People say it is okay for mothers to work part-time, leaving their babies and children with others. This is not true. Babies and children need their mothers. God gave mothers breasts for a reason. They are to give consistent daily nourishment to their babies for the first year or two of their lives. Around one years old, the baby cries every time the mother leaves the room. He/she mourns being separated from mother. It is a natural, healthy instinct God has given them.
Up until WW2, mothers were consistently with their babies and children no matter how poor they were. Mothers have the nurturing nature that children need. God tells us we are to be keepers at home. This means we are to be keepers at home, raising and nurturing our own children. Listen to your heart ~ to the quiet yet insistent voice coming from deep within you and urging you to be with your baby.
The first step lies in taking a stand against the all too prevalent thinking that added income will solve all of a family's problems. If this added income means separation of mother and baby, then it may not be the solution; it may be a new source of stress. The long-range effects of separation are seldom as easy to correct as a temporary shortage of funds. Home is your base of operation, and some of your best work will be conducted in your rocking chair.
What a baby needs most is mother. Being there is the most precious gift, after life, that you can give your child. To the infant, mother is an extension of self. He feels complete only when close to her. {When Erin leaves the room for even a moment, my one-year old grandson begins wailing and crawling after her. He can be happily playing one minute with mommy in view and completely come unglued when she leaves the room.}
All future accomplishments rest on the foundation laid in the early years. "My husband and I want to put our personal mark on our children, and unless I'm there all the time for them, our mark is weakened. The time when we have the greatest influence on each child is so short, just about five years, and then peers and other adults start to become a larger part of children's lives."
All future accomplishments rest on the foundation laid in the early years. "My husband and I want to put our personal mark on our children, and unless I'm there all the time for them, our mark is weakened. The time when we have the greatest influence on each child is so short, just about five years, and then peers and other adults start to become a larger part of children's lives."
In the early years, the baby has an intense need to be with his mother that is as basic as his need for food. Mothers and babies need each other. The time a mother spends with her little one is the rich soil that nourishes motherliness. In the long run, it can affect the long-term relationship between mother and child.
It has been determined that children who don't have the benefit of a single, sustained contact with a loving mother-figure for at least the first 3 years of their lives, will manifest a diminished capacity to love others, impaired intellectual powers, and an inability to control their impulses, particularly in the area of aggression.
A mother must make a decision about who deserves the "first call" on her time. If she decides her baby and her family deserve not just a small portion of her time but a large quantity of quality time, then she knows what she must choose. In the upcoming chapters we'll offer you a way to make being at home an economic possibility in addition to being the choice of your heart.
The words in italic are all taken from a book called The Heart Has Its Own Reasons. I encourage all of you who want to be keepers at home and the ones who raise your children to read it. It was written by La Leche League and many mothers who wrote them explaining the importance of being home and how they did it. It is not from a Christian perspective but gives profound reasons why children need their mothers home with them on a consistent basis in order to learn to properly bond with others proving what God has commanded is true.
Teach young women...to be keepers at home.
Titus 2:5
