The Catholic Church and Oppression Against Women Part I

So I know, it has been awhile since I posted last. I guess. But, I read a blog today that accused the Catholic Church of being patriarchal and that woman were only to be used as children bearing machines. He accused the Catholic Church of oppression against women. I kind of blinked… a lot. There are just so many ways to analyze this, here is one of many blogs on the Catholic Church and Oppression against women.

My first angle comes from the family life. What should happen in a family dynamic if said family has a child?

1.     Have a stay at home dad. (Wow, I literarily shuttered at the thought of that.)

2.     Have a stay at home mom.

3.     Day Care

4.     Leave the child at a zoo with nothing but a lazer gun and hope that wolves truly can raise children. (see Day care)

As a developmental psychology major we talk a lot about what works and what doesn’t in parenting. Let me just say that who ever is going to stay home with the child, in order for it to help the Childs confidence and promote the optimum psychological state of health, the provider must stay at home with the child for at least the first 4 years of its life. This is an undisputed psychological fact. I won’t bore you with the countless reasons why, but lets just say they will be severely emotionally challenged if they don’t. Justifiably so, many highly acclaimed psychologists and teach for America even, believe that the time period where the child develops much of who they are happens before the age of 7.

So we know the early stages of childhood are crucial to a child’s understanding of the world. How do we apply that? Many liberalist will say that women should give birth to children, and then, have the fathers stay at home, or put them in day care, or even more laughable, go to work and just forget about it. Lets explore each of those.

Women are more capable of soothing their children with Oxytocin that is released during breast feeding, breast feeding also reduces the chance of breast cancer by roughy 90%, and children recognize and are naturally comforted from their mothers voice more than any other voice. Scientists think this is because it is the first voice they heard since the mothers voice would have been all they could hear during the 9 months in the mother’s womb. What does that mean for guys? I’ll tell you. It means that you have literarily no means of calming a baby that is crying and soon you will be all too able to identitfy with Arnold Schwartzenager in Kindergarten Cop.

Children who are simply put into day care without a consistent provider to turn to for the first 3 years, come to resent their parents and develop emotionally short of those who had a consistent provider (Consistently at home for 3 years... which is why developmental psychologists say, make maternity leave longer, or there is no point in giving it.)

This is where liberalist say, But but—women will be independent and they… will have super powers and… they will be happier! If by super powers you mean they will report  feeling that they did not understand their roles and had a greater incidence of depression.  Then yes, they will have that. Most women who worked and were mothers for their children reported as not having enough time and not having enough time to be a wife and mother, and this identity conflict caused them to feel depressed.

Now, I am not saying that women should never work in their lives. I think that they should and If a family is struggling and they need the income they should go for it. I have also read that women who worked after their children are in school reported having the highest satisfaction, had children that developed properly, and reported having a 100% likelihood of having superflying skills, X-Ray vision, and super strength. Let's go super moms!

Let me just end with a quote by John Paul II in Mulieribus Dignitatem, "It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person, and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more. The man - even with all his sharing in parenthood - always remains "outside" the process of pregnancy and the baby's birth; in many ways he has to learn his own"fatherhood" from the mother." There is so much more that men have to learn from women, including how to love. As Catholics we embrace an egalitarian society, we acknowledge that women are the forefront of civilization and are the archetype of humanity. We acknolwedge that there are some things that women can definitely do better than men vise versa. What you do with that information is up to you.