Pure Church

Al Mohler has an interesting commentary on Michelle Obama's decision to be a full-time wife and mother as First Lady rather than continue in a professional career. Apparently, many feminists have objected that she is "letting down the team" by deciding to focus on her marriage and children while her husband assumes the most demanding job in the country.

Mohler applauds Mrs. Obama's decision, and I join him.

This election has brought with it so many assumption-overturning events that at some point we're going to have to seriously consider casting aside the old party lines and stereotypes. For instance, the conservative vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin, herself a mother of five children, holds the highest office in Alaska and was prepared to take the second-highest in the land. That's not what we expect of a "conservative" or "family values" kinda candidate. It's not what we expect at all.

And all the conventional wisdom on the "progressive" or "liberal" or "feminist" side of the aisle said that First Lady Obama would and should keep her hospital executive position, proving women can make the bacon and fry it up at home, too. But, to the chagrin of some, she has decided that marriage and motherhood trump salary and abstractly representing the cause of women everywhere (as though marriage and motherhood does not represent women).

Personally, I say "good riddance" to all the stereotypes and "hello" to another national model of marriage and motherhood. Perhaps we'll be able to actually reason rather than react with our economic though deficient assumptions.

I think I'm with Rick Phillips on this.

Please pardon the chauvinist overtones of this post's title. But that's the question asked by a few researchers at Iowa State University during interview research with 72 couples. The researchers' findings suggest that wives are ruling the roost in a lot more homes that typically believed.