Stay, Stay at Home and Rest

I am quite the old fashioned spirit stuck in a modern day body. Feminism doesn’t appeal to me one bit. It tried to capture me, and at times it still reaches it’s claws out, but I just lift my eye brow.

Growing up I was indoctrinated into the American feminist ideal that one should “go to school, go to college, get a career, make money”. Having been born in the 1980′s, after the women-go-to-work movement had firmly taken hold, I can honestly say that my generation of women seems to have missed out on the fact that opening career fields in the job market for women was done under the guise of “having a choice”. What choices were there supposed to be? The choice to either stay home OR get a job.

But I tell you, there is absolutely no “choice” left in it in mainstream American culture today. Girls are told from early on that they must go to school…go to college…and get a career. House-keeping, motherhood, and wifery are a “second thought” if anything. Skills needed to run and maintain a well-functioning family home are rarely taught, because most girls (those under 30) nowadays were the latchkey kids of the ’80s and ’90s and come from moms who never practiced it themselves.

If a woman nowadays chooses willfully to “stay home” they are considered lazy, unproductive, boring, abnormal, unintelligent, and moochers. She is no longer considered to be “contributing” to her family, and thus little value is placed on her work. If she is educated she is even told it’s a waste of intellect to “do nothing”. Debt, rising gas / food prices, housing costs, and the increasing consumerism of our society…even the opinions of young husbands who were trained in the socialistic mindset that women now must work…also hinder today’s young woman from being free to make the “choice” to stay at home if she wants to.

Again, where is the “choice” that we were supposed to have when the job market was opened to us in the 1960s and ’70s? In just 30 years time, we have completely flipped the coin. Instead of not having a choice in obtaining a career, we now no longer have a choice, socially, to stay home and protect the inner lives of our family. There is a stigma attatched to those who “stay home”. Oh yes, there are those that do it and break away from “mainstream” America, but the majority of people expect a woman to be out working – even while pregnant (and then expected to return 6 weeks after birth!).

Taking the woman out of the home…or rather, removing her choice to freely stay home…is one of the greatest downfalls of our modern era. Is it no surprise that divorces are rampant, depression is common place, children are killing each other, neighborhoods are no longer “neighborly”, close friendships are hard to maintain, and most modern tract homes are now nothing more than glorified apartments with no character, family feeling, or beauty attatched? Our society no longer has an army of focused, full-time care takers. Women use to be home looking after the health and – mental, emotional and social – welfare of their families. Now that women feel they have no choice but to work, their absence from the home is cruely missed.

Note the sharp rise in daycares, early mandantory school ages, societal disorders, and fast food chains. What once was the woman’s role in society (loving full-time caretaker of private home and private family needs) has been passed along to the private or governmental sector, forcing the public to provide for the needs of our citizens instead. How in the world has American women allowed the private lives and needs of our family become the public concern of the government? Once the government steps in, they then have a future foothold to decrease personal rights in the quest for the “good of all”. For example, California homeschooling parents are currently battling the court system over whether homeschoolers should be forced to be certified. They are considered “unqualified” to teach their own child. Depending on the court’s decision, parents all over the country may just lose their rights to teach and train their own children…. and be forced to hand over their charges to the government instead. Again, what has happened to “choice”?

It does my heart good to see the growing segment of “stay at home” blogs and websites devoted to the Biblical ideals of the woman as a full-time hardy caretaker of her man, her children, and her home. Recognition of the skills needed to effectively and efficiently run a home and raise a family is noted in these blogs too. One of my favorites is Home Living. One post, in discussiong about how atmposhere and housing architecture emotionally affects families, really hit home in describing how I feel about modern subdivisions and the lonely daytime emptiness in so-called neighborhoods. I, for one, am sick and tired of fast food, cookie cutter too-expensive homes that people only sleep in, and rushing rushing rushing that is so prevelent in our society.

I was blessed to have a stay at home mom my entire life. During the 1980s, before telecommuting was popular, she sometimes worked “lowly” jobs from home (such as telephone jobs calling for donations) but she was always there with me. It wasn’t until I reached 13 years old or so before I realized that many girls didn’t have a mother at home! I am also very blessed to now be a stay-at-home mom to my new son after working 4 years at a professional staff level in the telecommunications industry. The business world is not a place I’d like to call “home” for the rest of my 9-5 days! Give me full time interaction with MY furniture, MY home, MY son, MY husband, MY yard, MY pets, and MY own personally scheduled calendar – over the sheep-to-slaughter business world any day.

Since marriage, I’ve also been surprised at how much skill and “learning” is needed to maintain a home. Chew on this…. One must go to college for years in order to “learn” how to manage a hotel. A hotel must have cleanliness, fresh bedding, healthy food, a pleasant environment, a friendly staff, and a supurb money management system. Is a home that much different?? Our homes too must have all of these amenities, and more….and it must have them smothered in love. Now notice, none of these “amenities” I mentioned for the hotel has anything to do with material goods, but it has to do with states of living. All of the new gadgets, modern appliances, and 3000 sq. ft. spacious homes out there will do a family of 4 no good if there is no “hotel manager” watching over and maintaining the property! If we were to walk into an unkempt, dirty (in looks and smells) hotel, void of clean linens and basic necessities, with used dishes piled everywhere, and an empty dining room, we would immediately leave and complain to Dateline NBC who would go undercover to expose the terrible atrocity. Yet many of us walk into homes such as this each and every night.

So ladies. Have you considered the effects an outside job might be having on your family? (If not, then this post is really not for you.) If you have though, and if you have given thought to what it would be like to brave life against the current, I’d like to say that it is definately possible. Don’t let other’s opinions of what you “should” be doing take ahold of your life. You only have one life – and you only have a few years in the span of eternity to build those wonderful feelings of hearth and home beneath your family’s feet.

It’s very enjoyable. I am college educated, maintained a 4.0 my entire “school career”, entered the workforce at age 14, worked at a supervisory level in the business world for many years, and enjoyed my time being productive in society as a single woman. Yet, I can honestly say that, as a stay-at-home mom, my life has never been as contented, happy, or peaceful as it is right now. Since leaving the official workforce, stress has almost dissappeared from my life, my marriage (and romantic life) has blossomed (which resulted in our first son!), my entire home stays clean for the first time ever, I am free to enjoy relationships with others during daily hours, I am able to assist my father and mother when they need an errand, I can grocery shop without stress, appointments can be made without having to mentally calculate how much vacation time i have (or if my boss will let me off), we spend far far far less many than we ever have before, our debt has been reduced faster on one income than it was with two incomes (strange, yes!), and my husband comes home each day to a happy wife and a home cooked meal (and for those of you who know Kevin, you know that his heart definately resides in his tummy!). And I might add, there is absolutely nothing more awesome than being able to spend each day with my new born son and watch him grow right before my eyes.

The emotional and mental benefits alone definately make a stay-at-home lifestyle worth pursuing.

So anyway, this post has become quite long. It’s good that I can type uber fast. For any woman out there who has considered this “alternative” lifestyle in today’s culture, I encourage you to follow your heart and don’t listen to the naysayers. You are the only one living in your particular position and it’s your family…not theirs.

With that, I leave you with this beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow…

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O’er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
To stay at home is best.