This month's Ensign has an article by Julie Beck entitled Teaching the Doctrine of Family. A compelling outlining of the assault and battle lines. "This generation will be called upon to defend the doctrine of the family as never before. If they don’t know the doctrine, they can’t defend it."
Reading the article vividly brought back a recent episode at work. We are in the midst of planning our Back To School marketing efforts. We target moms, which is some what an intuitive audience when trying to sell school supplies. Part of the warm up exercise for the brainstorming session was generating a list of the pros and cons of being a mom. Interestingly their were around 10 women in the group , they ranged in age from 30 -44 , only two of which were mother's themselves. The group proceeded to generate the two lists. The group struggled, I mean STRUGGLED to find positives. I feel as though I dominated the session - for whenever there was that awkward pause of silence when no one said anything positive I would pipe up with another positive. Finally, the group shifted to the negative list. That list went quickly and expansively. Clearly a strong commentary on the world view of motherhood. Where a random group of people couldn't create a list of positive reasons for motherhood. The battle is closer than I had imagined. It wasn't a debate of working mothers versus stay at home mothers of days gone by but an argument against being a mother at all. It was even an after topic of the Oscars. "In her Oscar acceptance speech, the pregnant actress suggests being a mom will be her life's pinnacle. Some feminists say that undermines her many achievements" The battle is real.
As Crittinton described motherhood is "the priceless, invisible heart of the economy," and of society. I'm grateful there are still women that find value in being mothers, fewer though they may be, they make the difference. The Family, A Proclamation to the World was only the beginning.
