I’m in my office, just before 8:00 on a Monday morning. Daylight Savings Time has arrived early, as almost everyone knows, and I am happy. (Even if getting up this morning at five for my boxing session felt particularly challenging.)
I had a wonderful time once again with the All Saints confirmation class this weekend on our retreat in the San Bernardino mountains. (I’ve written about past retreats on this blog: here are the 2005 and 2006 reports.). I was a bit disappointed by the abnormally warm weather and the nearly complete absence of snow, despite the fact that we were up in the mountains three weeks earlier than usual.
Though in 2005 we had more boys than girls in our confirmation class, this year our gender ratio was wildly skewed. After a couple of cancellations, we ended up taking fourteen girls and one boy up to Big Bear for the weekend retreat. (The boy, a very outgoing and relaxed kid, was more than delighted at his unique status.) In our intimate and emotional discussions Friday night and Saturday, one clear pattern emerged in the stories these young women were telling about their lives.
After years and years of teaching confirmation classes, I’ve noticed that each class has a slightly different “feel.” The 2007 “Seekers” confirmation class is not merely notable for being overwhelmingly female; this year’s crop is also marked by an often frantic desire to live up to the expectations of the outside world. Never have I gone on retreat with so many young women who were so completely exhausted! I’m not talking about temporarily underslept; I’m talking about girls who are 14-16 years old whose daily schedules are as demanding as that of a young Japanese businessman trying to climb the ladder at Sony.
Never have the youth leaders had to work so hard to convince so many kids to take a weekend away! These girls weren’t worried about missing dances or parties. They were worried about missing speech tournaments, SAT prep classes, and biology homework. They were worried about not being able to exercise and stay fit for their various team sport commitments. Many begged to be allowed to bring some books to study from “in our free time.” (We have a fairly strict “no homework” policy; the kids know about this weekend six months in advance.) And the thought of spending forty-eight hours away from their elaborately programmed schedules and responsibilities was terrifying for many of them.
Before a retreat, I always joke with the other youth leaders about “packing plenty of Kleenex”. We expect a lot of tears as we go through our emotional, spirit-filled weekend. But rarely have we had as many sniffles and wet eyes as we did these past few days. On Friday night, as we “checked in” with our fourteen girls and one boy about their lives and their faith journey, it was as if a massive dam had suddenly broken. One after another, they broke down. Some were angry at themselves, others angry at God, many confessed feeling utterly overwhelmed by pressure and expectations. The most common phrase I heard all night was one I don’t always anticipate to be the most common: “I feel so guilty.” These girls had guilt and shame weighing them down. I could see it in the slump of their shoulders, in the puffiness of their eyes.
The specific pressures vary. We have one girl who’s a dancer, a very good one; she’s trying to get ready to audition for professional companies at the same time that she’s carrying a full load of advanced placement classes as a sophomore. Another girl is captain of her debate team and active in student government at her school. Her days begin at five and end at midnight. She does three to four hours of homework a night, tutors underprivileged kids, prepares for speech tournaments and is gearing up to run for class president for next year. She’s a tenth-grader, but her anxiety about not “getting into a good school” and “letting everyone down” is so palpable that when she tries to relax she ends up sitting and shaking rather like a wet chihuahua.
As a feminist and a Christian, the desperate “people-pleasing” of so many of these young women troubles me. Many of them acknowledge carrying the double burden familiar to so many modern women: these girls know that they are expected to live up to traditional feminine standards of behavior and looks, at least much of the time. (Three girls talked quietly about their struggles with disordered eating and body self-loathing.) But in addition to the cultural expectation to be bright-eyed, cheerful, virginal and pleasing, they also feel pressured to be intellectually, athletically, and professionally successful. They all volunteer (often as part of school-mandated community service). Their parents have told them all their lives that they can “be anything they want to be”, which sounds great — until the girls are forced to excel at virtually everything they do in every facet of their lives so as “not to miss out” on any opportunity to succeed. The superwomen complex is alive and well in girls so young that some were born after Bill Clinton became president! That breaks my heart.
As we wrapped up our first session Friday night, I pulled out the Bible. I read two sections. From Matthew, I read my beloved 10:37:
Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Honestly, it’s often twice as hard to get young women, raised since birth to please and to perform, to grasp this than young men. We are so much more tolerant of male rebellion; we are more tolerant of young men who “take time to find themselves” or who “are going through a slacker phase.” And to put it more simply, more young men seem to have an easier time daring to disappoint their parents. (Of course, there are plenty of boys near collapse from trying to meet other’s expectations. But their numbers are fewer.)
What I wanted the girls to grasp from this passage is that a real relationship with Christ is one that comes unmediated by parents or peers. To live in Christ means to follow Him with the very likely expectation that His plan for your life is not the same as your parent’s hopes. That doesn’t mean that Jesus is an excuse for narcissistic rebellion. But it does mean that if you put pleasing others, especially your parents, ahead of discerning God’s unique plan for your life, then you have missed the point. I made it clear to “my kids”: Christ comes to set captives free, and sometimes the jailers are the very people who love you most.
After praying silently for quick inspiration, I felt called to read Luke 10:38-42:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Earlier, as our fourteen girls shared, I had realized that I was sitting in a room filled to the rafters with Marthas, with nary a Mary to be found! Like Martha, they are “worried and upset about many things”. They don’t know how to rest; they are “distracted by all the preparations that (have) to be made.” These Marthas — my dear, beautiful, brave, overachieving, anxious, exhausted girls — live lives that are governed by an endless series of “to do lists”. They wake up with “have to’s” and go to bed with “ought to have’s” and spend their days thinking about their “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” But only one thing is needed, and that is to sit at the foot of God.
It says in Kings, “after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” The earthquakes and fires in these girls’ lives are all that they hear; they hear only noise, only storm and fury. As I said to them, that “gentle whisper” (what the KJV famously calls the “still small voice”) can’t be heard until you learn to press the mute button at your peers, at your coaches, at your teachers, at Facebook, at Youtube, at Jane Magazine, and yes, at your parents. Martha is too busy to hear the gentle whisper. She worries too much, fearing what will happen if she stops to rest, fearing who she’ll be if she stops her endless motion, her endless people-pleasing. Choosing “what is better” is about placing one’s own spiritual growth ahead of everything else. Choosing Mary’s part over Martha’s is to risk the wrath of some who love and care for you; it is to risk disappointing those who raised you and nurtured you. It is to risk having to confront your own fear of not doing enough. And if you want joy, if you want fulfillment, if you want rest, it’s what you absolutely gotta do.
Thanks to the remarkable success of several waves of American feminism, the girls I work with today have more opportunities than virtually any generation before them. Though they have to confront a misogynistic backlash that has taken root in many aspects of our dominant culture, they have the chance to achieve more and do more and enjoy more than their mothers and grandmothers. But we’ve made the terrible mistake of turning opportunity into obligation. We’ve sucked the joy right out of their over-programmed, over-monitored, over-achieving little lives. True feminism and true Christian faith are absolutely congruent in their mutual opposition to the idea that young women ought to live up to an ever-more demanding set of duties and commitments.
As a feminist and a Christian, I want to see “my girls” becoming more like Mary, less like Martha. And if that means that some of the boys need to go and spend a few minutes taking over Martha’s duties so she can take a break, then they damned well can step up and do it.
UPDATE: My dear mother, long a defender of Martha, writes me today to remind me that many traditions say that Martha ended up in Tarascon, France, where she may well have slain a dragon. It’s a happy thought.
At one point I was considering writing a post about how churches (for obviously practical reasons) would far prefer Marthas to Marys (as a Mary wanna-be with Martha tendencies, it’s an unhealthy situation for me). I was about as Martha-ish as I could be as a teenager in the late 70’s, and I’m glad I’m not a teenage girl now with the greater pressures they currently have.
I really enjoyed this post, and I think it’s really great that you encouraged them to look beyong their normal, day-to-day rush. Your post is also valuable to those of us adult women who still have difficulty placing boundaries around their inner Marthas.
Thanks for this thought-provoking post, Hugo.
From what I’ve heard, it sounds like both young men and women these days are facing increasing pressure to be super(wo)men in school. By that, I mean young people are doing more and more to make themselves stand out (top grades, stellar community service record, leadership roles in sports and clubs), most often in the hopes that this extra effort will give them an edge during the college admissions process. I know it certainly was that way back when I attended high school in the SGV; there was extraordinary pressure to be number one in everything. I knew people who would burst into tears for getting a mere 1400 on their SAT. (I thought it was silly, but you get the point.) It was considered absolutely critical to pack one’s schedule with AP courses (and avoid non-AP courses, as they diluted one’s GPA), get into a service club, and if possible, join a sport, participate in student government, join the debate team, and/or participate in clubs. “Feel good” work in the community (e.g. helping mentally disabled children, teaching illiterate adults to read, volunteering at the convalescent home) were seen as feathers in one’s cap.
I don’t mean to sound heartless by saying this. But the fact is, getting top grades, being number one in debate, being the class president, doing community service, and the like were critical to standing out back when I attended high school, and that was in the late 1980s. (Wow.) And these days, the high schoolers I’ve talked to are saying it’s become even more competitive. I have heard of students who stay up till 2 or 3 a.m. every night to study. (Please note this describes only a certain subset of high schoolers; not everyone does this.)
While I do agree girls have the additional pressure of living up to traditional standards of behavior and looks, I would wager that boys have additional social pressures of their own as well. I do feel those additional pressures (whether for girls or boys) should not be confused with the pressure to succeed, which is felt keenly by both girls and boys (in this specific social subset), and which these days encompasses the multifaceted academic success (which includes grades, sports, student activities, and community service) students perceive to be absolutely necessary in order to gain entrance to a top university, which in their minds then supposedly paves their way to a successful and lucrative job and career.
Unfortunately, many young people have a habit of thinking their whole life and happiness hinge on getting into the “right” school. So of course, they therefore feel they must do whatever it takes in high school to get into the “right” school. IMHO, I feel that’s why young people are feeling so much pressure. I wish they could understand there’s more to life than getting into the “right” school. Getting into a top college does help, but that’s just one step in the path to potential success and happiness, and truly, there are many different paths one can take.
I think it’s wise, Sydney, to distinguish among several things. One key thing to distinguish: the pressure to succeed imposed by parents, and genuinely self-imposed pressure to achieve in order to maximize God-given potential. God wants all of us to become our best, sure. But if God is calling us to art, and our parents think we’re called to engineering, we’ve got two different definitions of success at hand.
The desire to please is what I’m getting at here; it’s deeper than the desire to succeed by itself.
Aren’t their parents part of your ministry, Hugo? These people need a wake-up call. Where I live, there are a lot of parents with the same mentality–either your kids get into an Ivy League or Stanford, or they’ll end up flipping burgers.
Hugo, those are important distinctions to make, and I feel people who have had a bit more life experience are more equipped to make them.
But if I recall correctly, pressure to succeed as defined by parents, pressure to succeed as defined by oneself, and pressure to please (perhaps pleasing parents and society by being “successful”) are often one and the same for that subset of that age group. I wonder if most young people are even capable of dividing the three from each other. This subset is taught from the beginning that success is *not* derived from answering one’s own calling, if that calling means art or something non-medicine, law, or engineering related; success is derived from taking the tried-and-true path to conventional success, toward achieving a life of higher financial and societal status. They are taught if they want to be good sons and daughters (and please their parents/family/society), they ought not stray from that path. I think a lot of these students adopt parents’ and mainstream society’s vision of success early on, so much so that it becomes difficult for them to comprehend the idea of alternate versions of success until later, if at all. As a result, succeeding in their (and their parents’) minds becomes no different from being pleasing.
Of course, not all students are like this. But I’ll wager a good number are. What motivates high achieving students today to do well in school? My guess is that most, though not all, are driven by the pressure (whether internal, external, or both) that they must “do well” because if they don’t, they’ll be, as mythago said, flipping burgers. This is the story their parents and society feeds them. Of course, we all know that’s an overly simplified version of life. I may be in my thirties, but I do remember well most of my peers in high school embraced this either/or story.
One way, I feel, to broaden these people’s perspectives about the need to please and succeed is to expose them to people who come from similar backgrounds but who have found alternate ways to succeed, especially if their version of success is not the conventional type. Seeing people who are like them but who have found a way to succeed in their own way *and* be content shows there is another way. It helps to show that these people are answering their own calling and are not leading their lives in such a way as to please others, to show they are answering to God, to their inner voice, or whatever internal force it may be (as opposed to family or society).
Mythago, yes, the parents are part of the ministry. I have sat down with parents many times to try and connect with them about their kids. It’s often very difficult to do, as we have no set time to meet with them.
Sydney, you’re right that this is enormously difficult work. Trust me, I don’t just throw out a bible verse and say “Look, you’re all actin’ like a bunch of Marthas. Be Marys!” That’s too simplistic. It involves a lot of work — and often, it involves planting seeds that will blossom years from now, in college or beyond. One of the poignant things about teaching and youth work is knowing that most of the time, one never gets to see how these kids turned out — only a tiny fraction come back. But I trust that the seed-planting matters, and that the blossoms will come even if I don’t get to see them. I don’t plant for my own pleasure, anyway…
Having been one of those high-acheiving teenaged girls, I advise care here. Your report feels somewhat judgemental from where I sit. It sounds a little bit like you’re looking at these girls’ lives from the outside and disapproving of their choices and their priorities. It feels like you’re asking them to remake themselves in the image of your choosing.
I assume it is not your intent to judge them or to impose more expectations on them, but I think you need to be careful here.
Maybe all fourteen girls at your retreat truely felt guilty about not getting everything done, but the guilt and shame could come just as easily from not being a Mary.
I fear that the response, of an overacheiving teenaged girl to being told she must be more like Mary is not to reevaluate her existing activities, but to add more. She will wake up still earlier to make time for devotions and she will become more involved in youth group and church activities.
So be careful. Be careful that yours is not yet another voice shaming them into taking on yet another role.
For fear of coming across very negatively myself, I find many of your posts interesting and thought provoking. I am sure it is not your intent to judge or shame here.
And let me be clear, they were weeping in frustration — and sharing stories of overwhelming pressure. I was responding to very specific pain.
And there is no judgment, just a gentle suggestion that they search for a way to hear the gentle whisper. And my voice is not that whisper.
Hugo, you sound like a parent already. :-)
for some reason, i tell myself these things almost everyday but reading your post really seemed to help…a daily struggle.
Oh, my. This hit home, hard.
These girls sound so much like me at their age (”at their age.” I make it sound like it wasn’t only, oh, nine, ten years ago. …oh, my God, it was nine, ten years ago. I’m not sure whether to feel like a baby, or old.) Especially this:
Their parents have told them all their lives that they can “be anything they want to be”, which sounds great — until the girls are forced to excel at virtually everything they do in every facet of their lives so as “not to miss out” on any opportunity to succeed.
I’ve always tried to articulate the implicit threat in the ways I processed these things: “So long as you do your best, it’s okay.” “You can do anything if you try.” The combined message: “If it’s not perfect, it’s clearly not your best, and therefore not okay.” I had to be a competitive athlete, frontstage in chorus and plays and winning medals at all three, running student organizations, running fundraisers, meeting weekly with the principal over policy, in AP classes, while trying to make my spiritual life deeper as though it was training–regular allnighters of pushups, prayer, meditation, boxing practice, reading, Scripture, more meditation, because I wouldn’t be satisfied until I was both a prophet and able to walk on water myself. While singing opera and running marathons and getting a couple Nobel prizes.
Anything less felt like I was letting everyone down, failing my potential, failing everyone. You got it right on, nail-head-bang: opportunity became obligation.
Like these girls, I didn’t belong to myself. I belonged to my family, to my society, to my duty to my faith. It didn’t matter whether it was classes, or youth group, or track team, or theater–they all had to have me giving my all. And there’s only so much ‘all’ to go around. It’s no surprise I was having panic and anxiety attacks at least weekly, by the end of high school, breaking down sobbing at the drop of a hat, engaging in self-harm. And the best part is, that just feeds back into the loop: you’re wasting this time breaking down when you need to be getting it together and doing your calculus midterm. volunteering. doing situps. doing scales. memorizing literature. You’ll just have to work harder next hour to make up the shortfall.
I used to say, in private, that the word I hated hearing most was “potential.”
This just breaks my heart.
I wish I’d had someone looking after me they way they do you. I just managed to survive the inevitable breakdowns when I hit college and put the pieces back together.
Thanks, little light. I heard almost exactly this verbatim from one girl this weekend:
And the best part is, that just feeds back into the loop: you’re wasting this time breaking down when you need to be getting it together and doing your calculus midterm. volunteering. doing situps. doing scales. memorizing literature. You’ll just have to work harder next hour to make up the shortfall.
As far as self-harm is concerned, I ought to have mentioned we have a “cutter” or two among our girls. One huge advantage of having been a self-mutillator myself is that I can point to scars on my own arms, scars much older than these kids themselves, and assure them that I do understand and there is hope.
The Bible passage that jumps out for me here is:
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.”
Hi Hugo,
just wanted to say this was a really insightful, very well written, spot on piece. I too relate to the Marthas you describe - I am happy that you are there for these girls to help them find perspective.
Good post, Hugo. I hope my kids don’t think I’m expecting them to be perfect!
Interesting article. I find it fascinating that you feel the Bible and feminism is telling these girls:
“True feminism and true Christian faith are absolutely congruent in their mutual opposition to the idea that young women ought to live up to an ever-more demanding set of duties and commitments. ”
Feminism is what pushed girls to feel they HAD to do it all. Pre-feminism saw men and women with complimentary roles. Men took the obligations for many things such as careers, protection, leadership, and women took the obligations of home and hearth. When feminism swore it did not need men; “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, it chose for generations of women to be forced to tackle both male and female roles. These girls are a product of feminism. This is what every feminist mother dreamt of for her daughters. The grass was apparently greener.
I do not consider myself a feminist, much in part becuase what feminism stands for is directly contradictory to the Bible. Not that men and women are equal: the Bible supports this yet feminism does not IMO. The Bible stands for clearly defined roles for men and women, and tells women (and men) that priorities are to be 1) God 2) husband/wife 3) children . Feminism tells you your priorities should be 1) Yourself 2) Career 3) Family, IF you want one. or friends if you don’t.
I do not see what you do in the Bible.
I do not see what you do in the Bible.
Evidently. Read through the archives on Christianity and feminism on my sidebar, and you’ll have some idea, Jenk, where I’m comin’ from. It’s folks like you — and I say this gently and without rancor — who remind me that the work I’m doing with young people in Christian formation is so important.
Thanks, O. Lee and Anna.
Little light said “the word I hated hearing most was ‘potential’.”
I sure hated that word. I’m pretty sure I’m older than others here. I was in the “potential” pool well over fifty years ago. It caused me so much discomfort that I basically opted out. “Tuned in and dropped out” as people said a while later. I’ve lived quite a good life, but I know I was a huge disappointment to my family. Blue collar all the way.
It’s been fine. No one will ever be able to google my real accomplishments, but I’m satisfied with them, and my satisfaction began when I determined not to let my elders set my agenda.
“The fact that my understanding of sexual morality is broader than that of most evangelicals doesn’t mean it’s so wide open the wind blows through.”
It looks to me like you are reinterpreting the Bible and assuming that means you have a broader, ie better, understanding of it. Your interpretations already are causing you positions from Christian organizations which are loose with interpretations to begin with. It is pretty presumptuous of you to assume you know more than traditional Christians because you have a different view. Sometimes more is less, to turn an old cliche around.
How can you seriously claim to be pro-choice AND Christian. You cannot tell me you think Jesus would approve of ripping a 2 month old baby out of the womb? I just do not get it. Where is your support for feminist doctorine in the Bible?
As I said, the Bible very much teaches that both men and women are equally valuable in the eyes of God. It says nothing else congruent to radical feminism. Actually the MRM is closer to the teachings of the Bible, by valuing fatherhood and demanding accountability of both men AND women.
Please do not tell me to go read more of your writing, I do not have time to sift through hundreds of posts.
Jen, the starting point for feminist doctrine in Scripture is Galatians 3:28. Read Ephesians 5:21 as the controlling purpose for 5:22 and ff; read 1 Corinthians 7:4 and you see the radical egalitarianism of authentic Christianity. For starters.
The men’s rights movement, Jen, wants “choice for men” — the right of fathers to walk away from children they help conceive. That’s one of the most basic tenets of all the national men’s rights organizations. (Promise Keepers is NOT a men’s rights organization, it falls into a different category). The MRM is decidedly secular.
Abortion is not the topic in this thread, and I won’t let it be hijacked.
I am praying for you, Jen; confident that you are praying for me. Pray for the many lambs of His I am feeding.
Peace, sister.
I think the opportunity=obligation equation has been true, in most times and places, for both men and women. As opportunities expanded, the equation has been preserved–and women, whose opportunities have expanded more, have seen their obligations grow in proportion.
But that may be the one MRA point that I actually, whole-heartedly, agree with: in most of history, the opportunites that early feminists saw men as having and women as needing were perceived primarily as musts, not mays.