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Anyway - side tracked. Bit controversial. Feel free to look away if you are a maiden aunt type.We went to church business meeting this week. In heaven there will be NO business meetings - of this I am certain. Nice mild mannered, Christian people turn into people trying to recreate the Nuremberg Rally. Anyway digression again.
As per, there was a discussion that I should probably not talk about and to prove that I DO understand the meaning of the word "confidential" actually, I won't. So we are talking and lady says "She is a home maker - as lots of us are" Hmm. What she means by home maker is a female who doesn't go out to work and stays at home to look after the children and the home. It's probably just me but the use of this word in this way does my head in.
I understand why the term was purloined. Women who stayed at home working pretty damn hard sweetie, felt that their labours were not appreciated and they coined a word to describe what they do. The problem is that my smug detector can sometimes rise a bit - especially when the word is used in Christian circles. It's like home making - if it is to be done properly - has to be done by a particular sex in a particular way. I'm afraid I think not, baby. I was a stay at home mum once - both full time and part time and I am very aware that it is an important job often with very little fanfare but homemakers come in all shapes and sizes.
These days I work full time. I have grown up children but I consider myself and my husband to be partnering in home making - both for ourselves and our kids and other people who happen to be passing.
Surely a single person who works to make a nice hospitable home is as valid a homemaker as someone with a fully paid up membership to Mumsnet? Do all good homes have to be defined by having children in them?
A young couple who work hard outside the home all week and then open their house to the local youth hoards - another kind of home maker.
A single mum who has to take on childcare so she can go out to work to earn money to keep a roof over her baby's head - homemaker.
A mum and her husband who have swapped the traditional roles while she goes out to work and he looks after babies - for whatever reason - may she's just flippin fantastic at her job - still home makers.
A old man who makes his house a place of safety for a couple of kids for whom the word family means only sadness and violence. Home maker.
And, in the words of the Whispers - "The Beat Goes On" There are infinite examples. Let's not allow ourselves to claim any kind of high ground because we have been blessed with a decent chap, some sprogs and a Dyson that clips to the wall. God's ways are not our ways. He places his Grace in the weirdest of places including you and me.
YES Yes and Yes again. A 'Homemaker' is someone who is blessed with somewhere to live*, who endeavours to make that space a blessing for themselves and others. It doesn't matter if they are young, old, parents, childless, working full or part time or not at all... That lady would have probably been MOST offended if you had corrected her to 'JUST' homemakers[ie doing no other job] * and 'somewhere to live' may just be a rented room, or shared student house or whatever, maybe even a temporary hotel room. "Home is where the Heart is" may be a trite expression - but its all about the atmosphere we create in our living spaces. Now you have got ME ranting!!
ReplyDeletere the confidentiality of church meetings - I sometimes think I could make a fortune if I wrote a book about Baptist Life - but nobody would believe the comments that are actually made sometimes.
ps - The Lord has blessed me with a Decent Chap and Good Sprogs. I do not like Dysons - but He has granted me Sebos instead. xx
I think I ranted because I find it sad when Christians (myself included) back into society's middle class view of what a good home is rather than be at least open to the different and the against the norm
Delete:0) I guess they were looking for a nicer term than 'housewife', and trying to get past the devastating and unfair evaluation of a person as either defined by the thing that earns them money, or else as someone who 'doesn't work'. I remember my mother night after night through the summer, until well past midnight, cutting and blanching and freezing beans, blanching and skinning and freezing tomatoes, and raising orphan lambs for meat, and looking after the hens, the orchard and all the rest of it. And my sister has consistently maintained that our mother 'never worked at all' - because she just grew the fruit and veg and preserved and cooked it, raised the sheep and cooked the dinners and cleaned the house and did all the laundry - and no one ever paid her.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it would be better for us to learn to think outside the box altogether, and not persist in defining people by their day-time occupation! x
It is certainly an unfair evaluation. The stay at home mum part of my life was really hard work. I think what tipped me over the edge was someone identifying a Christian woman as a "Weak Link" because she didn't fit the norm.
DeleteAbso-blinkin'-lutely. Couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you :-)
ReplyDelete