According to the First Baptist Church of Berryville, Arkansas, the world is filled with sinful women, mothers who are treading a well-known path of good intentions, all because they work outside of their homes.

To help make the world a safer place for the Berryville menfolk and save them from being lured into sin by these temptresses, the leaders hip of the First Baptist Church of Berryville has decided to close the church-sponsored day care.

This move, they have assured the congregation, will encourage these sinning mothers to leave that devil's playpen of a work place and return to the saintly life of apple pie-baker and floor-mopper.

To help explain their actions, the Berryville deacons have published a pamphlet listing their reasons. This pamphlet gives great detail to the sinful pitfalls women fall into when working outside the home.

These include learning to listen to another man (her employer) instead of her husband -- this could lead her to discover that her husband is not quite the font of knowledge she had heretofore always believed him to be.

In the situation the deacons describe, the woman is subordinate to another man beside her husband, someone she comest to rely upon and trust. Hmmm. I wonder if the deacons ever heard of the woman being the boss, the employer? In those cases, does the man learn to respect and revere another woman besides his wife?

Another serpent's apple the working women are offered is independence. According to the deacons, the fabric of her marriage is greatly weakened when a woman is not totally dependent upon her husband: "When a mother does not think that she needs her husband or her children, she loses her love for them," the pamphlet states.

One of the greatest charges the deacons lay at the door of working mothers is that they neglet their children. The deacons state that no one can fully take the place of the mother when the children are young, that there is no such thing as "quality time" in a child's world and that the needs of a child are as urgent as they are unscheduled.

Point taken, but there are some needs greater in a child's life than to have mom hang around just so she can kiss a boo-boo. There are such things as having a refrigerator stocked with food and a roof covering their beds. This is one of the major reasons why many women leave the daily housework routine for the work place.

The deacons also presented a mythical budget of a working woman's income along with their chauvinistic reasonings. Mentioned in this budget is a superfluous $80 expense expense for restaurant and carry-out meals incurred because the working mother was playing in the air-conditioned office instead of slaving over a hot stove.

Another idiotic expense charged against the working mother's budget was $116 in forfeited savings on thrift shopping. I think the deacons are trying to say taht working mothers spend more money at the grocery store than non-working mothers do. Sicne when? I know many a working mother who spends lunch hours searching thrift markets for bargains, buying day-old bread, etc. rather than dining in sybaritic style in five-star big city restaurants.

These deacons, though, aren't quite the know-it-alls they've portrayed themselves to be. They left a whole segment of working women out of their calculations on how to build a God-driven family -- single mother households. Hmmm. I wonder how many of those same Berryville church leaders approve of single mothers collecting welfare? I have a hunch not many do.

You know, in an apple pie, baseball and Norman Rockwell kind of way, I'd love to stop being one of those sinful women and stay home and raise my children too. But guess what? I can't think of a single, legal way to do so without going on the public dole -- and all because I'm a single mother.

But then again, I suppose those deacons would have counseled us degenerate women to stay married, not sue for divorce or let ourselves be divorced by our spouses.

Doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible that it is better to marry than to burn? Does that apply to staying in a bad marriage, regardless of the circumstances? According to those church elders, that's where God has ordained us to be.

Talk about living in a fantasy world! These are the kind of people you want to walk up to, take by the shoulders, give a good, firm shake and, to quote Ann Landers, tell them to "wake up and smell the coffee."

Yeah right! Women are supposed to stay in marriages headed by philandering husbands, wife-beaters or drug abusers just because these church deacons say that God would want them to? Oh, Please!

I have a suspicion that the decision to close down the church's day care had nothing to do with what the deacons believe is God's will. In fact, I suspect a more mundane explanation for this decision.

After reading the pamphlet and the explanations by the church leadership for its beliefs regarding working women, one thought struck me immediately: one or more of teh church elders is having marital problems which they believe has been cuaed or aggravated by a spouse working outside of the home.

This is so evident in what the deacons list as reason number five, titled, "She May Transfer Her Affections" which states that "when a wife works for another man, she actually displays towards him some of the attitudes of an ideal wife."

Reason number six gives another clue when it mentions that "no one can serve two masters, she (the working mother) must ultimately decide which world will become her primary source for acceptance, approval, achievement and fulfillment."

Okay, so someone got burned when his wife went out to work, it's certainly a sad situation -- but is it any reason to shut down a whole day care?

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If you would like to drop the author a note about the article please email to deborah@ipa.net

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