IN THE ENTRY on the politically besieged homemaker, I and others dicussed the burden of volunteer activities many homemakers face.

Sarah S. writes:

Something that I would point out, too, is that all that volunteer work used to be done by the “church ladies,” women whose children were grown and who now had time to teach Sunday School, deliver meals to the sick, lead reading groups at the library, etc. But in our times, even women who stay home with their kids go back to work as soon as their children enter school and then spend their most energetic years making money. And then, when they retire, they move to Florida or Arizona to play golf or they pursue second careers, sometimes because they need to, but more often because they want to. That leaves the young moms with little kids as the only ones to coordinate food drives, lead Mother of Preschoolers groups and women’s Bible studies and they’re all so tired to begin with, but they need the chances to be with other women so they work themselves into depression. I know. I’m there now. I am very fortunate in that my mother has bucked the system and not gone back to work or moved out of state – she helps at church, teaches classes, takes people to the doctor, picks up my son from school and watches my kids so that I can go to the doctor. But she’s one of the few “older” women I know who has dedicated herself so thoroughly to serving others now that she has time and financial stability. If there’s little support for women staying home to care for young children, there’s even less for women being home to care for their home and older children (my mother strongly maintained that my siblings and I needed her at home more when we were teenagers than when we were little!) and there’s almost none at all for women eschewing paid work in their later years in order to do all that volunteer work they didn’t have energy or time for when they were young. And the whole culture suffers from the lack of influence from the older women. My grandmother taught me how to set a table and passed down her china and silver. But many children don’t have grandmas who do that anymore. 

                                     — Comments —

Rita writes:

Lest we forget, the volunteer pool is also shrinking because, due to divorce or poor money management many woman must continue working until retirement age…at least. 

With so many folks on welfare, seems to me we should have plenty of helpers around. If not, why not? Oh…never mind.

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