When I got engaged and left a budding career as a paramedic, the first question people asked me was “So what are you going to do now?” The implied question was what I was going to do for “work.” Um, be a wife. Build a home. Serve my husband. Keep a clean house. Do laundry. Cook nourishing meals. Reduce our food bill by gardening and food preservation. Help on the ranch (we’re re-siding and re-shingling right now). On top of that, I teach piano, do photography, and write for a handful of publications.
Yes, I am a homemaker. And I have never been busier! My countertops are overflowing with home-canned goods and baked goods and eggs and garden produce. My husband has clean clothes and good food to eat. The house is welcoming and pleasant, generally tidy though loved and lived in.
Somehow society has convinced women that it is demeaning and belittling to build a home and serve one’s husband and family and to actually enjoy doing so, but that it isn’t demeaning or belittling to enter the workforce and serve your employer (who statistically will likely be a man) and customers.
Women will say on the one hand how they’d be bored to death if they stayed at home as a wife, but then the next second they’ll talk as if it is “privilege” to be a homemaker. We’ve created a modern home life that doesn’t have to take a woman’s full attention, with washing machines and dryers, dishwashers, Amazon and Walmart and easy access to anything you need. But more than that, women have let themselves be convinced that the work within the home shouldn’t take their full attention, and is somehow “lesser” work.
As far as it being a “privilege”…I know that there are situations where a dual income is necessary, or where a wife needs to work outside the home. I also don’t for a second think that women can’t or shouldn’t ever work outside the home. But the prevailing attitude towards homemaking is so sad. The home used to be a woman’s pride. Now it is generally viewed as a cage, or a worthless pursuit.
What a sad lie.
I have never been so busy. I have never felt so needed and purposeful. I have never felt such passion for my work, whether it is hanging laundry up to dry or making coffee for days working cows or canning my garden’s bounty or feeding chickens or mopping the kitchen on hands and knees. I take pride in a clean home, but I take even more pleasure in a loved home, one that is welcoming and hospitable and safe and comfortable.
I have figured out where I’m needed. And it is beautiful work.
