Working at home

One of the Christian Women’s groups I belong to was having a discussion about working at home versus working out of the home and why mothers should be working at all. I immediately thought of the study I’ve been doing here and posted the following comment.

I encourage you all to go back and read Proverbs 31, particularly from verse
13 onwards. The wife/mother did go out and work and came back and did things around the home. The Proverbs 31 woman provided for her home both financially and with her own hands, she cooked (and had help), she wove, she sold, she bought, she owned land, she worked the land, she got up early and stayed up late, she dealt with merchants and clothed the family, she watched over the affairs of the household and was not idle.

Now, I don’t think for a minute that any woman I know (including all of you) is idle – life is sooooooo busy these days. But we need to recognise that the wife who stayed home and did not work has only been a recent generational thing – women have nearly always been involved in helping with the income and working in some way, and in the past she had her children with her. If working on the land the kids were there too. Or she got help to look after her children (often there was help in the home) whilst she went out and travelled, bargained, bartered, bought and sold.

Don’t forget that families were extended in those days with grandparents, aunts, uncles and others frequently in the same household, just next door or on the same land. Often this was the ‘help’ that provided care for the children when it was needed. Today this is all too frequently not the case with families becoming ‘satellites’ and isolated from the rest of their relatives, living far away, interstate (as is the case for us) or overseas. And for many others, the single parent family is the ‘norm’ with no family members close by to assist.

With respect to the husband/man not being willing to support the household – this is not true in most cases. As was said, society has recreated the situation where it is necessary that women go out to work and with how things have developed through the industrial age and now technologically, it means that women no longer go and work out on the land, sew and weave, etc to earn an income, but instead they go out to an office job, a factory job, a job in a hospital or other helps type organisation, and so on. The nature of the work done and how the income is earnt has changed.

My husband earns a good income and we may have been able to stretch his income for most things but we wouldn’t have been able to buy the home we have (and now own), and there are other things we would have had to go without if I hadn’t worked. I just thank God that He allowed me to do my work at home – which so many mothers want to do today, so that once again, the mother and the children are together whilst she works – just as it was in years gone by, except that the grandparents and other extended family members are generally no longer present in the home. Whilst for some it may be a case of ‘keeping up with the joneses’ for many it is purely a case of survival and very necessary.

What are your thoughts about women/mothers going out to work, versus, staying in the home with the children? KMT

work at home, proverbs 31, survival, mothers working, single parent