Our Family Deserves the Best of Us (Avoiding a Leftoverish Generation)

None of us would say that we believe our best gifts and energies and talents are better expended to strangers than to our own families. But we do believe that, deep down, because the feminist culture in which we are immersed, has taught us to.

Here are just a few comments I’ve personally received that prove this to be true:

“As a stay at home mom, don’t you feel oppressed?” (From a radio producer who works by someone else’s schedule, time restraints and demands.)

“I could never just stay home all the time.”

“Aren’t you wasting your college degree?” (Fill in the blank with “training, skills, gifts, etc.”)

“A helper to your husband? That sounds like something from the dark ages.” (From a woman who works as a secretary, helping another man build his business.)

GK Chesterton said it clearly enough when he said:

“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?”

I’m reading one of the most fabulous books I’ve read in a while. Lady Like, by Rebekah Curtis and Rose Adle is brilliantly written, exposing truths about women’s roles in our society that are both simple and remarkably important.

Listen to what they write:

“Even secular sociologists say there is no better way to serve society than taking care of one’s own family….If you’re a gourmet chef cooking for your family every night, your family is exceedingly blessed. What is the world to you anyway, with all its vaunted diners? We all want the best for our loved ones. How sad it would be if we failed to share with them that special gift we consider the best of ourselves.”

How and why did we lose sight of the importance of our own families? When did it become “oppressive” to pour out our best on them, but emancipating to pour it out on strangers?

To be a nurse is noble, indeed. But how can it be less noble to nurture, care for and attend to my very own family? The same goes with any profession.

Somehow, somewhere, one’s own family became denigrated in the eyes of society so it follows that work devoted to family is less meaingful. The child-care professional is applauded, while the mother committed to her own is pitied. The school teacher is esteemed while the mother teaching her own children is “wasting her education.”

You might think I’m demeaning career in order to exalt motherhood and a woman’s role at home. In fact, I am not. But mathematics seems to reveal that the exaltation for the former is constantly the antagonist of the latter.

This, also from LadyLike says it clearly:

“Women are obviously able to do more than bear children, which is a comfort especially to those who do not….However this does not permit devaluing the maternal function, which is the foundation of the vaunted female form….Valuing women’s gifts disproportionately leaves her imbalanced and dysfunctional. It is no kindness to emphasize what she is undeniably best at and discourages her from receiving with trust and gratitude the only earthly gift that lasts eternally.”

What I long to see is healthy families, born from healthy perspectives about the crucial role women play at home. If our homes and the people God has given us are secondary and only worthy of our leftovers, we can expect the results of the next generation to be leftoverish.