Being a Homemaker is the Hard Choice

  The world has a very negative view of homemakers, particularly, of their brains.  Because no degree is required to be a homemaker, people tend to think that every woman who chooses to stay home with her children, does so because she is too stupid to do anything else.  In other words, she cannot hack it in the real world and therefore she settles for being a stay-at-home mom.  As homemakers, we know this; we know how we are viewed and we know how little our brains are esteemed.  We all get the question, “do you work?” or “what else do you do?”. No, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to do this job, but that doesn’t mean that I am dumb. But does it really matter?

   When we choose to stay home and not enter into the working world, or in some cases, to leave the working world, our pride takes a hit.  We want people to know that we are smart.  We want people to know how good we were at our jobs, or how well we would have done if we had chosen to pursue a given profession. We want to be respected.  In some ways, this is the hardest thing to give up when we choose to stop working. Beyond a grateful spouse and children, there are no accolades for doing the laundry, again, or dusting the house, again, or cleaning the bathroom, again. We want to be respected, but we don’t need to be.  Perhaps this is just another sacrifice that we can make. We must sacrifice our pride, not worry about what the world thinks of us or how smart people think we are, and just continue to do our job to the best of our ability.  

“The world has enough women who know how to be smart. It needs women who are willing to be simple. The world has enough women who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The world has enough women who are popular. It needs more who are pure. We need women, and men, too, who would rather be morally right than socially correct.”
― Former U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall 1940's