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Raising Daughters Differently · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Instead of just constantly having this conversation as if people's desires come out of nowhere and they just spring into existence when they're 20. No, you're raising your daughter in your home and you're either lifting up motherhood through the way you're living as a mother, through what you're saying about motherhood, through the stories that you're telling. Like you said, Jess, I think that's so accurate. The biggest story wins.
• 0:21
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:41
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. We're going to do a motherhood episode. And so we're going to try to hit two topics today. One about the unique challenges of raising daughters and trying to raise them without making them or raising them into sons. This is a conversation we're constantly trying to understand here at Family Teams. And if we have time, I'd love to dive into a conversation around, do women need a contingency plan?
• 1:07
  or the possibility of divorce. So hopefully we'll be able to hit that video and talk about that. How do we think about that from kind of a family team's perspective? But I'd like to introduce you guys to, we got Jess Gagné zooming in again from the Twin Cities up in Minneapolis. So thanks Jess for joining us today. Yes, thanks for having me. Yeah. And then April, zooming in from a couple of doors over.
• 1:33
  So we just got back from our little Asian excursion. We were in Japan and in Korea. And so then I came across this clip. And so I wanted to get your guys' take on this. This is a conversation that happened on Al Jazeera. This isn't a very normal place I go to for news. But I thought this was an interesting conversation worth having and a good jumping off point. And they framed it in a way that I thought would be helpful for us to dive into. So I'll play this and then get your guys' take on this.
• 2:03
  And his president, Xi Jinping, said it was necessary for women to actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing. Here's one take on that.
• 2:13
  Okay, so the context here is that China has, through their one-child policy, just decimated the family culture in China. And so now they're kind of regretting some of that and saying, oh, wow, they're really facing population collapse like many of the Asian countries. And so this is one take on that from a Chinese daughter. From social media.
• 2:38
  Y'all heard about China's Wanchao policy? All the only daughters, including me, were raised as Mulan because we're the only child in the family. So our parents had no other options but to invest all the resources in us. So we were raised more like sons, not daughters. Growing up, everything we saw was that so we were told that we were equal to the boys.
• 3:00
  But now, after we grow up, they said... No, you need to go back to the family, then they're leaders, have some kids, and just do all the man things. But no, we were raised to become this independent individual, both financially and emotionally. We went to the same school as the boys. We got the same jobs. We're pursuing the same dreams. We fight as hard as the boys. No, even harder. And now you're telling me I need to put down my swords, take off my armor, go back to marriage, do cleaning and cooking every day. No, we're warriors. We do not accept that thing.
• 3:29
  All right. So she's a little bit upset at this sudden transition that happened and really understandably so. So she said that in China, because of the one-child policy, when you have a daughter, you raise her like Mulan, right? Like she's raised to be a son, to be a warrior.
• 3:48
  to really represent the family in what was traditionally masculine roles. And then all of a sudden, now the state is realizing their error, and they're beginning to try to reverse their propaganda and say, no, we need to make sure that women, we clarify the difference. One thing that's interesting to me about China is that before the one-child policy, it's such an ancient culture, as a lot of the Asian countries are, that there was a really clear difference.
• 4:14
  role distinction between sons and daughters. It actually meant something like they, they, they understood multi-generational family and a lot of ways that, um, way beyond most people in the West. They understood what a father and a mother were. They understood what, what the birth birth order meant. And that all just got completely destroyed in one generation in China. And so they're really suffering from, um, what are the implications of that? So I'll play a little bit of the conversation that they had around, around this topic from, uh, her, uh, TikTok reel there.
• 4:42
  Aaron, is that something that you heard during your interviews, perhaps, for the series or during your dates? I do believe that, you know, this is something that is happening because we are empowering women, right? So why would any woman put all this time, energy and effort together?
• 4:59
  giving the best education, going to the workforce. And then when they get married and they have kids, they're the ones who are expected to stay home and give up everything that they've spent their whole lives building for themselves. It doesn't make sense. So I do think that Asian societies tend to be a bit patriarchal in that sense. So the moment you have a kid, it is primarily the woman's responsibility. And I don't think that's sustainable.
• 5:22
  And one of the things he's talking about is we've empowered women. And I think one of the things that they're pointing out is actually, this is really kind of gets to the crux of the challenge I think we have to work through. And that is, if you do expect daughters and sons to live fundamentally different kinds of lives.
• 5:38
  then wouldn't you raise them differently, right? Isn't, wouldn't there be a way that you would talk about, like, and who they're going to become? So the next conversation I want to have with you guys is about, like, the contingency plans for the incredibly high divorce rate we have in the West and how to think about that as family teams. But first, like, when you're raising daughters...
• 5:59
  It's so intuitive now in the West to raise them to take care of themselves, to be as independent as possible. And there is such a dissonance to suddenly then say to a daughter, we've given you all the advantages to be able to be independent. We've really elevated all of these sort of non-maternal elements of what you can do as a independent adult.
• 6:25
  But then all of a sudden you start getting these mixed signals like, hey, now after all of that training and all that expectation, wouldn't you like to become a mother? And when they say, of course not, like I've been raised. And this is one of the reasons why I like the way that the Chinese daughter presented it. She said, you did this to me. She's like, you raised me to be Mulan.
• 6:48
  And now you expect me to be a mother. So I think that's a really valid way to frame it. So this is the last part of the clip. And then I'd love to get your guys' take on this. I wanted your take, Ana, on the aspect of how much is expected of women once they actually get into a marriage. And is that why some are actually staying away?
• 7:14
  I think so. And I mean, back in the days, even for my parents' generation, the man could look after the household and the wife and the baby just on his one income. But these days, because everything is, you know, the prices of everything is so high, the both of the parents have to work in order for the household to just keep chugging along.
• 7:33
  And that means most of the, well, yeah, the most of the household and the baby looking after goes to the mother. But she's also working her corporate job or whatever. So I think she gets a lot more work than she that she probably should be doing, you know. Yes, she does. Yes, she does. And I talk from experience. Amy, in Japan, people are opting for...
• 7:55
  a different experience altogether. Take a look. Why are people in Japan marrying their friends? With more and more young Japanese teaching traditional marriage, a new trend has emerged, friendship marriage. But how does it work? These marriages center around companionship rather than romance or sex. They provide practical benefits such as tax breaks,
• 8:18
  societal acceptance, and the ability to live together or apart while pursuing romantic relationships.
• 8:25
  In these cultures where the family has been so destroyed by this sort of changing expectations around gender roles, they're having to come up with very novel. And I think all of these very novel approaches to family or marriage are all going to completely fail. There's only one path, and that is you have to somehow recapture the way God designed men and women to work together to build families. And he did a good job. You made it. You made it. We're the ones messing it up.
• 8:53
  We're the ones who are really struggling with embracing this blueprint. And then Anna Lee, who was on and she described in South Korea, the place where the birth rate is lower than any other place in the world. They are really struggling because they do expect women in that culture to work a full-time job and do all of the traditional elements of what it meant to be a mother. So there's so much confusion going on in Asia right now. We just got back from Japan and Korea and Japan.
• 9:18
  Man, it is really difficult there. That is ground zero for the destruction of the traditional family because they had, like I said, such a clear understanding of the traditional family. Then it was engineered destruction by the state and by the culture because I think there was such a strong shift. And all of those Asian cultures, China...
• 9:41
  Japan and Korea are a little bit more conformist. And so the degree of adoption that that occurred with that generation that was getting those messages was very high. They began to follow the blueprint right into this this this future where they're going to face population collapse in a way that that is almost difficult to imagine. Right.
• 10:02
  I think I mentioned before, it takes now 100 South Koreans to make just about three great grandchildren. That's how fast the population is going to collapse in Korea. And one of the reasons why we wanted to go over there was because I'm like, I don't know how long these cultures are going to last. I mean, they are facing such dire and they're aware of it, by the way. This isn't like weird propaganda from one side.
• 10:24
  They are all freaking out about it. And that's why this woman who was on the Chinese TikTok, the Chinese daughter, she was describing, like, what do you expect us to do about it? So I wanted to get your guys' take on this. And the primary thing I think would be helpful is from a family team's lens, how do we raise daughters differently?
• 10:45
  Right. It's like if this is what happens when you raise daughters to be sons or you just erase gender during the period of time which you raise kids and you just you just treat sons and daughters exactly the same way. This seems to be the predictable result is that daughters become more like sons and they become rewarded to the degree that they achieve things in a traditionally masculine way. And this is going to just feel like dissonance when it comes to the call to someday become a mother.
• 11:14
  And this has been a very confusing mixed messages that we've sent.
• 11:20
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• 11:52
  So April, I'll start with you and we'll go around. I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on this. Yeah, well, I'm remembering back when I was in college or like the year or two leading up to college, trying to put myself back in that mindset. And I definitely was not thinking about these kinds of questions at all. And I grew up in a pretty conservative society.
• 12:17
  family, conservative school, conservative church, you know, region of the country. And still the obvious thing that I was going to do was to go to college. And I remember having some thought that I didn't complete, but it was just like this circling thought that would come every now and then. Why am I doing this again? Like what?
• 12:42
  What am I doing? Because I think I'm probably at some point going to want to get married. I think I'm probably going to want to have kids. And if I do that, then why am I trying to get a business degree? Like, I don't. I pictured myself sitting in an office in a cubicle and was like, I don't actually want to do that with the rest of my life. So I just remember having that question mark of like, why am I doing this? Yeah.
• 13:08
  But you just did it because that's what everyone was doing. And that's what that's the trajectory of life. You graduate from high school and then you go to college and you get a degree because degrees are important and that's how you get a good paying job and all that stuff. And those are not bad things. Those are not evil things, but they do set you on a trajectory and they do shape your mentality about life.
• 13:29
  um these things and so i think um a huge thing i had in my favor was i did grow up in a in um you know my mom stayed home with us she was college educated she had a job before she had us kids and then she decided to quit her job and stay home with us and i had the benefit of having a mother who stayed home with us and um i grew up in an entrepreneurial family on both sides of my family so there was a lot going for me in terms of um
• 13:59
  Being able to kind of break out of the norm and think a little bit differently. At some point I got there. But the flow of the culture is so strong. And kind of I think the gentleman on that, he said, like, why would you put all that work into your career and then just...
• 14:17
  Stop it. Like, I understand that. Like, that does. That does. Why? Why would you do that? That doesn't make a lot of sense. So you have to have something that shifts your thinking or something that you believe or come to believe that is much stronger than that flow. Right. To interrupt yourself. Right.
• 14:36
  It has been really confusing and we've had lots of conversations and, and with other parents and families. And obviously now that we've had, you know, a couple of daughters, now we have three daughters who are adults going into this season and are, have gotten through this season. It's, it's interesting because I think part of what's happened is that because college has gotten so expensive.
• 14:55
  The return on investment that you get from college has to be higher, right? If you're going to go into debt that's going to take five to 10 years or more to pay off, then it's really important that you get the benefits from all that money that you spent on your education.
• 15:14
  And so this has created a really difficult dilemma, I think, for women in particular, because if they decide that they do want to stay home with their kids and they still are in a ton of debt or they feel like they've invested so much in their education that they're not getting any return and that it makes them look at everything they invested and they're thinking of themselves, what?
• 15:33
  Why did I do that? This creates, I think, sort of an assumption that, well, we've got to delay having kids and got to delay motherhood. And then it creates all of these impossible tensions. And I think part of what we've done is we've tried to separate, I guess, three things that I think kids need when they enter into kind of 18, 19, 20, 21, that kind of adult college age. They need education. They need community.
• 15:58
  and they need credentials, right? Depending on what they are going into. And I think one of the things that we've said to our daughters is don't worry about the credentials. Like just throw that away. And that freed us up to think about things very differently. If they need the credential,
• 16:14
  Then obviously getting a bachelor's degree and master's degree, going into all the debt, all that stuff becomes very difficult. But you can get education and you can get community in many different ways today without necessarily paying for the credential. And I would say the credential is 80% of the actual cost.
• 16:31
  The education, the community, there's lots of ways, lots of less expensive ways to get those things. And so we're not going to go into detail how we did that. There's lots of things we've done and we are doing with our kids. But one of the things I would just say that we've done when it comes to daughters is we told daughters, do not worry about the credential. That is so expensive. And if you choose to have children at a fairly young age, it's going to really potentially compromise that decision.
• 16:56
  And so that's one way to kind of frame or think about this. So Jess, what are your thoughts? What did that sort of stir up for you? Yeah, I think honestly, just really heartbroken with just the China, like Korea, Japan, just where they're at right now. And I think wanting to learn from that of, oh, this is what happens when we don't follow God's blueprint and we do just kind of.
• 17:22
  like are I mean really I just think of like chic like just following the other like one like oh yeah we'll just go this way like um so wanting to just really have my eyes just more alert for those different ways our culture tries to sneak in hey here's the story you should live into um
• 17:45
  And yeah, at least you think about we just were having a conversation with another family team in our community a couple of weeks ago, and we were just talking about the bigger story wins. So what like stories are we really trying to highlight for our kids that is like the way of Jesus? Like, hey, hey, God made us man and or male and female for a reason. So what does that look like? Yeah.
• 18:09
  So yeah, I feel like I'm still in the trenches of I have a two-year-old daughter. And so seeing the differences between my sons and her, how do I encourage that? How do I really elevate being a mother so that that is such a delight? And she's so looking forward to that like I was, but even more so being like, the pressure I know is gonna be so much more when she is at that, like you're saying, 18, 19, 20.
• 18:39
  what can I be doing now and over the years to come to encourage that? Yeah. Still trying to discern that and yeah. Wanting to hear what other families are doing in that area for sure. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. You, you, we are telling a story to our children. We are saying to our daughters, this is what, this is, this is what, this is the pathway.
• 18:59
  One of the things I get really frustrated with is when people are always asking the question of somebody who's 18, 19, 20, well, what do you want? Do you want a career? Do you want to have kids? Do you want to be a mother? And one of the things that we're not acknowledging and one of the things I think that this Chinese daughter acknowledged is you told us what to want.
• 19:19
  You told us what the big story was. You told me to be like Mulan. And so I did. I poured my heart and soul into being like a son and to putting on the armor and to fight for the family the way a son traditionally would. Don't now tell me to want something else. And so this is one of the things that we have to, instead of just constantly having this conversation,
• 19:40
  conversation as if people's desires come out of nowhere and they just spring into existence when they're 20. No, you're raising your daughter in your home and you're either lifting up motherhood through the way you're living as a mother, through what you're saying about motherhood, through the stories that you're telling. Like you said, Jess, I think that's so accurate. The biggest story wins. What are those big stories you're telling? Even things like, what are you watching? Like when you're watching Mulan,
• 20:07
  It's a really interesting story. I think it's fascinating that that particular story is what captured Disney when they were like, we need another Asian story. Let's tell the story of Mulan. It's like the perfect example of this, which is what we're looking for is for girls to step up and be like sons.
• 20:28
  And I think there is a story that I do find really beautiful and compelling. And that is that there are times when a family gets destroyed. And this, I think, is the actual story of Milan, where there is no son and where a daughter does step up into that place. I think there is a mythological story like that that is really interesting. What's really dangerous is to say, yeah, even though we're having lots of sons and daughters, we're going to raise them the same. That's a different story.
• 20:55
  That's the story that I would really want to resist and that requires us to get clear about what a daughter is and what a son is. And so I think that's really important. So Brittany, you're joining us from Texas. Good to see you. Yeah, I know you didn't get a chance to see the whole clip, but I'd love to hear any of your thoughts about this discussion. We're just trying to figure out how do we raise daughters in a way that doesn't just assume that they're like sons.
• 21:19
  Yeah. Sorry for being late. That whole like Eastern Central time. I was wondering if that was hours. I have childcare from three to four. Okay. I watched the clip last night and I have to confess, when I was watching that last night, the Lord was like...
• 21:37
  This has been you in the past. I have stood at my kitchen and told my daughter, girls can do anything boys can do. Don't let your brothers tell you different. Or she has said, why can't I swim with my shirt off like the boys? And I've just said, oh, she's a double standard, you know. And really, my heart's been convicted because you're right. Yeah.
• 22:00
  Boys and girls have different roles. Anytime we swim upstream, it's not going to be easy, right? So I, last night as I watched the clip, I was like, oh man, Lord, thank you. Thank you for convicting me again. As y'all, I've told y'all before, I hate speaking on these things. It's like the most nerve-wracking thing, but
• 22:25
  You know, I thought our past shapes us so much. And like Jess was saying, the bigger story wins. But when your past has been the story of girls can do what boys can do, or you've worked too hard in your career to stop and stay home, that really shapes how we raise our children and the things we speak over them. And so...
• 22:54
  Thankfully, my personal story was when my parents got divorced at seven, I knew at such a young age, my goal is to stay home with my children. I'm going to stay home and I'm going to be a mom. And so I did like April was saying, I went to college still. It's like, I'm going to be a teacher. That fits into the mother role the best. I can be a mom and a teacher.
• 23:24
  quickly realized that, you know, my heart was for motherhood. So after realizing I couldn't teach to state standards because, you know, that was just hard for my heart, I switched my degree to psychology. And I came out of college with $19,000 in debt and stood there going, I can't do anything with this. Those credentials were worthless.
• 23:53
  But I did get the education and I get to use that in my home with my children, in my marriage, in my friendships, in people who mentor me or I get to disciple. So I see the value of it. But to think of pushing my daughter and saying, go pursue, you know, a degree when her calling may be to be home and be a mother. Yeah.
• 24:22
  We have to see those as the same value. Yeah, absolutely. Well said. Jess, what are your thoughts on that?
• 24:29
  Doubling back on what you were saying earlier about like a daughter kind of coming in and like it instantly made me think of Ruth and like your example in family revision of Ruth being the example of a daughter and how she did come and like Naomi sends both died. But like how she is the example of, oh, this is what it looks like to be a daughter to like support my mother-in-law like. Yeah.
• 24:55
  just yeah that full story of Ruth I just love of like oh this is the story I should be like telling over and over again and like looking at not only for myself as a daughter but then how to teach others how to disciple others and what does that look like and how can we implement that in today um
• 25:15
  Yeah, I just was thinking of the Bible and how we are part of the big story and then thinking, oh, Ruth, boom, that's it. Yeah, that's a great story. I love that so much. And you see the tragedy of Ruth's family. It's Naomi, her mother-in-law, her father-in-law dies or her husband dies and then her brother-in-law dies and there are no men left.
• 25:39
  And Naomi is the one who's left absolutely destitute. She changes her name to Mara, which means bitterness, and she needs support. And so there is no, and one of the things that you see even in that story, and this kind of really dovetails with where we're headed next, which is who is supposed to step up and provide in the case that all the men are wiped out? Should women create contingency plans for when every man in her life fails her?
• 26:09
  And that's really what women are being trained to do today. And in the story of Ruth, you actually, because in the Torah, you see exactly who was supposed to step up. God provided in the Torah, in the law, within the scriptures, for what happens when all of the men in your life somehow die. And what that does is there's a kinsman redeemer. Yeah.
• 26:36
  who was supposed to come along, the next closest male relative is supposed to provide for that destitute family and the women who are left. And there's a whole system for how that's supposed to work. And you see that in the fourth chapter of Ruth, and you see how it broke down because the actual kinsman redeemer refused to do his duty. And that's when Boaz stepped up and God provided graciously.
• 27:00
  And then, of course, then you get the line of David coming from the decision that Boaz makes. So what do you do? Do we want to create an entire culture where, and this really, I think, does connect well with the conversation around daughters, because one of the reasons why you want to raise your daughters like sons is,
• 27:17
  is because you're assuming that the men in their life are going to fail them, or there's a high probability that they're going to experience betrayal by the men in their life. And if you don't have contingency plans for those scenarios, then you are putting yourself into an impossibly vulnerable situation. So I want to play for you guys this clip and get your take on this. And I would like to discuss how do we think about this topic?
• 27:45
  A lot of women talking about how horrible the trad wife movement is. And in some aspects, I can agree, but I definitely don't think it's all bad for me. So she's going to frame this from the perspective of the trad wife movement. So this is the movement that is kind of a social media phenomenon where there are women who are living more of a traditional life, the traditional lifestyle as a mother and a wife and presenting the positive sides of kind of homesteading and all of those elements.
• 28:12
  And so there's a lot of influencers who have been lifting this up. And so this is the conversation that she's going to kind of tease out. It just very much feels like a complicated issue and depends on which trad wife you're talking about. For example, the work that women do taking care of their home and their children has been disregarded for so long, especially during the girl boss era, that it's very refreshing seeing people.
• 28:37
  bring light to how much effort it takes to be a stay-at-home mom. And just being fully present with your children and fully involved is a beautiful ideal that these women are carrying. For Emily Perea, a stay-at-home mom in New Mexico, the Tradwife movement is a way to escape from a world that doesn't appreciate someone staying home and raising children and to one that puts people on a pedestal for it.
• 28:58
  People say that tried wives are not smart for fully combining your life with your husband and not having any of your own money. And I just don't agree with that. There are a lot of successful ways to have a marriage and combining everything is one of them. My thought is if you're both in it to win it, why wouldn't you combine everything?
• 29:17
  Again, not that it's for everyone. The problem people keep bringing up is if the wife doesn't have any way to support herself if something were to happen to her husband, like a backup plan. And I do want to tread lightly here because I don't think there's one right way for everyone to handle their marriages. But I know there are a lot of women out there who fully financially rely on their husbands and they're doing just fine. They made the calculated risk to give up their monetary potential for the benefits of raising their children full time.
• 29:46
  I think it's probably a good idea to have a means of making money to protect yourself, but is it for everyone? Probably not. I think that the real issue with these trad wife influencers is that they're not laying out the risks and giving some caution. It's just go forth, submit your husbands, and everything will be okay.
• 30:04
  Stephanie Kuntz, the director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families, says it's worrisome if people in the movement convince young women that depending on a male breadwinner will solve their work-related frustrations without considering the risks that a man might lose his job, die early, mistreat them, or abandon them.
• 30:22
  And while I can completely get behind that, I don't think it's for everyone to always plan for failure. We shouldn't just blanket statements say that everyone should always be financially prepared for any disaster when disaster may never come. But I also do see women get locked into unhealthy marriages because they're being financially controlled.
• 30:42
  Over 50% of marriages in the U.S. ended in divorce, and I can assure you that nobody's sitting on their wedding day and thinking, oh, we're planning to get divorced. I chose to stitch this because this is exactly me when I was 26 or 27. I had two young kids. I would remember walking into a thrift store of all places, and I saw one of my mom's old friends, and she was like, oh, hello.
• 31:00
  are you? They're so cute. What are you up to these days? Like, what are you doing for a living? And I was like, this is what I'm doing for a living. I'm staying home with the kids. And she was like, oh, and like she had this cautionary like look on her face as she very judgy said to me, well, just be really careful. You know, you don't want to be in a situation where you're reliant on someone. Make sure that you don't have any gaps in your resume and you're, you know, you're keeping your skills set up. Well, clearly I wasn't. I had just said I was staying home with
• 31:29
  Um, well, that's not necessary. I mean, we have a really great relationship, and we're really happily married. We'll be married forever.
• 31:38
  Five years later, I really had to eat my hat, so to speak, because I was miserably married, like in a miserable situation where I could not get out of this marriage. I had given 15 years of my life to this man, and I had poured all of my talent and all of my energy into his business, building his business, because I was staying home with the kids, and this was the way we were making an income together.
• 32:02
  What I wish that I could tell myself back then was, shake, shake, shake. Listen to the lady who's a little bit older than you. Maybe she has a life experience that you don't know yet. And that's why you see so many older women entering the workforce when their kids go off to college and their husband decides that they want to end the relationship now. And he's going off with a young secretary or whoever. And now they are having to start their career, career at age.
• 32:28
  We're one because they've given their whole lives to stay at home and to propel his career. So he's flying high, has the great career, making fantastic money. And now she might be getting some money in child support or in alimony if she's lucky. So I wanted to for us to really face a well-described argument from the other side, because it's easy to talk about.
• 32:52
  The problems with contingency planning. And I really want to understand what you guys think about that. But it's also, there are also going to be people listening to this who have seen the nightmare scenario on the other side. The woman who really is destitute after having given everything to her husband and to this family. This is a very difficult topic.
• 33:13
  You know, and I think I think one of the things that I would say that and I'm going to get guys take after this, but one of the things that isn't really articulated in this clip, it's almost like framed as if you could do this contingency plan that's sort of simple on the side. Just keep up your resume.
• 33:29
  Just like somehow be able to provide for an entire family while caring for your children. Make sure you have enough education without having too much debt, while giving yourself to your family as a stay-at-home mom, while making sure that you could easily provide for yourself and maybe all your kids in any event. Like that's not that there are a small percentage of women who might be able to pull that off.
• 33:51
  But that's a full-time job. Like we're in a hyper-competitive capitalist economy. You can't simply say to women that you need to be able to enter the marketplace and be able to compete directly with men. And you're going to be able to do that while taking all of this time to focus on your family and have very little engagement for potentially a decade or more in the marketplace. Like, in other words...
• 34:16
  Planning for this contingency is likely a full-time job. It's not a simple thing. I think that's not necessarily been articulated in this clip. But then you have to deal with the question that they are really raising, which is, well, is it still worth it in an atmosphere in which divorce is so high? And that probability is high as well. Like what you hear? Be sure to leave a rating and review for this podcast wherever you use streaming.
• 34:45
  So April, we'll start with you and kind of go around. But I'm curious. Yeah. What did this stir up for you? Well, I remember the first time I even heard this idea was because at our Christian homeschool co-op, one of our daughter, who was probably 16 at the time, one of her teachers was really getting on her because she wasn't sure if she wanted to go to college. And she said to her, you need to have a contingency plan.
• 35:11
  because that was this teacher's story. She had gotten married, gotten divorced, and left with no contingency plan, and was on her second marriage. And so...
• 35:24
  I was really surprised at that, just that mentality. I understand people wanting to go to college to have a career, but I hadn't heard of having a contingency plan because to me that sounds like you're kind of planning for divorce, like that lady said. But I feel like just so much of all of this goes back to what you believe. Like, what do you believe to be true? So if you are...
• 35:50
  someone who is trying to live a life surrendered to Jesus and is trying to follow the Bible and God and his design and his ways. It is my belief that if you end up in this type of a
• 36:15
  Providing for yourself financially is perhaps one of the things that you will have to figure out on that end of things. But there's probably a lot more there that is... So there's just a lot of this...
• 36:31
  the realities of people's lives and choices and belief systems that I can see how they would end up like this. You know, I, this woman didn't talk about her belief or anything like that in her, in her story, but I feel like so much of it has to be based, like, what are you basing your life on? What are you basing your decisions on? Who is your life surrendered to? Is it surrendered to your husband in the hopes that he in 20 years from now still, you know,
• 37:00
  is attracted to you and wants to provide for you, you know, then maybe that's questionable as to whether or not that's actually going to happen. I feel like living a life surrendered to Jesus and marrying someone who is also living a life, surrender to Jesus. You have a lot more hope in that because it's because through Jesus, we have the tools to combat these things that come up.
• 37:26
  that can lead to 15 years into a marriage, things falling apart. Like there, you can back it up and say like, if I am surrendering to Jesus right now in this moment, when I just had this fight with my husband, or I just, and like resentment is building about something,
• 37:43
  Because of Jesus and who he is and because I'm following him, I can take the tools that Jesus has taught me about forgiveness and about love and about putting others before myself and about taking up my cross daily. I can take those things from Jesus and like apply them to my day, that day. I can have victory in that day. And so I feel like if you do that, and I know we can't, we're not perfect and we don't do that perfectly daily, but if we're just like in a constant state of like,
• 38:12
  you know, the cycle of desiring to follow Jesus and be surrendered to him and like being our fallen self, but also just continuing to try to follow him. Then I would I believe that there's power in that in him, not me, but there's power in his ways. Yes. You know, I will say his ways are higher than our ways. I don't understand his way sometimes because I think my ways could be better. But if I'm trusting that he's God. Yes.
• 38:42
  and he's above me and above my plan and above my desires or above my thought of what my future should be, then I have no choice but to trust that. And although I do it imperfectly, that ultimately is where kind of like my aim is. And so I feel like if you don't have that...
• 39:02
  then it's understandable why you'd be concerned that it's up to you to build a contingency plan. Right. Yeah. A lot of these conversations are being had in a context where there's not clear faith. You know, we don't know what the motivations are going into those marriages.
• 39:21
  these motivations that are oftentimes, I need my husband to fulfill me. I need my wife to fulfill me. They're just in a different state. And those are much more fragile marriages. And this is what, when you study marriages like, I think in India, the divorce rate's less than 2%.
• 39:37
  And so you have in cultures like that, just a completely different framework for what marriage is. Marriage is far more about fulfilling particular duties. And it's really clear what those are and everyone's able to do it. And then of course you stay married because that's the framework. But in our context,
• 39:57
  We put so much freight on marriage and then we don't give people the kind of faith that helps them deal with the challenges that come up in human relationships that are in a covenant like that. Now, Jess, you brought up in the last conversation we had the character of Ruth. And I think that one of the things that, you know, so she's talking about Trad Wives.
• 40:19
  And if you were to ask me, okay, what is it, how does a family team think about contingency plans for when things go really bad and things can go really bad? And so our contingency plans are, if you're, you're a trad wife, you need to make sure that you're a part of a trad family and a trad community. Because the contingency plans within a trad family is if anything were to happen to a
• 40:42
  to like my daughters in terms of their husbands, it's something whether they were to die or if some abuse were to take place and she needed to somehow have a safe place, like I'd be like, come to me. Like that's my job. I'm the contingency plan, you know, I'm the father. And so there should be men that are, they're sort of like in traditional cultures, there's an assumption that it's always,
• 41:10
  men's responsibility to provide for women, because that always was necessary in traditional cultures. You couldn't have a culture, but that wasn't happening. And so then there would be a clear order within the culture of who takes responsibility. And it's like in the story of Ruth, where you have this massive tragedy, right? It goes, there's the father-in-law has died. The brother-in-law has died. Ruth's husband has died. There are no men left in the entire immediate family they were a part of.
• 41:37
  or even that first rung of extended family. And within the Torah, it was the kinsmen redeemers, the next closest male relative's responsibility. And so there needs to be, and this in the church, one of the things that occurred is that you had families where women were not being provided for
• 41:53
  and were vulnerable because they were coming into the kingdom and they were losing their families. And that's why in Acts 6, one of the first decisions that the early church made was to provide for all of the widows from these families. And they didn't go to the widows and say, hey, you guys, I hope you all have contingency plans for when you were going to be kicked out of your family.
• 42:11
  And so you all need to make sure that you get your resume out and go find a job. That wasn't what happened. In the early church, the men stepped up within that community and said, we will provide for all of the widows who are undergoing this persecution or these situations. And then you see that being codified in 1 Timothy 5 by Paul to all of the churches. It's the responsibility of the churches to have a list of the vulnerable women who
• 42:37
  and then to look at each of their situations. And if they are truly vulnerable and they've lost all of the men in their life, then the men of their church have to provide for them. So in other words, there is no contingency that says that women are completely on their own. Because when you do that, you force them to have to think about contingency planning. And like I said, the problem with contingency planning for most women is that's going to dominate their lives. You can't just do that
• 43:04
  tiny bit on the side, sprinkle a little contingency plan. That is a huge endeavor to keep up and your family will suffer greatly for it. It's so much better for women who want to be stay-at-home moms to be able to focus completely on that role and to give that all they have. And you want them to be able to do that because they see all of these safety nets underneath them. They don't feel like they have to have this constant fear.
• 43:30
  that they're going to somehow be abandoned by every man in their life. Jess, what did this start for you? Yeah, man, this was a head scratcher for me. I have not yet put a ton of, I guess, brain cells into thinking about this, mainly because I feel like I'm doing what you were saying. I'm home with my kids and that's just like my world. But I think maybe piggybacking a little bit off of what April said, I think too, it goes back to like...
• 43:57
  Again, kind of what I said earlier, like what story are we both living into? So my husband and I, like, are we aligned on like God's story for like where we play a part in that story? And then just like what, like April was saying, what is like the bedrock of our faith and where are we getting that? Because if we're on the same page with that, then there's a place we can go to when we do have a hard season or a hard conversation that then gives us the framework to know how to work through that.
• 44:26
  Um, but I think too, it also just goes back to, uh, just this lack of like a vision. Cause I think too, when we're at the same vision, when we're living in the same store, when we're in God's design and then we're like, okay, what's then the vision that that looks like?
• 44:43
  I think there's something so unifying in that, that I, we talk off it on here, that our culture has lost and that the situation too just reminds me of just the sad reality that we aren't walking in the Lord's blueprint. And so how do we...
• 45:02
  can't like, again, hold that story up high. Like, Hey, here's what God says. And like, how do we encourage that in our own marriages, our own teams? And then how does that, how do we disciple and spread that? Yes. Yeah. We have to really think about that blueprint and this cultural idea that you cut your kids off at 18, especially for daughters, forces them into this kind of thinking.
• 45:25
  Like you need to tell your daughters, I'm going to be there for you for the rest of my life. And when I'm gone, your brothers will be there for you. Like we're going, we're, we, we're providing a safety net for, for our family members. And if fathers of young daughters are listening to this, this is part of why we talk about, like you're thinking about this, um, sort of from the ground up when you're building your family, when you're starting to think about the kind of messages that
• 45:51
  Instead of giving to the culture and just saying to your daughter, hey, look, we're giving you education. We're going to cut you off. You're going to provide for yourself. Those are all messages given to sons. And I do think that there is a critical amount of weight that a son needs to feel on their shoulders in order for them to become a man and begin to understand how to provide. The problem with...
• 46:14
  doing that to daughters is that the minute they become pregnant, that weight is going to crush them. Because now all of a sudden they have the dual task of providing and fighting sort of the man's curse from Genesis 3, which the ground was cursed. In other words, work was cursed.
• 46:34
  So they're going to have to deal with the masculine curse while they're working through the vulnerability that's created by all of the challenges of being pregnant, having a completely helpless infant, and feeling totally attached to that infant emotionally, physically at first, and for the first season of their lives. It's like we're not really thoughtfully thinking about this from the perspective of... And I think one of the questions I'm always wondering...
• 47:01
  and you can think about this from the perspective of your daughters is what, what kind of masculine provision culture would you want to create? If the assumption is that women are getting pregnant and on an unspecified number of times,
• 47:17
  And that's celebrated by the family and the culture. If that's happening, if women are going through and that's such an exciting thing for them to get pregnant, have a baby, be in that vulnerable state, you could be in a state of hyper-vulnerability for 10, 20 years as a woman within that framework.
• 47:35
  And so if you know that that's coming, then you need to make sure that you're creating the kind of culture that provides for women and the contingency plans that provide for women when what they're trusting in does fall apart. Like all of that needs to be created if we're going to celebrate motherhood.
• 47:50
  And I think what our culture has said is like, we'll just, we will stop celebrating motherhood because we don't want women to be that vulnerable because men have so badly either abused or neglected their responsibilities to provide. And so this is why these are, these are really becoming binary options. You either need to make sure you're creating the kind of culture in which men are motivated, excited, and held accountable to all of the things that they get to be as fathers and husbands.
• 48:18
  Or you're going to create a culture in which men and women need to become the same and that we need to really fight and destroy any kind of difference between men and women. Because if you do that, you're disadvantaging women and their ability to compete with men in the workplace and therefore live an independent life. You're forcing them into this vulnerability. So this is the kind of these are why these two different stories are at war in our culture because they're very different.
• 48:44
  And if you're going to pick one, and this is why I think she's really kind of laying this out there. These these trad wife influencers are presenting a story that's radically different than the girl boss ideas. But underneath all of that are large amounts of assumptions that need to be challenged and on both sides. And if you're going to go down this traditional path.
• 49:07
  I think it's important that you go down all the way. You have a traditional faith in God and his design. You raise your sons and you as a father. Think about your responsibility to all of the women in your family and in the church that has huge responsibilities placed on men's shoulders to provide for women in vulnerable situations.
• 49:29
  And so, yeah, there's a lot to trying to understand what the safety nets and contingency plans need to be within a more traditional framework. Brittany, what did this start for you? About a year ago, I had a really close family member come to town. And after a few days, we were sitting in my driveway and she said, so do you know how to make your own money?
• 49:52
  And I was like, huh? And then she said, well, all this is nice, but you know, men cheat. Men leave. Do you know how to make your own money? And I won't go with where it was, but I realized right then and there what April was saying. This all comes down to a belief system.
• 50:15
  And if you're operating in the Christian belief system, like you have to stop. And what I did then was stop and say, do I really believe the covenant my husband and I made? Do I really believe that? Does he believe that? And it made me think like,
• 50:34
  If we really believe that, that is more the reason to fight together and not have to have that contingency plan. We fight together for our mission to move forward. And I think the key in that Ruth story that we were talking about with Rose and Naomi was,
• 50:53
  The key is not Boaz. The key is that God provided. And so if we're operating in this Christian belief system, we don't need that contingency plan because we believe that God's going to provide if things do because the enemy is at work. The enemy wants to destroy marriages. He wants he's got a target on all of our backs. Right.
• 51:16
  But I thought, like, if we're operating as a family team, like you were saying, Jeremy, you're going to have a team there. But so much of our culture is pushing independence and individualism. Well, then, yeah, you do need a contingency plan. That's what I thought.
• 51:33
  Yeah. That's the real collision is the difference. That's why we're talking about the culture of individualism versus the family. And that those are such different ways of framing and viewing this. So, yeah, that's a man potent. April, any other thoughts before we're? Yeah. Something we say a lot around here is.
• 51:56
  we roll deep. Yes. And that is, I guess it's a way of saying like, we've got lots of contingency plans, but it's all each other. It's like we, we, um, within the framework of what you're saying, Brittany, cause I agree. Like, you know, on one hand, do we need contingency plans? Cause we've got the Lord and like, he is our ultimate provider, but within his framework, I feel like there are these, it's like layer after layer after layer of like,
• 52:25
  Just for example, like, oh, when we go out of town, who will feed the pet? Oh, Papa will come over and do it. Oh, if he can't do it, then our nephew Clayton, he'll come over and do it. If Clayton's not available, then we'll see if, you know. So it's like we can go layer after layer from everything from like, oh, a car broke down. Who's going to go get them? Oh, like you ran out of gas. Well, who's going to come bring the thing? You know, so it's like.
• 52:50
  You're at school, but this car is here and you're the driver and you can go. So we just have this like kind of understanding that we have each other's backs. We're, you know, that we're looking out for you and you know, we're looking out for each other within the framework of like, you know, being people who are trying to surrender to the Lord on a daily basis. And so I just feel like we roll deep. Yeah.
• 53:15
  And that's we don't need to like be afraid. I think contingency plans in this the context these ladies are talking about is like being ruled by fear. Yes. Yeah.
• 53:29
  Yeah, I love that. A traditional family rolls deep. I think that comes from like rappers when they show up at a party. I think this is where it came from, right? Where like some will show up with like a posse of five and then somebody shows up with a posse of 10. And so when things go down, the ones who roll deep, you know, they're going to win whatever gang battle is about to happen.
• 53:48
  transpire. And I love that picture because it's like a cool hip rapper. Yeah. Yeah. You could. Yeah. I almost put a beat to what you were saying. That was good. We rolled deep. Well, yeah. And this is this is what. Yeah. Because we just had this conversation like an hour or two ago. We're hosting a big banquet at our house tonight. And
• 54:06
  somebody who came over to help said, well, whoa, two of your daughters are gone in Korea. Like, how are you guys going to pull this off with just your family? And I was like, well, we rolled deep. There's like a lot more of us than we'd have to on the other side of the world and still pull this off. We just called the other family members. I mean, that's,
• 54:21
  And it's fun. Part of what we like to do is just push our family to see like what happens when, like you were describing April, when you have to kind of go down the layers of the contingency plans, you know, all of the different and just get to experience the strength of, of all of the, the different components of the family.
• 54:41
  And you want to test your family in that way because you want to sense and see that, no, those nets are real. It's good to rely on each other. And this is really the vision of the interdependent life versus the independent life. And I think that there is the hyper-dependent life that some people, that's where you become. I think the culture today is you be hyper-independent.
• 55:05
  And then if anything were to go wrong, you're going to become instantly hyper dependent on the government. It's like, that's the one, two, there's no interdependence, right? There's no like community of people in which you're experiencing the depth of relationships. You're either completely on your own or you're going to rely on a completely unparalleled.
• 55:23
  you know, personless institution of some kind to come to your rescue. And man, that's just another form of really individualism to say, I don't actually want to know the faces or hear the voices or feel the strength of the individuals actually lifting me up when I'm in need. I'm going to live as a complete individual.
• 55:45
  And man, that's just an anti-family way to live. And this is why a lot of people don't value family, won't put in the work, because they look at that and they're like, I want the independent life. And maybe for a lot of people, they just haven't even seen the beauty of rolling deep with a family. And that's what we want to be presenting here. Yeah, Brittany?
• 56:06
  I totally agree with that, Jeremy. When you were saying that, I thought, man, like the whole reason I could jump on this podcast is because my dad and stepmom are next door. And we were able to call and say, hey, got the time wrong. Can she run over real quick? Right. There's interdependence and we're able to use that towards ministry. And so, but, you know, I thought when you were talking about that, that independence, well, we are strongly independent. Yeah.
• 56:35
  It feeds this pride in each of us. I can do it all. I got it. I don't need help. And so it feeds this, like, it lets this sin fester. Whereas when we're interdependent, it feeds vulnerability and growth. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 56:52
  There's a character implication to this whole conversation. Part of why these families break down, part of why there's such selfishness with some husbands or some wives is because they have been trained to live this independent life. And so part of it is sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• 57:12
  you've, you've raised people to be hyper-independent and then you're, and then you're shocked when there's a constant breakdown in families where marriages are, are, are so fragile, but it's a direct result of that hyper-independence. So, um, man, yeah, that's a good, good discussion. Really. Uh, thank you guys for jumping on here and rolling deep enough to be on the podcast today. And, uh, yeah, you guys have a good rest of your day.
• 57:39
  Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the family teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend to stay up to date with our events, new content and products. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at family teams.