Today I want to highlight two more reasons that we’ve made the decision for me to be a stay at home mom…
If the women’s movement emphasizes a woman’s ability to choose a career outside the home, then I have an equal right to choose to be a homemaker as well. And I am exercising that choice.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am a totally “anti-feminist” person. As is the case with most normal individuals, I’m for women having the same rights as men. But one of my problems with the strong feminist movement that has swept across America in the past few decades is that it seems to me to be very one-sided in terms of the “choices” offered to women in the arena of career/work. Personally, outside of a small, like-minded group of friends, I don’t particularly feel that I get a lot of respect for wanting to be at home full time. In fact, a few women I knew in college (again, I went to very progressive UNC-Chapel Hill, which is both one of the places that feels most like home to me AND one of the places I feel I fit in the least at the same time) told me that I was “self-oppressing” myself by desiring the full-time domestic life as a goal even for a short period of time (in college, I was only planning to stay at home when my kids were young – now David and I are talking about a longer commitment to that and homeschooling possibly, but that’s a different topic for a different post).
The fact remains, however, that I have a choice to pursue what fulfills ME, even if that’s not what culture SAYS is worthwhile or fulfilling! And for me, that sense of fulfillment comes from taking care of my husband, my children, and my home! My sense of worth comes from who I am in Christ and HIS will for my life, not from an outside-the-home career or anything else. To tell me that my worth is only in working outside the home is its own form of oppression (and one that seems to come more often from other women instead of men!), as stated well by F. Carolyn Graglia…
“Feminist who ceaselessly inveigh against their own oppression by men (often hardly specifying its exact nature) would ignore how they themselves have oppressed…feminine women. It oppresses a woman who years to stay at home with her children to tell her that she is worthy only insofar as she achieves in the workplace.”
So one reason that staying at home is the right decision for our family is that it is my CHOICE based on what is fulfilling and worthwhile to me, and how thankful I am to be able to live out that decision!
Another reason I’m going to be a stay at home mom is that being a homemaker doesn’t mean you are giving up work!
If people are thinking of being a homemaker/stay-at-home mom as some pass to be a full time lady of leisure eating bon-bons and watching Oprah, think again! I agree, not only would that be incredibly mind-numbing in terms of boredom, but not very fulfilling, either! If I were signing up to just lay around the house and relax all day, every day, well I’d be eager to run back to a 40-hour-a-week job, too!!!! But I KNOW that not only is being a stay-at-home mom work, it’s HARD work. REWARDING work. How do I know? Because I saw my mom do it. I’ve seen friends do it. And I had one friend that contemplated, after a year of being a stay at home mom, going back to a high-pressure sales job that left her totally exhausted at the end of each day. Why? Because she said that her outside-the-home job was SO much easier than being at home with the kids (but, she admitted, less rewarding for her) and trying to manage them and the affairs of the home full time. This woman considered going back to an incredibly high pressure job to relax! I think Danielle Crittenden illustrates it well…
“A woman will not understand what true dependence is until she is cradling her own infant in her arms; nor will she likely achieve the self-confidence she craves until she has withstood, and transcended, the weight of responsibility a family places upon her – a weight that makes all the paperwork and assignments of her in-basket seem feather-light.”
Obviously, the job of being a mother, whether a working one or a stay-at-home one, is challenging enough as is (Jane Sellman once said “The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant”), and for a stay-at-home mom there is never a time that you are “off work.” It’s a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 day a year CAREER!!!!
The way I look at it, it’s the best of so many worlds. I get to CHOOSE what is fulfilling for ME, as well as maintain a position (homemaker) that is challenging and rewarding. For me, it just doesn’t get better than that!
You can see my other posts from this series here:
Part 2: http://www.onefleshonelove.blogspot.com/2012/07/why-im-going-to-be-stay-at-home-mom_09.html
Part 1: http://www.onefleshonelove.blogspot.com/2012/07/why-im-going-to-be-stay-at-home-mom.html
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