CAROLYN WRITES:

I sent a small donation to you via Paypal today. Keep up the good work. I hope you get lots of donations.

I love reading your site. Your voice is refreshing in a mixed-up world. I think many of us have lost our ability to think clearly and express our true opinions. I have walked both paths. I was a working girl with a big executive career job for 19 years. Then I came home to my family and have been home tending the hearth for six years. Let me say clearly that even after six years home, it continues to be a struggle. It is a struggle financially to live on one income in a world where most are doing it on two incomes. Perhaps living in the suburbs of Philadelphia contributes to the financial pressures to keep up with the neighbors. It is a struggle because I am reminded daily of the financial implications of my choice. To stay mentally strong, I must stay focused and committed to my beliefs. And this is where your blog comes into play for me. Your blog is a place where I go to remind myself of the benefits of my convictions.

All that being said, I have loved every minute of coming home to parent my four children. In a heartbeat, I would make the same decision again. In fact, I would have come home sooner to parent my children. Women cannot be the career gal and the keeper of the home at the same time. The home nest needs to be tended and loved. To act like the home nest can be done part-time or squeezed in around your job is just wrong and ignoring the work that goes into creating a peaceful home. On a personal level, this view insults me to the core because what it says is that you can squeeze the loving of your family [tending your home nest] in after the fact, that the devotion to family is not important, not needed, is not a priority, that home will thrive with the leftover attention. It is morally wrong. Yes, that is a strong statement. And our divorce rate, teen suicide rate, teen drug rate, all social ills are reflective of the fact that it just is not working out so well. Children and husbands need to be loved. Children do not care about the material things. Children want peace and love.

And the women in my sphere for the most part soften it with all the baloney, such as: “‘work-life balance,” “the kids are fine,” “I have tons of creative solutions in place,” “I need something for myself,” “I need to define myself so I have a life once the kids are gone,” “it makes me happy,” “I am bored at home,” “I am too lonely at home,” I have heard it all and even stated it myself at times. And it all rings with narcissism and hollowness.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your generosity. I appreciate it.

I am glad you go so far as to say that a woman’s neglect of home is immoral. That is refreshing and brave. It doesn’t matter whether being a wife and mother makes a woman happy or not. The fact is, the duties are there and our culture needs to be restored and maintained at its most basic and primary level. Women who have no choice but to leave home for survival or those in the extraordinary situation of having relatives and hired help who do absolutely everything a mother does, including disciplining children and instilling character and morals, are exceptions, but women who leave for extras or purely for their own happiness when no adequate substitute is there are not. And those who do leave are wrong in trumpeting this as a suitable model for others. They should speak of themselves emphatically and regrettably as departures from the ideal. Many women have never persevered so they do not honestly know whether fulfilling their duties makes them happy or not. They are unprepared for domesticity. They run from it after a few months or years in the house. Nevertheless, the point isn’t whether it makes them happy but whether there is a job to be done, whether children and husbands, young and old, community and culture, have needs that cannot be met other than by a legion of unpaid workers who tend this sphere for its own sake, purely out of love. Some men will say, “I’ll be damned if I want my wife to stay home.” But that too is wrong and selfish. They should not trumpet this as a suitable model for others. Others will say, “I knew a woman who was so depressed at home she nearly killed herself.” Many of these stories are exaggerations and cases of mass hysteria induced by the constant propaganda against domesticity. Nevertheless, we are not striving for utopia and personal happiness is sometimes sacrificed to the larger good and for the greater happiness of the many.

                                       — Comments —

Sheila C. writes:

Carolyn’s comment really resonated with me, as did your reply. There have been plenty of times I’ve felt bored or frustrated or tired while home with my children, and times I’ve dreamed of having a few weeks or months of private time – but these are daydreams only, and I fully recognize that after that mythical break, I’d be deathly lonely and leading a purposeless and selfish existence. Even when stay-at-home motherhood is not necessarily the ideal for the mother, it’s ideal for the children. It’s not a lifestyle choice or an economic trade off, it’s a biblical and biological and social imperative. Your bolded assertion that those who do leave home must not trumpet their choice, whatever the reason, but acknowledge it “emphatically and regrettably as departures from the ideal” was brave and powerful. As Carolyn noted, she has at times made similar excuses to herself, and she recognizes them as hollow. I know a number of different women who work and leave their children with their own mothers – and they claim this is ideal or just the same as if mommy were there. The children are home for rising and going to bed, but all the hours in between they’re raised by their grandma, because mom “has to work.” My family, too, could well use the extra income, but we made a conscious choice when we married that I would stay at home to raise our children, and we will not depart from it. As Carolyn notes, the “home nest needs to be tended and loved,” and this is not part time or “quality time” work. It is a full-time job and a sometimes hassle and an oftentimes joy, and by devaluing children and motherhood our society has truly turned its back on its Creator and His command to go and be fruitful.

Laura writes:

It’s amazing that some women hold the career mother up as their personal ideal when they themselves are having their own mothers raise their children. There is a reason nature limits fertility in women. It is difficult to care for young children full time when you are old. 

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