Many people dismiss off-hand women who stay at home as women who just don’t have ambition or who are simply not intelligent. There’s a vast number of people in the world who believe that if a woman stays at home, she is either incapable of working outside the home or that she is wasting her time and her gifts because anyone could stay at home and run a household.
Perhaps anyone could run a household, but not without thought and planning. Not without creativity and intelligence. And certainly not without perseverance and determination to make it work and do it right. These are all the same qualities that employers want to find in their prospective employees. Like all jobs, there are always some people who could do the job of staying home better than others. Staying at home is a full-time job. Unlike a job in the workplace of the world, stay at home women are their own managers and motivation. They have to find and assign the special projects that need to be done. They have to supervise their own projects and work assignments and find the resources they need to accomplish their jobs. This kind of job takes creativity and self discipline.
Stay at home women, like all human beings, need a creative outlet for their gifts and abilities. The artist needs to work in her medium, the musician needs to play and sing and the organizer needs to create order. All human beings have a talent in some area of life. This explains why stay at home women often work so hard to make their homes look beautiful and feel comfortable. This is why stay at home women often take up hobbies that turn into money-makers. They focus their talents and abilities on these hobbies and the hobby becomes profitable. Some stay at home women focus on decorating, sewing or baking for their families. Either way, the stay at home women is using her abilities and talents to bless her family and friends and this gives her a sense of accomplishment and self assurance that all people crave from their profession.Society as a whole doesn’t take into consideration that the stay at home woman, like all other adult humans, is simply exercising her intelligence and preferences in staying at home to use her gifts and talents.
This societal doubt can tear down a stay at home woman’s confidence. It is a constant battle for many stay at home women to remain at home against the negativity and ridicule of the world. Many stay at home women become victims of peer pressure to leave the home, even though they know that is where they enjoy practicing their gifts and talents and where they have the most success and influence.
For the most part, stay at home women are people-centered individuals who choose to lavish the fruit of their talents on others. Instead of carrying out an assignment at a workplace they are likely to be creating something lovely to look at, teaching and training their children, preparing a nourishing meal or performing the daily tasks that make a home livable and pleasant. They often focus their efforts and abilities on helping others and serving them in helpful ways. They are frequently found to be performing multiple tasks in their homes on a daily basis that no one ever knows about. We forget that those small details that make life more enjoyable don’t happen by themselves. The stay at home woman makes it part of her job assignment to perform those tasks.
From scrubbing and cleaning to designing and creating, the stay at home women is as much an employee as any other person who works outside the home. She has simply chosen the luxury of her home to work in and to exercise the discipline of being her own employer.
It has to start somewhere and let’s allow it to begin with us. The understanding that women who stay at home are intelligent, creative, responsible human beings who choose to use their gifts and talents, their efforts, skills and knowledge in their homes, needs to be spread around. Offer encouragement to the women you know who stay at home. Like everyone else in the workplace they need feedback and affirmation that what they are doing is essential and a valid profession.
I know this all to well. I’ve had other women turn their head in the middle of my sentence when I say I’m a stay at home mom. And what’s with people thinking that stay at home women seem to have plenty of free time?
I’ve had that happen too, Tarah. That is precisely why stay at home moms and wives have to be able to find their worth and their purpose in spite of what most of the people in the world think or believe.
Hang in there! Be your best. Do your best. Rely on God. You are doing a great work and the great works are sometimes hidden from the world’s understanding.