It’s admittedly been a long time since I posted anything, and there are a lot of very notable and/or terrible things going on in the world and our country of late that I could voice my tiny opinion about. I could write about the problem of liberal racism, or I could share my opinions concerning Hillary Clinton’s corruption, or how Donald Trump’s followers are being woefully deceived. But today I don’t want to blather on about politics or our society’s constant struggle with national suicide. I want to talk about a more fundamental-and personal-problem that is occurring in homes across our country, and has virtually no difference between the churched and the unchurched. I’m taking about working women, and I’ll warn you, this is a “mean” article.
My wife and I attend the Sunday School at our church fairly religiously. In that small room, we listen to a lesson along with two or three other couples. Almost all of the wives in the church have children… and jobs. Most of them work in the medical field, at hospitals or health care providers in our area. Their jobs are demanding and their schedules are often unforgiving, forcing some of them to miss church entirely and often. They also all have children, often several children and often very young children. In order to work their taxing jobs, they have to do something with their kids. Older kids are easy: they go to school. Younger kids are tougher to deal with (or kids on break from school), and these working moms would have to send them to daycare, but their family members are more than happy to take the kids so they don’t have to.
And I, as a father of five, whose wife stays at home full-time with our kids, I sit in that polished little white room and listen while the teacher makes statements like, “Some women neglect their children, but I don’t know any in this church. All of you sacrifice so much for your children.” On Mother’s Day, these women glow with appreciation while they are complimented by other church members, friends, and acquaintances. But the fact is, these women do not sacrifice for their children. I know these women, and I like them, but as mean as it is to say, they are not sacrificing at all. And the ones who know it most are their own children.
Our secular, God-hating society is busy telling women that in order to be fulfilled and happy, they have to work. The worst fate a woman can suffer, says the world, is to be relegated to the home-to be kept home slaving while their husbands enjoy the glamorous, fulfilling, paid jobs that are the highlight of being a human being. Working a job is the ultimate in women’s pleasurable pastimes, you know, and any woman who does not should have her head examined, or has not been “liberated.” Many do find a sense of fulfillment or satisfaction (or yes, even “happiness”) at a desk for eight or nine hours, or wearing their pantsuit as they sit at Starbucks with their briefcase leaning against their chair leg, or just getting that paycheck that supposedly makes all the stress and effort worthwhile. And if that’s you, then I can say without the slightest hint of sarcasm or irony: Great!
“Wait,” you say, “I thought you were a Bible-thumping member of the League of Men who Want to Hold Women Back in the Dark Ages (you know, the LOMWWTHWBITDA.” Ah, yes, the LOMWWTHWBITDA, I know it well. I mean, not that well. I haven’t met a man who was a part of it yet, at least not one who would openly endorse it. Anyway, I really do think that if a woman wants to work, she should be my guest, including Christian women, including married Christian women.
But…….
Don’t have kids.
See, my problem isn’t with women who work. It’s with women who find all of this purpose and meaning and happiness in a job, and still feel like they aren’t quite complete until they’ve satisfied that nagging little maternal instinct. Frankly, I don’t get all the hubbub about working a job. As far as I know, men have worked jobs forever because families had to eat, and most of the time the men who worked them would rather not have. Most people don’t get to do what they love and get paid for it. Take me, for instance. My passion is to write. I would love to work a job where I write opinions, stories, novels, even whole epics, and get paid enough to feed myself and my family. That would be great! But I can’t, because it takes a lot of work to get into that field, and I already have a family, so starting over isn’t really an option for me. Instead, I work as a draftsman. Do I like drafting? Yes. Yes I do. Does it grant me a sense of wonder, fulfillment, and purpose, so that if anyone said I couldn’t work this job and that I had to stay home with my family all day I would be offended? No. No it does not give me any such feeling. It’s no wonder that men don’t normally weigh in on this whole women working thing. After all, if your wife wants to go to work and double your income so you can afford a bigger house and newer cars, what’s not to like, right? We’re at work anyway, so what happens to the kids while we’re gone isn’t really “our deal” is it? Actually, yes it is.
I don’t mean to get off the trail. The point is, if you want to work, then work. Make money, wear the pantsuit, go to the office parties, buy all the cute wall decorations for you cubical, and enjoy your sense of euphoria. But leave the children out of it. Because they need their mother and father. Dads like us, we have to work, because God made us to be protectors and providers, and while we can (and should) do housework, we’re just not as good at running and organizing a home as our wives. But kids need to have as much of their parents as they can get, because parents are their sense of comfort, being, and origin. Children in those early years define themselves largely in terms of their parents, and more importantly, find their sense of self worth in how their parents react to them. If you as a mom are always off having a love affair with your job, to the point where you work all the time and only see your kids in the evening, then your children will inevitably come to the conclusion that your job is more important than they are, a concept that good fathers have to work hard to fight. I have to constantly remind my children that someone has to work to keep food on the table, because they constantly think it’s what I’d rather do than be with them. Even if you’re trying to spend your free time with your kids, working mom, the fact is that you could be spending it all and you choose not to.
Raising children full time is hard work, so we can stop acting like being a stay at home mom is the equivalent of a vacation package. Children are dirty, disobedient, challenging, and demanding. Multiple children are easily as stressful as the most challenging job outside the home. Raising children is physically exhausting and mentally taxing, and rather than make money, costs you money. If that’s part of the reason you want to go to work, then do yourself a favor and don’t have kids. Because kids can’t help that they are that way-they don’t know how to behave because no one has taught them. And if you let someone teach them who isn’t you, you’re heading for a host of problems down the road. But I’m not even getting into that. I’m just talking about sacrifice. We sacrifice for the things we love the most, and what angers me is that even Christian women are living a lie where they believe that they are being loving and sacrificial mothers because they spend time with their kids after work. Not so. If you are working a full time job and you don’t have to, and sending your kids to daycare or grandma-care half of their waking lives, then you are not sacrificing for them… you are sacrificing them. If you have kids, ladies, then they are your job-your only job. God intended for mothers to sacrifice all personal desires to do their job, and uniquely equipped them to do so. Fathers have a duty to spend as much time as they can being a dad when they are home, but that’s another article.
It a mother’s duty not to neglect their children for the sake of personal fulfillment, money, or general pleasure, but the secret is being a mom full-time is actually more fulfilling and pleasurable than you would think, just ask my wife. Money lasts for a while and then you spend it and it’s gone. Feelings of fulfillment or personal happiness feel good for a while but it gets harder and harder to keep up with them. But bringing up your children is a job whose outcome is eternal. Your children will live forever, and more than that, they will have children of their own, and those influences you have on them will live on long after you are gone. God intended family units to consist of a man who work as much as he needs to, then comes home and be a husband to his wife and a father to his children; He intended families to have a mother who spends her time teaching, training, and taking care of the children, providing love, care, and discipline on a constant basis especially when they are young; and he intended children to be disciplined and taught, and to look around them and see their mother and father loving them enough to sacrifice personal pleasures and fulfillment for their sakes.
“Are you telling me I should quit my job???” comes the irate response from the churchgoing mom who also works 90+ hours a week at the hospital and makes $50,000+ annually.
Yes. Quit your job. Sacrifice for your children. Show them that your own sense of fulfillment and happiness is not more important than their immortal souls. Tell them through taking a hit on the budget and settling for a smaller house or a cheaper car that you don’t care as much about money as you do about their emotional well-being. It’s not too hard. You can do it. God made you specially to take care of your kids. No one can do it better than you can, and making someone else do it when you could be doing it is selling your kids short of what they ultimately deserve.
They deserve you.
Word Weld 
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