Marriage and Education

As a pastor, Doug Wilson is concerned about an over-reaction to egalitarian feminism that disparages the idea of providing daughters with a “rigorous education”. Later commentary suggests Doug’s idea of rigorous means something like a “general liberal arts education … at the college level” (university in Canada). He feels discouraging one’s daughters from pursuing such an education is “a really bad idea”.

Accordingly, Doug recently banged out seven theses on the subject to make his case.

Qualifications

I read them through once a month ago, and did not feel there was much “there” there, so I figured I’d give the seven theses another run this morning and see if my opinion had moderated in any way. I’ve got my own well-established opinions on the subject, naturally, most recently expressed here:

“Christian parents who put their daughter through seven years of higher education are definitely enhancing her independence and earning prospects, but they are doing so at the risk of diminishing or extinguishing the qualities that make her most marriageable.”

Let me qualify that a couple of ways:

1. Obviously, not every degree program requires seven years. A Bachelor’s plus a Master’s generally will. A Doctoral definitely will. In fact, I know of several people of both sexes who spent six to seven years in higher education without earning a degree at all, mostly because they started without any clear idea of what they wanted to accomplish. For their parents, higher education was the default, as it seems to be with Doug. I would stand by my statement about the notable level of risk to marriageability at seven years, but I would add that every year of higher education past the second or third increases a woman’s risk of missing the marriage boat.
2. In my view, all things being equal in the spirituality department (don’t minimize that stipulation), the qualities that make a woman most attractive to a prospective Christian husband are youth, beauty, agreeability and competence. The longer a woman stays in higher education, the greater the chances that the first three will diminish and, depending on her discipline, the fourth may not be greatly enhanced, except in her particular area of study, which will probably have zero relevance in the home. For a high status man who wants a decent-sized family, it should be obvious that faced with a choice between two agreeable, competent beauties (by his metric), a thirty-four year old will lose to a twenty-four year old more often than not: her window for childbearing is significantly greater and her emotional investment in her education significantly less.

In short, Christian parents, if you want your daughter to marry happily and bear you grandchildren, encouraging her to pursue an extended degree chase in hope of improving her career prospects is probably going to be a counterproductive exercise.

Let’s examine Doug’s theses and see if he makes a compelling counterargument.

The Seven Theses

I will apologize up front for truncating Doug’s theses, but reproducing them in full would make for a three-parter. I will try to be fair.

#1 Femina Adorans

“Our goal for our girls should be to have them as educated as the Lord’s mother was when the archangel Gabriel appeared to her. A careful review of her Magnificat, likely the work of a girl still in her teens, reveals that she, at any rate, was no silly juggins. She knew how to glorify God.”

The idea that a college/university education better prepares a woman to glorify God with her mouth and heart is just plain bizarre. Being a “silly juggins” is not primarily a function of the amount of information received, by rather of a child’s response to information. The world is full of educated foolishness and “under-educated” wisdom. A high school education supplemented by regular reading is more than adequate to the task of helping a woman think intelligently about the world. Furthermore, to allege that Mary was “educated” in anything like the modern sense is wildly hypothetical. There is literally no comparison between the sort of education she would have received in her day and the sort currently on offer in major institutions.

#2 Wisdom Is a Woman

“Anyone who believes that [wisdom, as described by Solomon in Proverbs] does not involve the life of the mind is out of their mind.”

I have always believed wisdom is biblically-applied intelligence. Of course the life of the mind is important, but resisting encouraging your daughter to pursue higher education is not at all discouraging her from emulating Lady Wisdom. Surely the greatest possible wisdom in life comes from familiarity with the word of God, not from higher education.

#3 Resisting the Serpent

“[Satan] has a low view of women, and when Christian men begin to reinforce the assumptions that contribute to such a low view, they are working contrary to God’s purpose and plan.”

Wilson offers the idea that Satan has a low view of women in a complete evidence vacuum. I would argue Satan chose to approach Eve rather than Adam not because he thought she was an intellectual weak link or because he hates women more than men, but because he needed Adam to sin in order to corrupt the human race. Eve was Adam’s Achilles heel. Whatever Satan’s motivation, the strategy worked. Eve’s problem was not lack of information or the inability to process it, but the fact that she was willing to disobey God to get what she wanted. That’s a problem entirely unrelated to higher education. In fact, if you want to be taught to second-guess God, there’s no better place to go than university.

#4 Companionate Marriage

“A man and a woman should be able to talk about more than the weather, or Johnny’s report card, or what’s for dinner, or if dinner is occurring, whether or not the mashed potatoes should be passed. A general liberal arts education that enables you to ask intelligent questions about a subject outside your expertise is going to be a true aid and comfort.”

Hogwash. Steaming hogwash with Brussel sprouts. My enjoyment of feminine company is inversely related to any discussion of “general liberal arts”. Women do not get the same things out of books that I do, and I don’t expect them to. Contrast the average Christian girl’s appreciation for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with the average male’s. Most completely miss Austen’s irony and anger, and it’s probably just as well. Furthermore, the idea of a woman as an “appropriate help” has more to do with her willingness to facilitate and support the man’s role in work and church life than providing lively dinner conversation. A lively dinner conversationalist who treks off to pursue her personal agenda in life every morning is not the sort of “companion” most Christian men are looking for. Moreover, there may be women for whom a modern liberal arts education enhances the ability to ask intelligent questions outside her expertise. But for the vast majority, expertise stifles earnest inquiry by fooling the “expert” into believing he or she knows more than they think.

#5 Lowering the Bar

“Silly women can be powerfully attractive, but it is worth asking exactly what kind of men they are likely to attract. Reducing educational expectations for daughters is a surreptitious way of lowering expectations for your future sons-in-law.”

Again, silliness and higher education are unrelated, except that perhaps the most educated people are occasionally silliest. Our higher-educated politicians cannot fix the economy, close the border, curb pollution without over-regulating industry, manage a pandemic, win a war or tell the difference between male and female. The argument may be made their problem is silliness to the point of retardation. They believe lies, deliberately propagate them, or perhaps both. If this is the outcome of higher education, we need less of it, not more.

#6 Leveling Downward

“The level of education that your daughters receive will be roughly equivalent to the level of education that your grandsons will receive. And if your poorly educated daughter manages to marry a man of educational distinction, then your grandsons are going to grow up in a divided home.”

This does not follow at all. Learning does not require formal education, especially in our highly propagandized college and university systems, which actively dull the mind by excluding all kinds of possibilities a Christian child is trained to entertain. I’ve been writing and editing this blog for eleven years without five minutes of university education. My books-read list for the first eight months of 2024 currently stands at 113. A woman occupied with raising her family will not be able to keep that up, obviously, but 10% of that level of engagement with big ideas will enable her to stay current and carry on conversations that matter. Furthermore, consistent with Doug’s argument, in home-schooled situations, a high school-educated mother can bring her children along to the end of high school with no great difficulty. There is no reason a son educated to that level cannot pursue higher education if it makes sense in his case, or, for that matter, a daughter who thinks she would prefer to be single and have a career.

In any case, most higher-educated mothers will not be home schooling their children more adequately than high school-educated Christian moms. They’ll be headed straight back to their all-important careers as soon as they can manage it.

#7 Answering Feminism

“[The view that higher education is unnecessary for daughters] tends to reinforce the mistaken idea that the only thing necessary to develop a biblical worldview about life between the sexes is to hold a position that angers and annoys the feminists.”

The only thing necessary to develop a biblical worldview about life between the sexes is the holy scripture. But in the unlikely absence of a Bible, inverting feminist dogma will not put you too far away from the truth. Annoying feminists does not guarantee you’re doing something right, but placating them almost surely indicates you’re doing something wrong.