Lori Alexander, a devout Christian and conservative blogger who is no stranger to controversy, has stirred up some again this week.
She’s made headlines numerous times in the past for her views on relationships, like that it’s a sin for a wife to deny her husband sex.
Or, by expressing how deeply troubled she is by modern women being interested in careers than getting married and bearing children.
Now, the mom of four has come under fire for her belief that women should not “expect” men to pitch in with duties around the house.
She wrote in a June 18 Facebook post that went viral:
“Do you ‘expect’ your husband to help w/ household chores? If you do, you won’t have a happy marriage b/c expectations destroy relationships.”
“If he helps, great and if not, do your housework cheerfully as unto the Lord. Remember, you didn’t marry your husband to help w/ the household chores.”
“You married him to be your protector and provider. You should also have married him b/c you deeply loved him,” she adds.
“You [wanted] to make his life better, not worse and put more burdens upon his shoulders than he already has to carry in providing for his family.”
Channeling her inner Anna Duggar, Alexander concluded by urging women everywhere to “make his life as easy and as happy as you can!”
The post has been shared nearly 94,000 times and has almost 10,000 comments … not all of which have been overwhelmingly positive.
“With a nope, nope, here and a nope, nope, there. Here’s a nope, there’s a nope, everywhere I look are nopes!” commented one critic.
Other detractors were far less kind and polite than that.
Yet Alexander, who has been married for 35 years, tells Us Weekly she isn’t upset about the backlash on her blog, Always Learning:
“I have been getting it since I began my blog over five years ago. It’s part of having a ‘voice’ in our culture that doesn’t adhere to biblical roles as I do.”
“I believe [the post] struck a nerve because housework is a big issue now that women work outside of the home,” Lori continued.
Even those who don’t, she says, believe that gender roles have flipped so much that men are unduly burdened. Their view, as she sees it:
“Husbands should do their fair share since they believe in a marriage where there is no difference between the role of the wife and husband.”
Alexander feels that a lot of this belies a fundamental problem, which is that “women have a tendency to want to try to control their husbands.”
Do you agree? Is she totally off base? Or might we all learn something from the shift away from traditional marital and gender roles?
