There are the general expectations to finish high school, go
to University or College, and acquire a decent job. There are also expectations
that you will fall in love before you are too old, get married and have a
couple of kids. If you are Dutch, you are expected to have at least half a
dozen arrows in your quiver. ;)
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find these
expectations a tad annoying, for lack of a better word. They tend to pressure
us in the form of others expecting us to meet these expectations. I find that
in our Reformed, Dutch communities there is always pressure to find someone and
marry them before we are ‘too old’. And it isn’t just parents and grandparents
putting on the pressure. It is also your fellow youth, and even your little
siblings and their friends. My sibling’s friends have told me numerous times that
“you really need to get a boyfriend.” Thanks, but I would rather let God decide
that, not you. Can you fellow young people relate with me?
Another example comes from something that came up in Youth
Group a number of weeks ago. A friend, who happened to be getting married in a
couple of weeks, said that when she and her now-husband were dating for a
couple of months, people were already asking when they were going to get
engaged. And then when you are engaged, everyone wants to know about the wedding.
And then you are married people start asking about kids. And I am sure that
once baby number one is around a year old, there is the question about when
baby number two is coming.
There is also the growing expectation of stay-at-home moms
to do something more than sit at home and enjoy their time with their kids. The
world says that they should go back to work. But, amongst those who stay at home,
there is another pressure, a “keeping-up-with-the-Jone’s” pressure. The blog
needs to be kept up, as well as the home business. The DSLR camera needs to be used
at every possible chance, so that the blog will always have amazing pictures on
it. I am just looking at this from the outside, but is this an accurate picture
moms?
My question for you is, how do you respond? Do these expectations
rule your life, or do you attempt to ignore them and live your own life? I
admire you who stand above the expectations and lead your life in a different
way. I wish I did that more.
This is just something that has come to light lately, and I
thought we could all think about it. Do we pressure others to fit our, or other’s
expectations? I know I have.
-Emily.
I completely agree ... although there's nothing wrong with expectations alone. It's good for Godly parents and peers to set benchmarks for living and to keep an eye on you, so long as these benchmarks are biblical :)
ReplyDeleteHowever, when it comes to personal choices and life direction, it's easy for people to become distracted by the choices that THEY have made for THEMSELVES. People want you to follow the same path they did - a way for them to feel justified in their own decisions, I suppose.
Also, keep in mind that when it comes to mothering, the expectations go both ways in terms of staying at home vs. working. There is such a stigma against working moms. Personally, the decision for me to work part-time was a decision that we made with much prayer and thought, not something we decided on lightly (and it had nothing to do with keeping up with the Jones').