The Moral Force of Women

This is from the footnotes in Elder D. Todd Christofferson's General Conference Address from General Conference in Oct.2013. The talk is titled, The Moral Force of Women. While the whole talk is good, this footnote really stood out to me.  For the purposes of this blog and for the book that I one day hope to write (one day), this quote stands out as one that sort of epitomizes part of what I want to get across. So often, we, as woman feel like we must be selfless, and not that we shouldn't, but with that, it sometimes seems that being selfless leads to a loss of identity, which I agree, is wrong. We can be selfless and serve while still maintaining our individuality and our identity. 

It is true that many women over many generations have been exploited or saddled with unfair burdens both in family and employment, but selflessness and sacrifice need not and should not become abusive or exploitative. Elder Bruce C. Hafen observed: “If being ‘selfless’ means a woman must give up her own inner identity and personal growth, that understanding of selflessness is wrong. … But today’s liberationist model goes too far the other way, stereotyping women as excessively independent of their families. A more sensible view is that husbands and wives are interdependentwith each other. … The critics who moved mothers from dependence to independence skipped the fertile middle ground of interdependence. Those who moved mothers from selflessness to selfishness skipped the fertile middle ground of self-chosen service that contributes toward a woman’s personal growth. Because of these excesses, debates about the value of motherhood have, ironically, caused the general society to discount not only mothers but women in general” (“Motherhood and the Moral Influence of Women” [remarks to the World Congress of Families II, Geneva, Plenary Session IV, Nov. 16, 1999], http://worldcongress.org/wcf2_spkrs/wcf2_hafen.htm).