I hope and have every confidence that at some future day
my posterity and yours will look upon the popular efforts of our popular
culture, working mightily to smooth out the differences between men and women,
and conclude, “Huh?” The differences are
real, profound, and obvious.
You have to work very hard to convince young children
that men and women, boys and girls, are pretty much the same. The differences are to them an unremarkable
truth. And so they remain, despite
efforts to pretend they are otherwise.
And so, I believe, the differences between man and woman will persist,
with unhappiness and poverty the rewards for efforts to obliterate them.
Not that it has not been tried before. It has always come to grief. One story comes from the French Revolution. A leader of the National Assembly proclaimed that
the new government had almost completely eliminated all differences between the
sexes, when a voice from the back softly retorted, “Vive la différence!”
I, too, embrace the differences and am glad of them. Having been married more than three decades I
can testify from long experiment that the many differences between husband and
wife, man and woman, have played a central role in our happiness. Even as a youth I often mused upon how my
life had been enriched by the influence of women. That was not a new discovery for mankind even
if it was for me. Benjamin Disraeli said
as much in the 1800s: “There is no
mortification however keen, no misery however desperate, which the spirit of
woman cannot in some degree lighten or alleviate.” (Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby, p.311) I am not aware of any exception to that
maxim.
This variety is eternal, built into human nature from the
very beginning:
So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
(Genesis 1:27)
This was no accident of nature. Together man and woman, male and female, are
the image of God.
My children have always noticed the difference and
profited from it. When they phone, they
rarely ask for “Dad.” If Dad answers,
they will sweetly and briefly chat and then ask, “Is Mom there?” With Mom they will then talk for a long while,
hours sometimes.
On the other hand, while growing up, when they wanted
permission to do this or that, more often than not, they went to Dad. To guard against this clever maneuver, my
wife and I early made a pact that we would not openly disagree regarding the denial or
approval of a child’s request and would seek to consult to get a parental
consensus if a matter of consequence were involved. That worked well, but the children still knew
where to go first to make their pitch.
The paradigm was similar when it came to bugs, vermin,
and fixing broken things, unclogging drains, moving the rubbish—all jobs
usually given to Dad and faced with trepidation when Dad was not
available. As the boys got older, these
jobs increasingly found their way to them, too.
The flip side was that all illnesses and injuries were brought to the
attention of Doctor Mom. They still are, no matter how far away the child may
be.
These patterns have been successful for peace and harmony
in the home. Life would be harder if my
wife and I struggled against the differences that gave us distinct skills,
insights, and abilities, related to being a woman and being a man. One of the greatest blessings of marriage has
been to enlist an undying union with the owner of a wealthy supply of talents not
easily possessed by the other.
My conversation with friends and colleagues have shown
this pattern to be too common to be attributable merely to differences of personality. The differences between man and woman are real and enriching. I thank my God for making man and woman in His image, together.
