I'd like to blog about something a little more interesting than cooking and my adorable pets today.
The role of women in a family.
I am fortunate to be surrounded by women from all walks of life and all kinds of different beliefs, and I love to have the discussion about the role of a woman in a family.
I have not always been a Mormon wife, in fact two years ago I was neither! But I have always felt strongly that I was put in the earth to be a Mom. Now just to be totally clear, being a Mom doesn't mean I can't also follow my equine dreams, or get an education (which I have finished as of January.)
However when I have my children, I've always known that I wanted to stay at home to raise my family. There are lots of people who think this is an outdated and old fashioned point of view.
Here is why (in my opinion) being a stay at home Mother is the most important job in the world.
“neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11). - Hopefully your husband has a really good job where he is able to earn a decent wage where he can support you and your children. Just because the roles of Men & Women are different does not mean they aren't equal. In this society we are completely motivated by money, you look at a family and in most circumstances you can tell if they have money. They have a nice home, nice car, nice clothes. Child rearing on the other hand, Yes you can see a well behaved child but for the most part you don't see the work a mother does until her children are all grown up. Consider this, My husband is intelligent, has a fantastic work ethic, is almost finished his degree in business and is steadily climbing the ladder in his business. His mom stayed at home, and I am so grateful that she taught him all he knows and also that a mother is an equal partner in a marriage.
Nowadays, society makes women feel like they need to hold the same roles as men or they are unimportant. This is my husbands argument:
You should start a family with the intentions of the family being a family. Raised by a mother and a father with the mother having an influential every-day role in this process. To stay at work and start a family is sacrificing time with one for time for the other. If you're staying at work because of an absolute need for financial stability this is a separate argument, but if you're staying at work believing your career identifies your character, and you're afraid that motherhood will rob that identity, you're steering towards selfish endeavours.
Children need organic growth. Growth that only happens through years of parental influence. A child is your responsibility to raise, if you feel the obligations to have children you must give-up certain luxuries. What seems to be a recently hard concept to grasp is these luxuries don't include a person's entire identity. If you feel that you're not contributing to the family by not contributing financially remember that a mother will invest more than 8 hours a day 5 days a week to motherhood. A mothers investment in time is worth more than any financial job could accomplish. An example that's easy to see is people who are incredibly rich, are there children any better off than an average income family's children? No, in fact there are examples where parents are providing so much to their children secularly, they seem to lack an investment of personal time to their children. The point is financially better off children need just as much care/attention as any other children.
Motherhood is something that can't be replaced, can't be broken apart and categorized to fit someone's schedule.
Heaven forbid anything happen to my marriage or my husband, I have an education and am employable. But I plan to be there, every second of every day to raise my kids. And for every women who feels that staying at home would make you a lesser person, know that your father in heaven has a plan for you, and it is your divine role as a women to be a mother.
That is special.
This article is great too.
