Responsibility of Womanhood

An eminent American has this to say on an important subject: “Womanhood today is not necessarily synonymous with motherhood and that is a social tragedy far more serious than we have yet admitted….”

Many through the centuries have commented on the distinctive responsibility of mothers. “The future destiny of the child,” said Napoleon, “is always the work of the mother.”

“The family is the foundation upon which our whole social organization rests,” observed Agnes E. Meyer. “Women must…sharpen their intelligence and clarify their vision of woman’s responsibility for the preservation of the highest human values [of which] woman is the natural guardian…. If it is difficult to carry out the high role of woman in our modern society, it is also a great honor to be a woman in this critical historical period…. Woman must again recognize her responsibility as the fundamental conservative and vital one that it always has been.”

There is much responsibility that goes with being a woman⎯not that there should be a double standard in the world. There should not be. But there is a division of labor, of assignment, and the woman in her role of motherhood has a God-given responsibility to be unselfish, to be a righteous example; not to partake of the vices of men, not to perform her function perfunctorily nor thoughtlessly to farm it out to others. “What greater or better gift can we offer the republic,” asked Cicero, “than to teach and instruct our youth?”

And the mother who reaches for prayerful wisdom, to counsel, to be constant, to be at her best, to be ever a little better⎯not looking upon children as a burden, not looking upon homemaking as something from which to be emancipated, but as among the greatest of careers⎯is fulfilling one of the greatest of all missions.

The nation will go and the world will go as its mothers go, as womanhood goes. This is an old platitude but a profound truth. And mothers⎯women⎯should, in some ways, be placed on a pedestal, not as unreal or unreachable, but with a down-to-earth wholesomeness and goodness and dedication and devotion, accepting with gratitude and reverence and righteousness that which is among the greatest of all the roles that God has given.