women’s discourse : the sustaining of cultural heritage through storytelling, the perpetuation fo medicinal knowledge through culinary traditions, the art of community-making in post-industrial age urban spaces. Women’s discourse with the richness of personal narratives is so much a part of our lives. Furthermore the division between objectivity and subjectivity is farcical : how can one tell the difference between the two without imposing one’s personal and therefore subjective opinion upon that division?
If objectivity means being empirical, there’s still that niggling problem of the interpretation of “soft” sociological data.
McMinn validates the way women are made and discusses debates on men-women differences .The conclusion? She suggests that we are different in some ways and similar in some ways. That comes as no surprise. Yet what is new in what McMinn is saying is that we shouldn’t even be thinking in terms of raising our daughters to be career women or homemakers who stay at home. Each woman and girl has her God- gift -whether it be sewing gorgeous clothes or pushing the buttons in corporations or blazing the race tracks. As mothers, our delight is in nurturing her to be that person God has meant her to be.
Do we train our girls to “maximize their potential” at the cost of family ? McMinn cites the examples of strong women who choose to stay at home to raise her children nad are accused of wasting their talents; of strong women who go to work in order to feed their families and of strong women who have to do a bit of both in order to keep their families afloat. In short, she goes to the very heart of the SAHM-vs.-working mom debate : does our motivation stem from selfishness or by that desire to use our gifts for others, for family.
She writes about the pressures young girls face due to media and society that tell them how they should look, dress and behave. We mothers have to be that rock, to be their strength and by being strong, help them wade through the bombardment of information and propaganda. A woman can’t do that if she’s not even sure of who God has meant her to be.
This is great news. I’m just so glad that I don’t have to force her to wear either a dress or denim trousers. Clothes maketh not the woman. So what does? She draws on Scriptures to answer that question. So , go read.
Oh, and about that first book? Buy it.
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