Whenever I encourage women to be keepers at home, I receive comments from women who can "do it all" and can't understand what the problem is with working full-time out of the home. I have incredibly wise readers and sometimes they respond to these women better than I do. Here is one example of what I mean ~
Don't see where there's a problem...I work all day and still manage to
make home cooked dinners 7 nights a week. It's not that hard. If I'm home
by 5 pm, there's plenty of time to cook dinner, clean up, throw a load
of laundry in and straighten out the family room. So, I can bring home
the bacon and fry it up too...and yes, I LIKE my career, it's taking
advantage of my God-given abilities. So...if I decided to give it up,
wouldn't I be wasting the gifts that God gave me?
One of my readers responded to this woman this way ~
You may not see the problem, but it's definitely there. It's attitudes
like this that keep the rest of us women in bondage. I'm happy that you
can do it all, but you need to understand that this is not how most
people--both men and women--are built.
How many men come home from a
full day's work, labor in the kitchen, clean up, straighten up the
house, AND do laundry? If you're happy playing Superwoman, so be it. I
would have given anything to have been told I didn't have to do it all
while I was still working full-time, and I know most of my friends are
equally miserable.
Our culture expects us to be Superwomen, running
ourselves into the ground; God does not. Furthermore, to respond to the
question you posed at the end, I believe that God gave me many gifts.
The notion that I am somehow "wasting" my gifts by not using them in the
workforce is absurd. Don't I have any influence on my husband, family,
and children?
I'm a gifted writer who is teaching my own children how to
write. I'm a critical thinker who is teaching my children how to think
critically. Whatever impact I make on the next generation is a valuable
investment of my talents. Being a stay-at-home wife {and later, mother},
was good enough for our mothers and grandmothers. Why are we trying to
reinvent the wheel, as though we somehow think we're better or more
liberated than they are?
I love learning from the women who read my blog. They give me many things to ponder and learn. Thank you, all of you who participate and give great responses like the one above! Many women are coming home to their families and loving it.
