Journal of Religion and Health, Vo123, No. 4, Winter 1984
Marriage and Ministry in Midlife Women L. GUY M E H L A B S T R A C T : This study of 15 midlife women seminarians or clergy and 13 of their h u s b a n d s focuses upon the tension between a commitment to family life and a commitment to ordained ministry. The women were preparing to become P r o t e s t a n t clergy or were already in this vocation, while their h u s b a n d s were middle-class, successful professional people. The study examines the impact of the new cultural self-development ethic upon the lives and religious faith of the women. H u s b a n d s ' responses to the wives' changes are considered, and suggestions are made to supervising judicatories regarding assistance t h a t may be given to the couples.
Since the Reformation, male Protestant ministers have struggled to maintain twin commitments to marriage and to the ordained ministry. Now large numbers of women (so many that L e t t y Russell in 1979 projected that ministry could become a "female profession ''1) are being ordained, many of whom are married and have children. As they prepare for ordination and accept church positions, they are entering the same arena of twin commitments in which their male counterparts have struggled for four centuries. Because it was thought that there is much to learn from a new sex in an old struggle, a study was undertaken of 15 Protestant women (8 seminarians, 2 seminary graduates not serving churches, and 5 parish ministers who were recent seminary graduates}. Its purpose was to generate preliminary data about how women and their spouses would experience and resolve the tension arising from simultaneous commitments to marriage and to the ordained ministry. The study was kept small and nonstatistical. Presbyterian and Methodist women from two seminaries in the Mid-Atlantic region were interviewed. All were white and urban-oriented. Thirteen of their husbands, past and present, also agreed to be a part of the study. Not interviewed were women married to male clergy or seminarians and women uncommitted to ordination. L. Guy Mehl is director of the Lancaster Career Development Center. He is an ordained minister of the L u t h e r a n Church in America as well as a licensed psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania. 290
9 1984 Institutes of Religion and Health
L. Guy Mehl
291
The early marriage years The midlife {from 30 to 60) women of our s t u d y were born between 1922 and 1952, a period dominated by what Daniel Yankelovich calls an ethic of selfdenial. 2 Under this ethic, women and men were socialized to deny themselves for the sake of the family. Typically the husband was the monetary provider and the wife at the center of the home. Our 15 women seemed successful in living out the self-denial ethic. They married accomplishing husbands, who, with one exception, earned college degrees and did well by their families. And all of the women, except one, fulfilled their part of the bargain by having from one to five children. They stayed in their marriages too, for an average of 19.7 years. The only woman in the group who had divorced and remarried was eight years into her second marriage at the time of the study. They could have taken different paths. Two-thirds of the women had their bachelor's degrees by the time of their marriages or shortly thereafter, and almost all rated themselves as having high achievements needs. Thirteen were gainfully employed outside the home at one time or another during their marriages, and two worked continuously and full-time as wives and mothers, even though one had to divorce and remarry to do it. Nevertheless, the basic, early pattern of the marriages was that the husband's job had first priority and the wife was responsible for home care and nurture, no matter what she did outside the home. The pressure to conform to the family unit self-denial ethic was intense prior to 1960, and educational institutions as well as work places, except for the traditional female fields, helped to enforce this ethic.
The decision for ordained minis try As life moved on, however, the women's pattern of self-denial for the sake of the family began to change, because of at least three factors. The first was the occurrence of outside events over which they had little control and which tested their values and goals. Undesired moves for the sake of the husband's job was in this class. More traumatic were the deaths of children and family members. "When my younger sister died of leukemia," a seminarian stated, "I struggled to come to terms with her death." A second factor was internal personal distress. Restlessness, low selfesteem, and inner confusion began typically between the 12 and 16 years of marriage for those of our study, sometimes with no external, precipitating events. "I experienced inner emotional dissatisfaction, unfulfillment. A friend encouraged me to have a better self-image," said one. The severity of the internal distress varied, but for most it was extensive and very real. Vocational uncertainty and questing was a third factor. The work they did outside the home and being mother and homemaker were not enough. They wanted to do and be something different. "I was looking for a way to use [my]
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gifts and talents," said one who had run her own business and been a state trooper. Their questing led to their decisions to enter the ordained ministry. For several, this meant uncovering childhood dreams "I went to a Catholic girls' camp and had wanted to be a priest, [but] was frustrated about that." For others, becoming a minister was a new dream. One woman, married at 16, decided for the ministry at 31. "I imagined myself as an ordained minister and had a sense that I could be a good leader and could use my gifts." Wrestling with these three factors might have overcome less resilient people. For these women, the outcome was change shaped by one significant commonality: their religious faith.
The religious call
Religious experiences provided far and away the most vital motivation for the women. For the 13 who had been church members off and on throughout their lives, new faith experiences deepened old faith memories and brought new midlife dimensions. They spoke of a "strong feeling of presence" 8nd of "uncovering a religious sense [that] the sacraments are very important." For the two who had not been early churchgoers, outside events and inner emptiness led to religious faith and church involvements. The death of her child brought one "closer to God." The second said she was "sort of afraid of the church," b u t went into it anyway because something was missing in her life. For all of them their religious experiences brought integration between past and present and between the self and the church community. The experiences provided a way to put their lives to work in a new endeavor as well as the determination to change and sacrifice in order to begin a new life pattern.
The cultural context
Feminist thought played a part in the women's changes. One-third of the group were motivated to change b y feminism; but instead of being militant in society at large, the women worked to advance women's causes within the church or used feminist theory as a way of deepening their selfunderstandings. The other two-thirds did not credit feminism as a strong personal motivator. More important was a social change from an ethic of self-denial to an ethic of self-development. During the 1970s, " a s many as 80 percent of all adult Americans became involved in a search for self-fulfillment." 3 This was during the very time when our group was making its changes. The new ethic stated that it was appropriate for a woman to work outside the home in her quest for self-fulfillment and this was not to be diminishing to the husband. Rather, his status remained the same even while hers was being enhanced. The new ethic granted social permission to the women to take their religious
L. Guy Mehl
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callings seriously. They had been granted ecclesiastical permission in 1956 when the Presbyterian and Methodist churches voted to ordain women, but that was not enough. A massive social change provided the context for the women to adopt a new life direction.
Marital stress points At the time of the interviews the women's marriages had gone through serious stress. Five of the women had already divorced or were divorcing. Three more of the marriages were strained to the breaking point. Seven were stable, but had been through various upheavals. Once the wife began seminary, husband intellectual assent or neutrality was tested on emotional levels. The use of time became a focal point for stress. Demanding seminary studies meant that the wives had less time for family nurturing and enjoyment. "Our biggest fights [came] at crucial points when I had papers due and tests to take," stated one wife. Care of home and children was a second stress point. Most of the husbands said they would help out, but the tasks usually remained the wife's responsibility, and this led to much frustration and anger. "I felt I had to keep the home up. He was good at asking, 'Can you manage?' " This wife eventually "went on strike for four months," doing little if anything within the home. Sharing and communication was a recognized stress point. Husbands felt left out. "When she was absent so much, I became jealous, lonely, needy." In seminary, wives met new worlds of thought and new people as well as new levels of religious commitment. Differences between husbands and wives stood out. " I n seminary a fellow student and I were very close . . . . M y emotional life flowered. My husband didn't want to share in my intellectual or feeling sides." Seminary began to symbolize threat, pain, and change in the marriage relationship for many of the husbands. It began to dawn on them that permanent alterations were underway. The wives, under pressure from the seminary on top of family pressures, frequently expressed intense emotion that was difficult for husbands to handle. "I felt like I was walking on eggs," said one. " A t times she almost can't cope, she is so tired," said another. Seminary usually was a turning point for the marriages. Those that were to collapse did so there, although that was not always the case. Those that survived were able to resolve the issues that arose during the school years. How the husbands acted in the new situation was vital for the future.
Husband responses The wives made the first move in going to seminary, and the issue of redefining the marriage was forced there. H u s b a n d s demonstrated three patterns of response. In the once-decided-for pattern, husbands were quickly and unequivocally
294
Journal of Religion and Health
committed. This occurred in four of the marriages, two of which were longstanding--37 and 38 years--with no or one older child in the home. These two husbands were supportive because they wanted their wives to be satisfied and there was no particular family or husband vocational pressure against a new direction for the wife. In the other two marriages of this pattern, the husbands had seen the wives through rough times, that is, the death of a child, and they were glad their spouses had found something they really wanted to do. It helped her mental health, said one husband, and also provided a channel for growth and made her a paid professional rather than a volunteer. These four husbands were willing to expend less energy on their own careers, either because of their ages {late 50s} or because they realized that their family was as important to them as their work. They adjusted to new demands with considerable flexibility: they accepted less time with their wives, were cooperative in interior home chores, parented children, and generally cheered their wives on. Also, their wives did not go through traumatic personal changes right before or during seminary. That came earlier or not at all. In the second pattern, step-by-step, the husbands gave qualified support to the wives, but the decision to go ahead was continually being renegotiated. Husbands had difficulty in lessening their career commitments and in thinking about themselves as spouses of community religious figures. Wives were angry and upset that their mates couldn't adjust to their new plans and roles. Mixed messages and ambivalence were felt by one or both spouses. Yet neither could bring him- or herself to leave the marriage. They kept trying to negotiate and look for positive signs. The constant indecision, false cues, and lack of certainty were sometimes excruciatingly painful, and this forced decisions. Of the eight couples in this pattern, five divorced or were in seriously strained marriages. "I couldn't continue to live in this hell," said a husband. A wife stated that in the middle of seminary, "I had to take care of me and divest myself of my marriage." Two of the three husbands of those marriages that were making it in this pattern eventually did as the husbands of the first pattern did, that is, were flexible in their roles, shared more power, and accepted less nurture from their spouses. In the third marriage of this pattern, the wife gave up seminary until the children were older. The third pattern m a y be called the unwilling response. The husbands were presented with a fait accompli, a nonnegotiable, privately arrived-at decision, and they could either adjust or expect growing distance. One husband adjusted and the marriage survived; two could not and divorces occurred. The latter two marriages lacked trust and intimacy before the wives' vocational changes and probably would not have survived anyway. The wife's ultimatum may have been the most realistic way of saying to her partner, " I t ' s now or never." It was possible for marriages to survive in any of the three patterns. The once-decided-for was the most successful because the husbands were immediately willing for the marriage relationship to be reshaped in the per-
L. Guy Mehl
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spective of two encouraged vocations, one religious. In the step-by-step pattern, either one or both of the spouses could not make up their mind what they wanted. When they finally decided, three of the couples decided to form a new " w e " together, three concluded t h a t their couple identity had been shattered beyond repair, and two were still trying to decide in the midst of great strain and tension. 4 Children in the home
The number and ages of children in the home at the time the wife entered seminary were of great consequence for the marriages. A l l that ended in divorce or were severely strained (7 out of 11) had two or more preschool to earlyteen children in the home when the wife began classes. Four couples were able to have a stable relationship even with two or more younger children at home, but the odds against stability were greatest with this type of family constellation. Finances
Financing seminary was not a particularly difficult problem for the couples. In some cases the husband paid for the schooling, sometimes when the marriage was in crisis. In others, the wife paid for it all, even if it meant going to school half-time while working half-time. In still others, they shared the costs, the wife using money from savings or past jobs. Leaving seminary
By the middle of seminary, most of the couples had gone through their worst stress. There was one big hurdle left for them, however: placement. The wives juggled such factors as availability of parishes, type of ministry best suited for, husbands' work location, and local church discrimination against female and/or divorced clergy. The factor of husband's work location was a big one. The wives could not assume t h a t the husbands would follow them to a new work location. Some older husbands were willing to do so because their retirements were coming up. For others it was a compromise to stay put rather than make a career relocation of their own. And would they live in a parsonage or their own home? Could the husbands accept the former? The women belived t h a t if a couple moved to a new career location for the husband's sake, the wife would have to search for a church position in a new judicatory, and this would be difficult. If the couple split their living locations, she would face questions about why she was not living with her husband, again difficult. And if they moved for her sake, the husband would have to search for a new job in her new area, and this could cause problems.
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As it turned out, all of the married women with church positions secured jobs in the same area where they went to seminary. Nobody moved. The husbands kept their jobs, and, most of the time, the couple continued living in the same house. Seminary graduates who were divorced, as would be expected, were having trouble finding placements no matter where they lived. The parish
Once the wife had her church placement, some old stresses reappeared and some new ones surfaced for the couples. Going into a parish, said one husband, w a s " l i k e j umping into a snakepit." Five issues were mentioned. Time management reared its head once more, finding time for themselves as individuals, as a couple, and with children as a family. The telephone angered many husbands. A professor who often worked at home said his wife's ministry threatened "to invade the household." Schedules were hard to coordinate because of different work times. " W e try to spend early morning time together, one to one and one-half hours," said a husband. Household chores presented an onoing but minor problem. With the wife's new income, couples sometimes could afford to hire domestic help, and occasionally a mother-in-law would come in for child-sitting and cleaning. Family members were used to doing their share, but sometimes things were just let go. In general, there seemed to be less uprightness about this matter. The husband's relationship to the church the wife served was a new issue. How much and in what way was he to get involved? The consensus was that he could get involved as much as he wanted, as long as he never reached the point where he started to make decisions for his wife or where he began to be publicly defensive for her when he thought she was being severely or unjustifiably criticized. Other than that, husband involvement was seen positively by the couples. The husbands taught Sunday school, were in sharing goups at the church and active in property care, et cetera, and felt good about it. Some took kidding about their roles, but b y then that did not seem bothersome. Another new issue was pressure upon the wives to be neuter. Unsought sexual innuendos did arise in their dealings with men of the parish, but the wives perceived more problem with jealousy from parish women. So these women ministers took pains to be above reproach, to communicate that they were not after any man in the church. And they did this by playing down their femininity and their emotional and sexual needs. Some of the wives were worried that they would bring this "neuterization" into their marriages and that intimacy with their husbands would suffer. None of the husbands mentioned this problem; perhaps they interpreted their wives' behavior as lack of time and energy. A fifth issue was mentioned by one wife. "You must never forget that your husband's work has as much validity as your own." None of the other couples mentioned this issue, but it is easy to see that it could be important in a marriage.
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The remaining theological problem Although the ordination of women has been approved by the mainstream Protestant denominations, there still remains the applied theological decision about balancing God's call to a family with God's call to the ordained ministry. Is one to take precedence over the other? If so, which one? This has long been a painful problem for male clergy, and it is no less so for female clergy. Some maintain that the family, once begun, has priority. ~ Others believe that ministry and marriage are equal callings and that it is possible to fulfill both responsibilities. Satisfying work and nurturing relationships for both partners, they say, are part of the divine plan. If the two are not able to be maintained together, it is because of sin in social structures and norms as well as in personal attitudes and psychic structures. This theological issue underlay the couples' wrestling with their futures, particularly for the wives, because they took their religious callings seriously. Most of them were attempting to act upon the basis of the second position, but it was emotionally difficult to do so.
Judicatory aid Judicatories looking to help their midlife, married women ministerial candidates need to be mindful of the two stress points we have mentioned. The first comes soon after the women begin seminary, when family tension will be high as couples deal with issue after issue. They are, in effect, renegotiating their marriages on emotional, intellectual, and volitional levels. The establishment of a dual-career marriage in which the wife is a minister differs from other professional dual-career marriages in at least three ways, all of which will make the marriage more difficult. The ministerial spouse will have a lower salary level, even though the stress levels will be higher. Therefore, the "half-clergy" couple m a y not be able to ease stress by hiring regular help, paying for long-distance commutes, taking luxury vacations, or buying helpful appliances. Second, the wife's religious motivation will be hard for many husbands to understand. Shaking up the family and rerouting everyone, paying a high price to serve others, is hard for one not so motivated to grasp. And, third, the husband's behavior will be under church scrutiny and he m a y not like that. All of this will begin to be realized in seminary as vague feelings and halfaware thoughts. The judicatory can assist both husbands and wives in seeing and addressing their issues at that time through workshops, support groups, classes, a couples' buddy system, counseling sessions, and the like. The second major stress point comes when the wife is ready for placement. She faces not only problems in finding a position, but also problems of locating in relation to her husband's work location. Judicatory assistance needs to be
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accompanied by sensitive and flexible placement procedures at this point. Adopting an advocacy stance on behalf of the women m a y be necessary. In many ways, the issues for these women and their husbands are the same as those for midlife male clergy and their wives. In some places there is pointfor-point similarity. But the background of the two groups is different. In our society it still is the male who has the freedom to change directions at midlife, take religion seriously, be ordained, move to a new location, and start again vocationally. His wife usually is expected to go along and accommodate to these changes. For the wife to make these changes, even in the 1980s, is still to go against the grain of societal expectations. Thus, while the marital problems and adjustments of midlife married male seminarians and ministers often s e e m the same as those of their female counterprts, they are not on the same level of intensity. The former encounter them while swimming with the stream, the latter while swimming against the stream. In all likelihood, this pattern will continue for the foreseeable future.
References 1.
Russell, L., M. "Clerical Ministry as a Female Profession," The Christian Century, February 7-14, 1979. 2. Yankelevich, D., New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down. New York, Bantam, 1982. 3. Ibid., p. 144. 4. For further discussion of the tasks of a dual-career couple see Hall, F. S., and D. T., The TwoCareer Couple. Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1979; and Rapoport, R. and R. N., Dual-Career Families Reexamined." New Integrations of Work and Family. New York, Harper Colophon Books, 1976. 5. See Bouma, M. L., Divorce in the Parsonage. Minneapolis, Bethany Fellowship, 1979; and Behrens, W. C., The Two-Income Clergy Family, a paper for study by Staff Office of Support to Ministries, the American Lutheran Church, revised March 27, 1980.
Marriage and Ministry in Midlife Women L. GUY M E H L A B S T R A C T : This study of 15 midlife women seminarians or clergy and 13 of their h u s b a n d s focuses upon the tension between a commitment to family life and a commitment to ordained ministry. The women were preparing to become P r o t e s t a n t clergy or were already in this vocation, while their h u s b a n d s were middle-class, successful professional people. The study examines the impact of the new cultural self-development ethic upon the lives and religious faith of the women. H u s b a n d s ' responses to the wives' changes are considered, and suggestions are made to supervising judicatories regarding assistance t h a t may be given to the couples.
Since the Reformation, male Protestant ministers have struggled to maintain twin commitments to marriage and to the ordained ministry. Now large numbers of women (so many that L e t t y Russell in 1979 projected that ministry could become a "female profession ''1) are being ordained, many of whom are married and have children. As they prepare for ordination and accept church positions, they are entering the same arena of twin commitments in which their male counterparts have struggled for four centuries. Because it was thought that there is much to learn from a new sex in an old struggle, a study was undertaken of 15 Protestant women (8 seminarians, 2 seminary graduates not serving churches, and 5 parish ministers who were recent seminary graduates}. Its purpose was to generate preliminary data about how women and their spouses would experience and resolve the tension arising from simultaneous commitments to marriage and to the ordained ministry. The study was kept small and nonstatistical. Presbyterian and Methodist women from two seminaries in the Mid-Atlantic region were interviewed. All were white and urban-oriented. Thirteen of their husbands, past and present, also agreed to be a part of the study. Not interviewed were women married to male clergy or seminarians and women uncommitted to ordination. L. Guy Mehl is director of the Lancaster Career Development Center. He is an ordained minister of the L u t h e r a n Church in America as well as a licensed psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania. 290
9 1984 Institutes of Religion and Health
L. Guy Mehl
291
The early marriage years The midlife {from 30 to 60) women of our s t u d y were born between 1922 and 1952, a period dominated by what Daniel Yankelovich calls an ethic of selfdenial. 2 Under this ethic, women and men were socialized to deny themselves for the sake of the family. Typically the husband was the monetary provider and the wife at the center of the home. Our 15 women seemed successful in living out the self-denial ethic. They married accomplishing husbands, who, with one exception, earned college degrees and did well by their families. And all of the women, except one, fulfilled their part of the bargain by having from one to five children. They stayed in their marriages too, for an average of 19.7 years. The only woman in the group who had divorced and remarried was eight years into her second marriage at the time of the study. They could have taken different paths. Two-thirds of the women had their bachelor's degrees by the time of their marriages or shortly thereafter, and almost all rated themselves as having high achievements needs. Thirteen were gainfully employed outside the home at one time or another during their marriages, and two worked continuously and full-time as wives and mothers, even though one had to divorce and remarry to do it. Nevertheless, the basic, early pattern of the marriages was that the husband's job had first priority and the wife was responsible for home care and nurture, no matter what she did outside the home. The pressure to conform to the family unit self-denial ethic was intense prior to 1960, and educational institutions as well as work places, except for the traditional female fields, helped to enforce this ethic.
The decision for ordained minis try As life moved on, however, the women's pattern of self-denial for the sake of the family began to change, because of at least three factors. The first was the occurrence of outside events over which they had little control and which tested their values and goals. Undesired moves for the sake of the husband's job was in this class. More traumatic were the deaths of children and family members. "When my younger sister died of leukemia," a seminarian stated, "I struggled to come to terms with her death." A second factor was internal personal distress. Restlessness, low selfesteem, and inner confusion began typically between the 12 and 16 years of marriage for those of our study, sometimes with no external, precipitating events. "I experienced inner emotional dissatisfaction, unfulfillment. A friend encouraged me to have a better self-image," said one. The severity of the internal distress varied, but for most it was extensive and very real. Vocational uncertainty and questing was a third factor. The work they did outside the home and being mother and homemaker were not enough. They wanted to do and be something different. "I was looking for a way to use [my]
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Journal of Religion and Health
gifts and talents," said one who had run her own business and been a state trooper. Their questing led to their decisions to enter the ordained ministry. For several, this meant uncovering childhood dreams "I went to a Catholic girls' camp and had wanted to be a priest, [but] was frustrated about that." For others, becoming a minister was a new dream. One woman, married at 16, decided for the ministry at 31. "I imagined myself as an ordained minister and had a sense that I could be a good leader and could use my gifts." Wrestling with these three factors might have overcome less resilient people. For these women, the outcome was change shaped by one significant commonality: their religious faith.
The religious call
Religious experiences provided far and away the most vital motivation for the women. For the 13 who had been church members off and on throughout their lives, new faith experiences deepened old faith memories and brought new midlife dimensions. They spoke of a "strong feeling of presence" 8nd of "uncovering a religious sense [that] the sacraments are very important." For the two who had not been early churchgoers, outside events and inner emptiness led to religious faith and church involvements. The death of her child brought one "closer to God." The second said she was "sort of afraid of the church," b u t went into it anyway because something was missing in her life. For all of them their religious experiences brought integration between past and present and between the self and the church community. The experiences provided a way to put their lives to work in a new endeavor as well as the determination to change and sacrifice in order to begin a new life pattern.
The cultural context
Feminist thought played a part in the women's changes. One-third of the group were motivated to change b y feminism; but instead of being militant in society at large, the women worked to advance women's causes within the church or used feminist theory as a way of deepening their selfunderstandings. The other two-thirds did not credit feminism as a strong personal motivator. More important was a social change from an ethic of self-denial to an ethic of self-development. During the 1970s, " a s many as 80 percent of all adult Americans became involved in a search for self-fulfillment." 3 This was during the very time when our group was making its changes. The new ethic stated that it was appropriate for a woman to work outside the home in her quest for self-fulfillment and this was not to be diminishing to the husband. Rather, his status remained the same even while hers was being enhanced. The new ethic granted social permission to the women to take their religious
L. Guy Mehl
293
callings seriously. They had been granted ecclesiastical permission in 1956 when the Presbyterian and Methodist churches voted to ordain women, but that was not enough. A massive social change provided the context for the women to adopt a new life direction.
Marital stress points At the time of the interviews the women's marriages had gone through serious stress. Five of the women had already divorced or were divorcing. Three more of the marriages were strained to the breaking point. Seven were stable, but had been through various upheavals. Once the wife began seminary, husband intellectual assent or neutrality was tested on emotional levels. The use of time became a focal point for stress. Demanding seminary studies meant that the wives had less time for family nurturing and enjoyment. "Our biggest fights [came] at crucial points when I had papers due and tests to take," stated one wife. Care of home and children was a second stress point. Most of the husbands said they would help out, but the tasks usually remained the wife's responsibility, and this led to much frustration and anger. "I felt I had to keep the home up. He was good at asking, 'Can you manage?' " This wife eventually "went on strike for four months," doing little if anything within the home. Sharing and communication was a recognized stress point. Husbands felt left out. "When she was absent so much, I became jealous, lonely, needy." In seminary, wives met new worlds of thought and new people as well as new levels of religious commitment. Differences between husbands and wives stood out. " I n seminary a fellow student and I were very close . . . . M y emotional life flowered. My husband didn't want to share in my intellectual or feeling sides." Seminary began to symbolize threat, pain, and change in the marriage relationship for many of the husbands. It began to dawn on them that permanent alterations were underway. The wives, under pressure from the seminary on top of family pressures, frequently expressed intense emotion that was difficult for husbands to handle. "I felt like I was walking on eggs," said one. " A t times she almost can't cope, she is so tired," said another. Seminary usually was a turning point for the marriages. Those that were to collapse did so there, although that was not always the case. Those that survived were able to resolve the issues that arose during the school years. How the husbands acted in the new situation was vital for the future.
Husband responses The wives made the first move in going to seminary, and the issue of redefining the marriage was forced there. H u s b a n d s demonstrated three patterns of response. In the once-decided-for pattern, husbands were quickly and unequivocally
294
Journal of Religion and Health
committed. This occurred in four of the marriages, two of which were longstanding--37 and 38 years--with no or one older child in the home. These two husbands were supportive because they wanted their wives to be satisfied and there was no particular family or husband vocational pressure against a new direction for the wife. In the other two marriages of this pattern, the husbands had seen the wives through rough times, that is, the death of a child, and they were glad their spouses had found something they really wanted to do. It helped her mental health, said one husband, and also provided a channel for growth and made her a paid professional rather than a volunteer. These four husbands were willing to expend less energy on their own careers, either because of their ages {late 50s} or because they realized that their family was as important to them as their work. They adjusted to new demands with considerable flexibility: they accepted less time with their wives, were cooperative in interior home chores, parented children, and generally cheered their wives on. Also, their wives did not go through traumatic personal changes right before or during seminary. That came earlier or not at all. In the second pattern, step-by-step, the husbands gave qualified support to the wives, but the decision to go ahead was continually being renegotiated. Husbands had difficulty in lessening their career commitments and in thinking about themselves as spouses of community religious figures. Wives were angry and upset that their mates couldn't adjust to their new plans and roles. Mixed messages and ambivalence were felt by one or both spouses. Yet neither could bring him- or herself to leave the marriage. They kept trying to negotiate and look for positive signs. The constant indecision, false cues, and lack of certainty were sometimes excruciatingly painful, and this forced decisions. Of the eight couples in this pattern, five divorced or were in seriously strained marriages. "I couldn't continue to live in this hell," said a husband. A wife stated that in the middle of seminary, "I had to take care of me and divest myself of my marriage." Two of the three husbands of those marriages that were making it in this pattern eventually did as the husbands of the first pattern did, that is, were flexible in their roles, shared more power, and accepted less nurture from their spouses. In the third marriage of this pattern, the wife gave up seminary until the children were older. The third pattern m a y be called the unwilling response. The husbands were presented with a fait accompli, a nonnegotiable, privately arrived-at decision, and they could either adjust or expect growing distance. One husband adjusted and the marriage survived; two could not and divorces occurred. The latter two marriages lacked trust and intimacy before the wives' vocational changes and probably would not have survived anyway. The wife's ultimatum may have been the most realistic way of saying to her partner, " I t ' s now or never." It was possible for marriages to survive in any of the three patterns. The once-decided-for was the most successful because the husbands were immediately willing for the marriage relationship to be reshaped in the per-
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spective of two encouraged vocations, one religious. In the step-by-step pattern, either one or both of the spouses could not make up their mind what they wanted. When they finally decided, three of the couples decided to form a new " w e " together, three concluded t h a t their couple identity had been shattered beyond repair, and two were still trying to decide in the midst of great strain and tension. 4 Children in the home
The number and ages of children in the home at the time the wife entered seminary were of great consequence for the marriages. A l l that ended in divorce or were severely strained (7 out of 11) had two or more preschool to earlyteen children in the home when the wife began classes. Four couples were able to have a stable relationship even with two or more younger children at home, but the odds against stability were greatest with this type of family constellation. Finances
Financing seminary was not a particularly difficult problem for the couples. In some cases the husband paid for the schooling, sometimes when the marriage was in crisis. In others, the wife paid for it all, even if it meant going to school half-time while working half-time. In still others, they shared the costs, the wife using money from savings or past jobs. Leaving seminary
By the middle of seminary, most of the couples had gone through their worst stress. There was one big hurdle left for them, however: placement. The wives juggled such factors as availability of parishes, type of ministry best suited for, husbands' work location, and local church discrimination against female and/or divorced clergy. The factor of husband's work location was a big one. The wives could not assume t h a t the husbands would follow them to a new work location. Some older husbands were willing to do so because their retirements were coming up. For others it was a compromise to stay put rather than make a career relocation of their own. And would they live in a parsonage or their own home? Could the husbands accept the former? The women belived t h a t if a couple moved to a new career location for the husband's sake, the wife would have to search for a church position in a new judicatory, and this would be difficult. If the couple split their living locations, she would face questions about why she was not living with her husband, again difficult. And if they moved for her sake, the husband would have to search for a new job in her new area, and this could cause problems.
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As it turned out, all of the married women with church positions secured jobs in the same area where they went to seminary. Nobody moved. The husbands kept their jobs, and, most of the time, the couple continued living in the same house. Seminary graduates who were divorced, as would be expected, were having trouble finding placements no matter where they lived. The parish
Once the wife had her church placement, some old stresses reappeared and some new ones surfaced for the couples. Going into a parish, said one husband, w a s " l i k e j umping into a snakepit." Five issues were mentioned. Time management reared its head once more, finding time for themselves as individuals, as a couple, and with children as a family. The telephone angered many husbands. A professor who often worked at home said his wife's ministry threatened "to invade the household." Schedules were hard to coordinate because of different work times. " W e try to spend early morning time together, one to one and one-half hours," said a husband. Household chores presented an onoing but minor problem. With the wife's new income, couples sometimes could afford to hire domestic help, and occasionally a mother-in-law would come in for child-sitting and cleaning. Family members were used to doing their share, but sometimes things were just let go. In general, there seemed to be less uprightness about this matter. The husband's relationship to the church the wife served was a new issue. How much and in what way was he to get involved? The consensus was that he could get involved as much as he wanted, as long as he never reached the point where he started to make decisions for his wife or where he began to be publicly defensive for her when he thought she was being severely or unjustifiably criticized. Other than that, husband involvement was seen positively by the couples. The husbands taught Sunday school, were in sharing goups at the church and active in property care, et cetera, and felt good about it. Some took kidding about their roles, but b y then that did not seem bothersome. Another new issue was pressure upon the wives to be neuter. Unsought sexual innuendos did arise in their dealings with men of the parish, but the wives perceived more problem with jealousy from parish women. So these women ministers took pains to be above reproach, to communicate that they were not after any man in the church. And they did this by playing down their femininity and their emotional and sexual needs. Some of the wives were worried that they would bring this "neuterization" into their marriages and that intimacy with their husbands would suffer. None of the husbands mentioned this problem; perhaps they interpreted their wives' behavior as lack of time and energy. A fifth issue was mentioned by one wife. "You must never forget that your husband's work has as much validity as your own." None of the other couples mentioned this issue, but it is easy to see that it could be important in a marriage.
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The remaining theological problem Although the ordination of women has been approved by the mainstream Protestant denominations, there still remains the applied theological decision about balancing God's call to a family with God's call to the ordained ministry. Is one to take precedence over the other? If so, which one? This has long been a painful problem for male clergy, and it is no less so for female clergy. Some maintain that the family, once begun, has priority. ~ Others believe that ministry and marriage are equal callings and that it is possible to fulfill both responsibilities. Satisfying work and nurturing relationships for both partners, they say, are part of the divine plan. If the two are not able to be maintained together, it is because of sin in social structures and norms as well as in personal attitudes and psychic structures. This theological issue underlay the couples' wrestling with their futures, particularly for the wives, because they took their religious callings seriously. Most of them were attempting to act upon the basis of the second position, but it was emotionally difficult to do so.
Judicatory aid Judicatories looking to help their midlife, married women ministerial candidates need to be mindful of the two stress points we have mentioned. The first comes soon after the women begin seminary, when family tension will be high as couples deal with issue after issue. They are, in effect, renegotiating their marriages on emotional, intellectual, and volitional levels. The establishment of a dual-career marriage in which the wife is a minister differs from other professional dual-career marriages in at least three ways, all of which will make the marriage more difficult. The ministerial spouse will have a lower salary level, even though the stress levels will be higher. Therefore, the "half-clergy" couple m a y not be able to ease stress by hiring regular help, paying for long-distance commutes, taking luxury vacations, or buying helpful appliances. Second, the wife's religious motivation will be hard for many husbands to understand. Shaking up the family and rerouting everyone, paying a high price to serve others, is hard for one not so motivated to grasp. And, third, the husband's behavior will be under church scrutiny and he m a y not like that. All of this will begin to be realized in seminary as vague feelings and halfaware thoughts. The judicatory can assist both husbands and wives in seeing and addressing their issues at that time through workshops, support groups, classes, a couples' buddy system, counseling sessions, and the like. The second major stress point comes when the wife is ready for placement. She faces not only problems in finding a position, but also problems of locating in relation to her husband's work location. Judicatory assistance needs to be
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accompanied by sensitive and flexible placement procedures at this point. Adopting an advocacy stance on behalf of the women m a y be necessary. In many ways, the issues for these women and their husbands are the same as those for midlife male clergy and their wives. In some places there is pointfor-point similarity. But the background of the two groups is different. In our society it still is the male who has the freedom to change directions at midlife, take religion seriously, be ordained, move to a new location, and start again vocationally. His wife usually is expected to go along and accommodate to these changes. For the wife to make these changes, even in the 1980s, is still to go against the grain of societal expectations. Thus, while the marital problems and adjustments of midlife married male seminarians and ministers often s e e m the same as those of their female counterprts, they are not on the same level of intensity. The former encounter them while swimming with the stream, the latter while swimming against the stream. In all likelihood, this pattern will continue for the foreseeable future.
References 1.
Russell, L., M. "Clerical Ministry as a Female Profession," The Christian Century, February 7-14, 1979. 2. Yankelevich, D., New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down. New York, Bantam, 1982. 3. Ibid., p. 144. 4. For further discussion of the tasks of a dual-career couple see Hall, F. S., and D. T., The TwoCareer Couple. Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1979; and Rapoport, R. and R. N., Dual-Career Families Reexamined." New Integrations of Work and Family. New York, Harper Colophon Books, 1976. 5. See Bouma, M. L., Divorce in the Parsonage. Minneapolis, Bethany Fellowship, 1979; and Behrens, W. C., The Two-Income Clergy Family, a paper for study by Staff Office of Support to Ministries, the American Lutheran Church, revised March 27, 1980.
