Most people would say this in response to me telling them
that I teach Home Economics: "Really!?, they still teach that in
schools?"
It's quite interesting to
me to see how much our society has degraded the home and its many functions. In the guise of "women's rights," we
have conditioned countless generations of high school girls to think that home making
is not a high calling. As a result we
now have over-stressed, over -worked women who have farmed out their children to
be cared for by others. While they pursue personal gain and a false notion that
the modern "liberated" woman can and will have it all. I'm not trying to cause a war between what
each individual mother chooses for her life, but I am trying to "tip the scales" of balance back towards
a perspective equal to the idea that
staying at home with your children is just as important if not more to that of
the career/working mom. This negative perception of a woman's womanly duties
have been undermined for far too long.
My job as an educator is to give my students a fair and
accurate view of both sides. For so
long, there has been a retreating of women from the home. Perhaps we need to bring
back an education of what actually being in the home entails, rather than
indoctrinate upcoming generations of women into a one sided narrow view, which states that fulfillment
only comes from the emancipation of her maternal instincts in order to forge a
way in the male dominated market place of corporate America. Chasing the male characteristics of a career
outside the rearing and caring for the children she bore herself. Actually within reason, this gender reversal of the roles and trying to be a man is unnatural. But Feminists have played the woman for a fool since the time she
said that she can eradicate the products of promiscuity in obtaining an
abortion, therefore, "biologically" being just like the man in that regard. Woman, as God created her, is more intelligent
than Feminists would like her to think. You see there is a lot to be said to the
natural draws a woman feels when she has a child of her own.
Why I teach Home Ec. to girls is to tell them: it is okay to
want to stay at home with her kids and leave the corporate path; it is okay and
she has not "regressed" back to the stone age because her maternal
call ways heavily on her desire to care for her house, husband and children.
In my attempt to prepare for my class and as I was reading
the introduction in our Home Ec. book, the first paragraph was a perfect
example of what I have been trying to relay to my students:
"Technology has made life easier for
billions of people, but one of its greatest benefits is its contribution
to women's rights. Liberated from the need to have someone at home all day long, women could work in
offices, flip burgers, run banks. Home economics
("home ec" to dwindling
generations of high school students) was seen as a lowering of horizons, regressive even." paragraph 1, page 6 Home Economics
Vintage Advice and Practical Science for the 21st Century Household
On the contrary to what the world seems to value (as stated
in the opening paragraph) I would like to pose this question: who will remember
what office you worked, what bank you ran or what kind of burgers you flipped
when you are sitting on your rocking chair in some assisted living care center?
Who will remember if you scaled the highest mountain, ran the fastest time or
traveled to all the countries of the world?
My Biblical world view teaches me that life is not made up of what is
temporal, but what is eternal. When life
ends here on Earth, another life begins in eternity. Titus chapter 2 speaks
about what God places value on in His ultimate design for man and woman in
their roles in such capacities within and out of the Home. Again, each
situation is different for those who encounter life. And the ideal won't always be attainable. I am trying to teach God's ideal as He states
in the Bible. And specifically the ideal
as it pertains to women, Tit
2:3 The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness,
not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; Tit 2:4
That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to
love their children, Tit 2:5 To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good,
obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
This ideal is what I try to have my students strive for, not
what the world says. It all comes down
to what will be remembered when our lives on this earth are done. What will be remembered is the heritage that
you as a mother laid as a joint heir to the grace of life. 1Pe 3:7 Likewise, ye husbands,
dwell with them (wife) according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as
unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that
your prayers be not hindered.
In the role as mother you will have your part
in molding and making a future generation of Christians who can continue to
pass on the knowledge of God's beautiful salvation through Jesus. This is a sobering and daunting thought, and
more worth should be doled out to those moms who would choose this ideal. Choosing to "lower your horizons,"
as the introduction pointed out is actually quite the opposite when choosing to
be the sole care provider of your children, house and home, it's not
"regressive."
Technology may have made laundry easier, a dishwasher may
make it easier to wash dishes but technology cannot replace what is a mother's
steady figure of constant nurturing care and guidance give and requires her to be
in the home from day to day(if not until the children are of school age, which
then, gives her more freedom to choose her daily duties). Being "home all day" is what makes
that position so irreplaceable, for you can only be a mother to the child you
gave birth to, all others are just a replica. (Not to demean those who have no
choice in the matter, again, I'm striving for the ideal.)
We need to raise up a generation of women who will not run
from their posts of the home or be intimidated in their decision by a godless society that
tells them they have chose a course less desirable in life, but be glad and return to what is the
most important role, as Ellen Key said,
"The Mother [sic and wife] is the most
precious possession of the nation. So precious that
society advances its highest well-being when it protects the functions of the mother."
It's about time we reintroduce Home Economics back into life, back into schools, and back into the minds of generations to come- a vocation worthy of its pursuit. It's time we as a society begin to protect
and cherish the office of motherhood and home making once again. It's time to advance moms, not demean them.
