Choose Your Family Story

Marriage & Mothering Narratives, True & False

Why are we telling women that motherhood will make them miserable?” So asks the headline of a piece by Naomi Schaeffer Riley for Deseret News. She is commenting on the acclaimed novel Consider Yourself Kissed, which she describes as “yet another installment” in the long list of depictions of “modern women’s grievances.”

The grievance list is a long one—women who can’t find a husband, can’t have a baby, can’t successfully climb the corporate ladder because of said husband or baby, don’t feel fulfilled taking care of baby, yet are miserable at work because they miss baby, etc., etc.

Riley’s problem with this novel—and many other works like it—is not that it claims that marriage or family life is difficult. Any two married people can tell you that being married is sometimes hard. And any parent can tell you that being a parent is a lot of hard.

The problem with the grievance-based narratives, Riley says, is

that the whole system is out to get you. Sure, it may seem as if women have made progress, but these novelists and journalists are here to tell you that you are destined for misery. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of finding someone you love earlier and trying to build a family together, you will put your career first, rejecting multiple decent, loving men because it’s too early to settle down. If and when you finally do enter a partnership and have kids, you will walk around with a chip on your shoulder wondering why you have to cut back on work to be with your kids—even though chances are you actually do want to be with your kids more. You will blame this all on your partner or your boss or the world. Rinse and repeat.

Storytelling, in other words, is a big deal. The stories we tell ourselves and others—even in our heads, in our most private moments—impact how we approach and interact with the world around us.

Intergenerationality & Family Narratives

Research backs this up. To study the impact of storytelling on children, Emory University researchers Marshall P. Duke and Robyn Fivush developed something called the “Do You Know” scale.¹ Children were asked 20 questions related to their family history—questions like where the child’s parents and grandparents grew up and married, or what schools their parents had attended or jobs they had held. They released their findings in a 2008 paper they coauthored with psychologist Amber Lazarus: “We report that knowledge of family history is significantly correlated with internal locus of control, higher self-esteem, better family functioning, greater family cohesiveness, lower levels of anxiety, and lower incidence of behavior problems.”²

They found that the children’s performance on the Do You Know scale seemed to be correlated with the development of an “intergenerational self,” an understanding of themselves as part of a larger family picture. Or, as Fivush says, “When we don’t know what to do, we look for stories about how people have coped in the past.” Children who knew more about their families had a greater reservoir of experiences to draw from when facing new challenges.

The researchers also found that there were three basic kinds of family narratives. First is the “ascending family narrative,” which goes something like this: “When we first arrived in this city, Son, we had nothing. But we worked hard, saved, and now we’re incredibly successful.” Second is the “descending narrative”: “When we came to America, we were wealthy. But then the Depression hit, and we lost everything.”

Third, the type that seemed correlated with the most success and well-being in children, is the “oscillating family narrative”: “We’ve had good times, and we’ve had bad times. We’ve had family members who were wildly successful and well-respected. And we’ve had family members who were drunkards or went to prison. But through it all, we’ve worked hard, overcome, and stuck with each other.”

Suffering & Purpose

This particular study focused on children, but I believe the findings pertain to adults as well. This “oscillating” narrative is the one we should be telling women. Sometimes, in life, there are hard patches—when you’re waiting for a spouse, praying for a baby, putting your career on pause or leaving it altogether to care for your own family, or launching your children to the next phase of their own lives.

As part of the curse of sin, God tells the woman, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). Part of the curse, as it is unique to woman, is that sin introduced “pain in childbearing,” which, I’m going to suggest, might mean more than the physical process of labor and delivery. I believe it also involves the physical, mental, and emotional toil of woman’s unique role in raising children, in the same way that the curse of sin introduced pain and toil for the man in bringing forth food from the ground. The curse also affects women and men alike with the unnatural desire to rule over each other—man will exploit his dominion, and woman will seek to overthrow man’s authority. Strife in the family and toil in our respective callings—these are all a result of the curse.

But in his goodness, God has ordained that hardship also serves an important end: sanctification. Paul writes in Romans chapter five that as believers, we can “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Rom. 5:3–5). Likewise, in 2 Corinthians, the Lord tells Paul that he will not remove Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” for “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). James writes that Christians are to “Count it all joy . . . when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4).

Faithfulness & Blessing

The curse of sin has brought suffering, and our Lord has seen fit to allow it. In life, for women and men alike, there are choices. The key lies, as Riley writes, in recognizing which choices tend to lead to greater well-being for oneself and one’s family. It lies in recognizing hardship and responding to it in Christ-like ways.

Research has long demonstrated that marriage is associated with higher levels of happiness and health, and that having children leads to a greater sense of purpose, especially later in life. We have the autonomy to make the choices to be faithful and persevere. Once we recognize this—and embrace the suffering as well as the blessing—we can let go of the “system’s out to get me” mindset, which only breeds bitterness and discontent. “Part of growing up is realizing that we have autonomy,” Riley concludes, “that our life outcomes are not just a product of structural forces acting on us. In reality, women have a lot of choices open to them, but there are only a few that will genuinely make them happy.”

Notes
1. Carol Clark, “How Family Stories Help Children Weather Hard Times,” Emory News Center (Apr. 29, 2020).
2. Marshall P. Duke, Amber Lazarus, and Robyn Fivush, “Knowledge of Family History as a Clinically Useful Index of Psychological Well-Being and Prognosis: A Brief Report,” Psychotherapy 45.2 (2008), 268–72.