Expectations and Preconceptions

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my choice to be a housewife. I'm a second generation housewife and stay-at-home mom. I am glad I made the decision to be at home with my daughter. I enjoy being a housewife. My husband works hard every day so that I can stay at home. We don't drive brand new cars, we don't have a huge house, we don't take lavish vacations, and we don't go out to nice restaurants every night. We make sacrifices for me to stay home. We make sacrifices to homeschool our daughter.

I didn't complete my college degree but, I have taken some college classes. I have a certificate in accounting and have worked as a bookkeeper/manager of a flower shop. I've also worked as an assistant manager at a hotel. I'm intelligent, professional and personable. Yet, I choose to stay at home. I'm not the best housekeeper, I burn dinner occasionally, and sometimes I get distracted and we don't do as much schoolwork as we should. I don't always feel successful. And yet I don't want to work outside my home.

Which brings me to another point. My mother suffered for years from my grandparents expectations and preconceptions. They figured that because she did well in music and foreign language classes that she should use her gifts and find fulfillment in a career. Both my grandparents are highly educated with master's degrees. Grandma taught for 20 years, and Grandpa was one of the most highly sought after machinists ever. They worked hard.

Grandpa worked nights and went to school during the day. He earned his degree and he was a pastor. Grandma was a pastor's wife (with all that entails), worked, went to school, and raised 3 kids. Grandma graduated with "Highest Honors", not "Honors", "Highest Honors".

These 2 hard working people raised my mom, who stayed at home with 3 kids of her own. She disappointed my grandparents. She had an incredible ear for music and foreign language. She took 4 years of Spanish and 2 years of French while in high school. She won the Bank of America award for foreign language. She studied piano from the time she was 8 and after about 12 was mostly self-taught. In college, she studied sign language. She was fluent in 4 languages (including English) at one time. When she graduated high school she could have gone on to college and studied foreign languages. She could have gone on to work as an interpreter for a large corporation, in the government, for the courts, or just about anywhere. Instead she chose to work for a small department store. She started to write to my dad who was in Viet Nam at the time. When he came home, they started to date and it wasn't long before they were married. My dad worked hard and my mom stayed home with us kids.

She took a lot of flak from people for her choice. People thought she didn't really work or that she was lazy. I even thought that at times. People said that she didn't have any ambition. Maybe she didn't, but it was still her choice to be at home with us kids. She found fulfillment at home with us. She didn't regret staying at home. Not even when my dad died. She wished she had more education and could find work easier, but she didn't regret her choice. A lot of feminists say that she wasted her life. That she could have done so much more with her life. Personally, I'm glad she wasted her life. I never saw it that way. I saw a mom who was home when my friends had a problem. I saw my mom talk with the neighborhood teens when their moms were at work. I saw someone who opened her home to all these kids everyday. Kids who would rather hang out at our house most of the time because she was there. I saw her help a boy who had fallen out of the back of a pick up. No one else was around and the people who were driving the truck were just going to pick him up and drive off. She stopped them and possibly saved his life. I saw her help a boy who was bit by a dog in the neighborhood. She took him to the school where they contacted his parents and he was able to get the medical help he needed.

My mom could have had a wonderful career out in the "real" world. I could too. She chose to stay at home. I do too. To all the feminists who criticize us: You're welcome. We're the women who talk to your kids while you work, we're the women your kids go to when there's a problem, we're the ones who rush your kid to the school when they've been bit by a dog or fell in the front of our house, we're the ones who know what the test in English covered, how they did, and we probably quizzed them before the test, we're the ones you call lazy, we're the ones who make your kids a snack and ours are the houses they hang out at. Why? Because we're there.