Chapter One
Professionalizing Motherhood "So what do you do?" That is certainly the question of
the day isn't it? It is also a question that makes some of us
who stay home cringe whenever it is posed to us. We don't
know how to answer it. Some of us choose to be creative
with a response such as, "I'm currently researching the
development of children." And yet others of us respond
with, "Oh, I'm just a mom."
Aren't both of those responses telling? The first type
of response indicates that the terms wife and mother are
not important enough. They alone do not indicate a "real
profession." By using a creative title we hope we will be
respected more, valued for our knowledge in some area,
and interesting enough for continued conversation.
I've talked to far too many women who have attended
social gatherings with their husbands or former co-workers
only to find that when they mention they are "stay-at-home
moms," the conversations come to a halt. It is as if
the other person determines that you can't possibly have
much to offer to the conversation because you are not
"educated enough" or "sharp enough" to contribute .
after all, you are "only" a mom-how hard can that be?
Conversely, with the second response, we ourselves are
suggesting that we are "second class." The word just
implies that our responsibilities are somehow inferior to
those of other people. Because we receive no monetary
compensation for our position, we begin to buy into the
lie that we are not contributing as we should. We are
indeed "just moms."
I believe it is time for a new response. I believe we need
to remove the "just" from our response. We need to stand
up straight, offer no apology for what we do, and respond
with, "I am a wife and a mother, and I love my job!" With
great pride in our chosen career, we must share with
people that we are in the profession of motherhood.
A Change of Plans
I found myself in full-time motherhood by accident. It
did not begin as an intentional career choice for me. I was
a teacher, living in Indianapolis, Indiana. Actually, I had
just finished my teaching degree when my husband,
Mark, decided to change careers. Mark felt God calling him
to the ministry, so we packed up our little family and
moved to Lincoln, Illinois. Anne was two years old at the
time and Evan was just ten weeks old. To become an
ordained minister, Mark had four years of full-time school
ahead of him.
Our perfect plan for our new life included my finding
a teaching job, Mark's caring for the kids when he was
not in class, and a sitter's providing day care for the
majority of the daytime hours. We were not prepared,
however, for the possibility of a lack of teaching jobs in
the area. I interviewed at several schools, but found nothing
available. With two children at home, we determined
that most hourly paying jobs would not be worth my
time since the take-home pay would just barely cover
our child care expenses.
Because we lived in a married student housing unit,
we decided to put Plan B into action: I would provide day
care in our home. There were many other students who
also needed day care, and I could offer that service for
those families. We would have a steady income and our
children wouldn't need child care. It seemed like the logical
option. This plan worked for our family during the
first year and a half of Mark's schooling.
Those eighteen months were indeed a time of growth.
We couldn't afford anything but the bare minimum in
health insurance. We had very little money for food. As
I reflect on that time, I still don't know how we ever paid
our bills on $6,000 a year. But we did because God took
care of our every need. When grocery money ran out,
we would find groceries on our doorstep. When we didn't
have enough to pay bills, we would receive an unexpected
check in the mail. When we needed clothes for the kids,
someone would give us just what we needed. It was an
incredible lesson in God's faithfulness.
The most important lesson he taught me, however,
came from caring for the other children. I began to see
the downside of leaving children in someone else's care.
The children received excellent care in my home, but
when they fell down, they didn't want me-they wanted
Mommy. When their feelings got hurt, they didn't want
me-they wanted Mommy. When they were coming
down with a cold or weren't feeling well, they didn't
want me-they wanted Mommy.
Furthermore, I cared for a few grade school children
after school. When they arrived at my home, they were
bubbling over with excitement. They told me about
their day. They talked to me about their friends. They
showed me their papers and their craft projects because
it was fresh on their minds and they were so proud. By
the time Mom or Dad picked them up, that information
was no longer pertinent. They were tired and ready to
go home, eat dinner, and go to bed. For some of those
families, I could communicate what the child had told
me, but I could not adequately share the pride and
enthusiasm I had seen earlier in the day.
What an eye-opening experience that was for me! I
had never once considered what I might be missing when
leaving my children in someone else's care or how the
children might be affected. I certainly had never thought
about how short the season of children at home really is
in a family's life. My eyes were opened, and my heart for
my children and my home was beginning to grow.
The Value of Our Children
We keep hearing the questions asked, What is happening
to the children of today? Why do we have such
violence? Why are children killing? Why is there such
a lack of respect among the youth of this generation?
Although there are several contributing factors to this
situation, I believe our society's lack of value for children
is chiefly to blame.
We have given careers, money, and gadgets a higher
value than our children. We have allowed our minds to
be influenced by the media's message that "being home"
is something of the past. We have bought into the lie that
staying home to raise our children is a waste of our
minds. Therefore, we have valued our jobs and our education
more than our children.
When Anne, our firstborn, was small, I continued my
education and left her in several different home day care
situations. I kept looking for the "best" child care for her.
What mother wouldn't? Initially I looked for someone
to come to our home. I valued Anne's being in our own
home where things were familiar to her.
But through it all I did not realize what was really best
for Anne. In my quest to find the right caregiver, I did
not consider myself as a candidate. Furthermore, I was
missing her inherent value as a growing person who
needed to be taught all about the world around her. Her
value as a future member of the adult community and
the impact she could have on the world around her
escaped me. I did not understand that she needed a strong
family identity to help her know who she was and what
she stood for in an ever-changing world. Most important,
I did not consider the fact that God had given her to me
to teach her about her worth and value in Christ. I was
also clueless about just how much time
and energy it takes to raise a family!
When we have a goal of raising morally
conscious, emotionally stable, and relationally
strong children, we can't help but
see the time and energy it will take. But
when we realize our children are gifts
from God, entrusted to our care, we see
them as much more than just obligations added to our busy
schedules.
My years of home day care opened my eyes to the
needs of children. For the first time in my life, I began to
value my children for the gifts they are and I began to
seriously consider the responsibility of raising them. My
thinking changed from "Who is best suited to care for
them?" to "I am their mother and they deserve my best."
The Value of the Home
As God was growing my heart for my children, he was
also growing my heart for my home. I truly had not
given much thought to the atmosphere of my home. I
certainly "kept house" (although at times I didn't do that
very well!), but I had not known the difference between
homemaking and housekeeping.
As God was changing my heart, he instilled in me a
desire to do more than "keep house." He gave me the desire
to "make a home."
Holly Schurter, a mother of eight, puts it so well in a
letter she wrote to her grown daughter who was soon to
become a mother for the first time:
Cultivate the skills, not only of housekeeping, but
of making a home for your family. As you know
already, they are not always exactly the same.
Housekeeping consists of the laundry, the dishes, the toilets, and floors that need to be scrubbed, but
homemaking is something else. The difference
between housekeeping and homemaking is the difference
between a barren field and a lovely, fragrant
garden.
Homemaking is the deliberate cultivation of
beauty and productivity in family relationships.
Homemaking is about helping your family feel
loved and comforted. Homemaking is about celebrating
each other, and about caring for each other, as well as for your friends and extended families and
even the occasional stranger. Anyone can keep
house. Not everyone bothers to make a home.
When you combine the responsibilities of preparing
children for adulthood and cultivating a warm home, you
have a full-time job ahead of you.
Don't We Need Two Incomes?
Today's parents are heavily influenced by the media.
We have so much information and so many opinions
thrown our way we become easily confused by the difference
between what is true and what is a lie. It all gets
very confusing.
Does it take two incomes for a family to survive today?
We hear the message that if you want to give your kid
what he "needs," you will have to have two incomes. Is it
true that the cost of housing, schooling, and taxes eat up
so much of the family's income, you need additional
monies coming in to cover the rest of the living expenses?
Are you aware that over 7.7 million families in the United
States live on one income? For many of these families it
is not a luxury but a sacrifice they are willing to make.
The husband is not making more than an average salary,
and they are living in average homes. They accomplish
this in many ways, including being thrifty when buying
clothes, grocery shopping with a carefully planned budget,
and keeping a comfortable home without falling prey
to every fad that comes along. The bottom line is that
many of these families are living happily with less than
what we are told we need by the media.
Bill Flick, a newspaper columnist for The Pantagraph in
Illinois, questions the concept of the "high cost of living."
He says it's more like "the high cost of the way we choose
to live." The desire to "keep up with the Joneses" affects
us whether we realize it or not. We start to believe we
need certain things for the basic existence of daily life.
Mark and I have been trying to think through our purchases
with this in mind. We ask ourselves, "Do we really
need this or do we just want it?" One area we have found
to cut costs is cable television. Yes, you can get TV reception
without cable-even in rural areas! We're living
proof of that. We haven't had cable television for fourteen
years. Our children have not been hurt by the absence of
cable in our home. Are there times we wish we had cable?
Yes, there are. Can we afford it? No, it doesn't fit into our
budget. So we use an antenna and watch the basic network
channels.
It is possible to live on one income in today's society,
but it takes some willingness to practice delayed gratification.
Delaying some of the things we would like to
have now in exchange for doing something we need to
do now is what it is all about. As much as I'd like to have
a new car (for once in my life!) or new furniture in just
one room of our home, I choose to be happy without
those things in order to be home with my children. It's a
concept we don't hear much about today, but it's one we
can learn to embrace. By practicing delayed gratification
we are on our way to understanding what's really important
in life-people, not things. The choices we make
now will affect our families' lives and future. One day
when we reflect on the memories, will they be positive or
negative?
As a mother, I need to make the right choices now to
live without regret in the future.
A Change in Careers
After my experience of providing day care in my
home full time for a little over a year, my husband
started an internship in Bloomington, Illinois, that
required him to commute about sixty miles round trip
to school each day. So we moved to Bloomington, a city
where we knew no one. Looking back, this move made
absolutely no sense-we doubled our rent and lost the
day care income. However, the sense of direction God had
given us to make this move could not be ignored. We had
to walk through the door God had opened. We did, and
once again, he provided.
This move was different from the last one, though.
This time we were fully committed to my being home
with our children. My heart had been changed and
Mark's heart had also been changed as he realized the
value of my full-time commitment to our family. Our
financial circumstances hadn't changed, though. In fact,
they were becoming worse. We didn't know what we
were going to do.
As we wondered what God's plan was for us, he
affirmed the commitments we had for our family. I
provided care for one other child in my home, rather
than for a house full of children. I also put my music
skills to work teaching piano and voice in our home
several evenings a week. Mark took on odd jobs as his
schooling schedule would allow . and we made it.
Many times God interceded and provided in supernatural
ways. Through the experience our faith grew
at an incredible rate.
At that time, I told myself I would be home while the
children were small. When they went to school, I planned
to seek a teaching position. As Anne entered kindergarten,
however, we found ourselves expecting a new
member in our family. When Erica was born, Anne was
six and Evan was four. I knew then that I would be home
for at least another six years.
During those years I developed a close friendship with
another woman whose youngest child was born just four
weeks after Erica. We spent much time together and
enjoyed encouraging one another in homemaking. At the
same time, the small moms' group that I had started in
my home when we moved to Bloomington was growing.
The new friendships made those baby and toddler years
fly by quickly.
As Erica began her last year of preschool, I began to
anticipate a new season of life. Mark and I decided our
family was complete.
Continues.
