B. Blurs the Distinction Between the Sexes. The unisex emphasis in education is the result of feminist intimidation of the state and federal school system. Actually, it is a debasement of women, tantamount to suggesting that being a woman is somehow a second-rate position. Rather than featuring her femininity, she is treated as a unisex object.

The refusal to face the differences between men and women borders on intellectual insanity. Ordinary people have no difficulty admitting these differences, none of which denotes inferiority, but all of which signal exciting diversity.

Consider some of these:

1. Sexuality -- physiologically the sexes obviously differ.
2. Maternal instinct -- women, not men, instinctively yearn to nurture, love, and care for the young.
3. Physical capacity all the feminist rhetoric in the world will not alter the fact that men have stronger upper bodies than women and can usually run and swim faster.
4. Aggressiveness -- men pick more quarrels, seem more combative, are sexually the perpetrators of rape, and so on.
5. Emotional vacillation -- women experience greater mood alterations. It is a fact of nature that men never have periods and never give birth to children. One scientific writer claims that women have from two to six times as much difficulty with depression as men.

The Bible teaches us that, in the beginning, God made them male and female. If He had wanted only men, He could have arranged it that way. But instead He designed us sexually different and en dorsed procreation in marriage, while condemning all forms of same-sex activity. The feminist movement is in part a fight against God and nature, which is one reason it is doomed to failure. Fortu Lately, it has not been able to convince the majority of American women.

C. Creates Unnecessary Dissatisfaction With Being a Housewife and Mother. Feminist educators have succeeded in changing even the pictures of women in our children's textbooks. An order out of Sacramento forbids the inclusion of pictures in our school texts depicting women with aprons and vacuums. Men are now shown doing housework, and women are depicted as mechanics, telephone repair-persons, and so on. Such distorted concepts make little girls unnecessarily career oriented and cause housewives to become dissatisfied with their role and bored with home life. Many develop a risky obsession with going to work, which in turn may become tiring and boring. Some have needlessly sacrificed their marriage in a quest to follow the feminist illusion.

D. Causes Insecurity in Women. It is imperative that everyone come to grips with himself: who he is and why he is here. Many women today are being driven by the feminist mentality to assume an aggressive posture that is not conducive to self- acceptance and a feeling of emotional security.

After studying many disturbed women, Maggie Scarf makes this frightening admission:

... women are vulnerable to depression because emotional attachments are much more important to them than to men. In many Cases, she says, women define themselves almost exclusively by their relationships to others. When these bonds break -- through death, divorce or children leaving home -- they often suffer depression. Some say they would rather kin themselves than live alone....

These apparent differences raise a troubling possibility: that emotional bonding, once a key to survival, is making women's lives more difficult in today's feminist era. Women are caught between the demands of their genes, urging them toward marriage and family, and a society sending them powerful new signals to be independent. While Scarf admits that men also suffer from depression, she says that the condition is usually triggered by failure in their profession, not in their personal relationships. It might seem logical that women who follow men into the marketplace would be less vulnerable to depression. Not so, says Scarf. The working women she studied were just as depressed as those who stayed at home, reinforcing her unsettling conviction that mood is a function of biology. . . .

There is something fulfilling about motherhood that cannot be matched on any other level.

E. Destroys Femininity. I have attended enough feminist rallies and debates with my wife, Bev (who, as president of Concerned Women for America, is often forced to oppose their programs and ideology), to know that many feminists look and act more like blocking ends in the NFL than women. In fact, one of the characteristics that defeated the ERA was the un-feminine conduct and image of many of the feminist leaders.

Let's face it, there is nothing feminine about sloppy jeans and T-shirts. Many career women of courage dress stylishly, but even some of them project the idea that they wish they were men. What's wrong with femininity? There is something ennobling and enriching in a woman dressing and acting as if she is proud to be a woman.

I was pleased with a comment by a national magazine reporter after she interviewed Bev at length. Writing a book to be titled The Death of the ERA, that reporter volunteered, "I have really been impressed with your wife; she is so feminine. My research has brought me into contact with most of the leaders of the feminist movement, but as a woman, I seem to relate to Beverly better than any of them." And this came from a woman who considered herself a feminist.

Femininity by no means indicates weaknesses. It does, however, denote womanliness, strength, virtue, modesty, and grace. Our nation's girls need to start thinking of themselves as ladies with a purpose in life to fulfill, instead of as animals with appetites to be satisfied, as so many feminist humanists envision them.

F. Causes Insecurity in Men. A good man usually brings out the best instincts in a woman, just as a good woman enables a man to make the most of his masculinity. God intended man to be the provider, protector, leader, and priest for his wife and family. Feminism tends to destroy that. Instead of allowing the man to assume and become comfortable in his appointed role, the feminist movement tends to destroy man's natural identity and force him to compete with the very person he should cooperate with and protect.

Feminism is the ultimate in selfishness. It appeals to "my rights," "my goals," "my feelings"; consequently it destroys whatever it touches. Historically and biblically, selfishness has always been a destroyer. God challenges us, "Give and it shad be given unto you." Feminism is not interested in giving -- it takes.

Unfortunately, feminism forces women to be the greatest losers. The woman whose un-feminine feminism drives men away in her youth by making them feel insecure around her is doomed to spend her life in lonely solitude. Most men don't fight against the feminist movement, and few win speak out against it. They prefer to ignore it. With a population of 9 percent more women than men, feminists are largely disregarded. As a result, I predict that in the years to come there win be a tragic increase in depression and suicide among the forty- to fifty-year-old former feminists.

If you sense that feminists are against men and women (feminine women at least), you are right on target. Actually I get suspicious that they are more interested in overthrowing our traditional social order than in securing "human rights" or "women's rights."

Working women throughout the Western world are coming to the sad realization that by the time they have paid the additional costs of transportation, higher-income and social-security taxes, tithes, union dues, clothing, lunch, and particularly child care, they only gain 12 to 30 percent by working forty hours a week outside their home. Because their efforts put such a strain on the whole family, many are beginning to take a second look at it and ask, "Is it really worth it?"

Perhaps we should more deeply evaluate the problems generated by working wives and mothers to see if, indeed, it is worth the price -- even if it provided a 100 percent gain, which it never does.

No matter how capable she is, a wife has only so much time in any given week -- assuming that working hours, including transportation to and from work plus lunch hours, encompass the prime hours of 7:00 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. (that's approximately 52 hours each week). To perform well, at least five days per week she will need to expend physical energy, mental creativity, and concentration for other than family duties during that priority time. Examined from another perspective, the average person has only 112 waking hours per week. A single woman can afford to spend 52 of those hours outside the home, but a wife and mother is sorely pressed to sacrifice that many hours to her home responsibilities. By the time she adds her vocational hours as wife and as mother of one or more children, she can reserve little or no waking time for herself. As a family counselor for thirty years, I find that such a strain on a marriage and home should never be imposed, unless absolutely necessary.

But even time pressures are not the only dangers to the working family woman. Consider these three:

1. It Is a Threat to a Marriage. While modern appliances and push-button gadgetry have greatly simplified homemaking, time and energy factors do not account for all the stress on a marriage when the wife works out of the home, particularly if she works full-time. There is a realistic danger that a family will create an unrealistic standard of living on two incomes and then attempt to make it a permanent way of life. At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I should point out that it also has a tendency to make many young wives very independent, and this may have two serious drawbacks for young couples. First, the new husband may feel insecure. I realize that such a potential fails to impress the feminists, but it is a fact of life that most young men embark upon a marriage with feelings of insecurity about their abilities to properly lead their wives. If a wife earns almost as much as her husband, that could threaten his self-acceptance in his new role as provider and protector of his home. Additionally, that second income, inducing a spirit of independence, may inhibit the wife's feeling of dependence on her husband, particularly in times of marital tension (and every good marriage experiences some of those, especially in the early years). It is far better at such times, as the Bible teaches, that "her desire shall be to her husband." That does not admonish her to be his slave, but that she look to him rather than to her own self- sufficiency for provision and sustenance. The divorce rate, which is higher for working than for non-working wives, is evidence that the feeling and opportunity for independence makes divorce an excessively easy option, to the disadvantage of both. Even when the independent income does not accelerate the possibility of divorce, it tends to increase the degree of conflict.
   
   
2. It Is a Threat to the Family. We have already noted that the home is supposed to be family members' haven from the pressures of a competitive and often hostile world. It is extremely difficult for that home to become such a haven unless someone, preferably an adult, is there to produce the necessary atmosphere. Almost every working mother will admit that arriving from work around dinner time puts her behind schedule, and she rarely catches up before bedtime. Being a full-time careerist, for a woman, will often come at the expense of her natural desire to supply the needs of her home, unless she receives a great deal of support from her husband and children. This is one reason so many wives wait until their children are in junior- or senior- high school to commence work. It also explains why so many women are stopping with only two children. Husbands have generally been slow to voluntarily share the household responsibilities and chores with their working spouses. They often expect the same service from their working partners that they received when they stayed at home as resident domestic engineers. They remember enjoying early dinners, relaxation, and paper, romping with the children before bedtime; sharing a back-rub, pillow-talk, and regular loving. I have long wondered whether the life span for women -- four years longer than for men -- is really true for America's working women.
   
   
3. It Is a Threat to Young Children. In recent years the career woman has tended to carry her baby through the eighth month of a rigorous work schedule, deliver the child, and within two months return to work. Contemporary research suggests that such a procedure may be harmful to both the mother and the infant. Chicago Tribune women's writer Joan Beck asks:

   Would mothers of very young children be willing to work full time outside the home if they knew it could lower their youngsters intelligence measurably? . . . Evidence continues to pile up that the role a mother plays in the life of her child during the fist three years of life has a cruciaL lasting effect on his intelligence. And the components of this relationship include critical elements which cannot easily be supplied by mother substitutes or day-care centers.... Newest bits of evidence linking a young child's intelligence with the quality of mothering and the amount of mental stimulation in the home comes from the Journal of Educational Psychology. It reports new studies showing that for both black and white youngsters, the quality of early home life is much more closely related to mental test scores later on than such other factors as socioeconomic status.

   The above survey only cites the intellectual damage to a small child who does not have the benefit of a mother's constancy. Someday a research team may report the emotional difficulties that arise on early childhood when a youngster grows up without benefit of the working mother's presence throughout much of the day. I predict this trend will produce millions of future adults who have problems with self-image, emotional security, depression, and hostility -- a high price to pay for working, unless it is absolutely necessary.

   I find it gratifying that many young college women are seeing through the feminist movement, which has agitated careerism, regardless of the cost, based on a humanist commitment to self-actualization. Perhaps those women who really want to be mothers more than they desire careers will wake up to the fact that they are in the majority. If that ever happens, motherhood may again become fashionable.