By now, everyone and their dog seems to have weighed in on Kansas City Chief’s kicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College, so I can’t contribute much more to the discussion, but I do have some thoughts to toss into the kettle.
Butker covered a lot of ground, however, so I’d like to zero in on the portion of his speech directed to female graduates, in which he spoke of his wife and how she’s “embraced one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”
That seems to be the core of a lot of the frenzy I’ve seen online in the aftermath. It’s important to note the context. Butker was talking to a certain audience. A good communicator knows his audience and directs his words to them specifically. Even Whoopi Goldberg agreed .
Nevertheless, Butker apparently struck a dangling nerve. A fervently Catholic friend responded in the negative on Facebook, saying she doesn’t believe a homemaker is the highest calling a woman can have. “What about religious orders? What if you have to work as a mom? Didn’t these students all just spend a boatload of money to get degrees?”
That helped me formulate all the thoughts whirling in my brain. I responded that Butker was not denigrating single moms or those who’ve entered a religious celibate life; rather, he was elevating the vocation of motherhood within a culture that denigrates it.
As for the “boatload of money” comment, an education is expensive, and women don’t always know if it will lead to a lucrative career or years at home raising children. But an education can be efficacious either way.
Butker was still only a thought in the mind of God in 1991 when I graduated from Minnesota State University Moorhead, but I wish he’d been around to give our college commencement address. Though I was on course for a great career, graduating summa cum laude in mass communications, I was also engaged and knew from an early age that I wanted to be a mother someday.
I remember feeling confused about this, because my whole training had been on a career in the workforce, but nothing had been said by any professor about helping raise the next generation. There was a void, and I sensed it strongly. Who could advise me properly?
I set up an appointment with Maureen Zimmerman, anchor for WDAY evening news, to ask whether her broadcasting career was amenable to family life. She surprised me, saying not necessarily, admitting she yearned to see her son more and wished she’d have asked the questions I was asking when she was younger. I switched to print at that point, realizing it might be more flexible than television work.
Butker would have spoken straight to my heart, as he did one female graduate who appreciated his recent talk , and I think he speaks for many young women today fatigued by the culture’s misleading messages about motherhood.
After all, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on June 2, 2024.]
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