Working Mothers are Better For Children?
Jill Filipovic wrote a diatrabe basically arguing that working mothers are better for children on Twitter the other day. Her words are in quotes. Mine follow.
“And now I am really going to get myself yelled at, but I also think the issue of example setting for a kid is a totally fair one. What example are you setting when dad works for pay and mom does the care work at home? Lots of reasons not to want to set that example for a child. Among them: Girls with working moms do better in school.” So men and women obeying God in their God-ordained roles shouldn’t be set for a child? And girls of working moms do better in school? This is the goal in life? It’s not for believers in Jesus Christ.
“Men with stay-at-home wives are less likely to promote and support women in their workplace.” I have seen nor heard any evidence of this. Men, at this stage of the game, expect and accept women in the workforce. For most of them, it’s all they’ve known!
“Sons with working mothers do more household chores and childcare when they grow up. These aren’t just individual choices; they’re social.” And how does she know this? Mothers at home have time to teach their sons to help more around the home and with younger siblings around. Mothers at home are also the ones doing the household chores and caring for the children. Working mothers often need help from others in accomplishing these important tasks.
“The reality — in our capitalist society — is that if you are home full time, your husband is your boss and there is no HR department. Should care work be valued much more?” So, it’s wrong to have your husband as your boss (the man whom you have committed yourself for life) rather than a stranger as your boss?
“Yes! In the reality we live in, are women who stay home taking on significant risks? Also, yes. I would also argue that I am not convinced that this division of labor — one full-time wage earner, one full-time-at-home career — is a good or healthy one, even when you take out of it the (very salient) fact that it’s women who are overwhelmingly the at-home careers…There are real and tangible benefits to children having a working mother — something we’re not often hesitant to say.” Men being the providers and women being the homemakers were designed by God, and they’re good since He’s good! It’s much healthier and safer for women to be home full time with their children. This is what they were created to do!
I can’t think of one “real and tangible benefit” children have with a working mother. (Yes, I know some women must work and have no choice, but I think even they would admit that it would be better for their children if they were home full time with them.) Strangers or someone other than their own mother is better raising them? HOW can this be better or of benefit to the child??? In fact, children who are raised by their mothers are more stable and emotionally secure. Please read Mary Pride’s The Way Home and the research she did on this topic.
“To be honest, I would have a really hard time being married to someone who decided they wanted to direct their ambition into the sole work of raising our child. That’s not because I don’t think work is important. It is because it’s very inward-looking and wrapping one’s identity in one’s progeny. If you have a passion for child development, great, there are many paths to walk down that do a lot of good for lots of people.”
Jill would have a hard time if her husband wanted her to raise their own child. She wants strangers to raise him/her instead, so maybe she could go work in a daycare or be a teacher in a public school and try to help raise other children. Or she suggests you women who want to be home full time should think about doing this, since this may be a better “path to walk down” in her opinion rather than raising your own children.
Everything about feminism leaves children in the dust. There isn’t one thing about feminism that has helped children; the most innocent among us. It has only hurt them immensely and the results are clearly seen in our culture.
I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
1 Timothy 5:14
39 thoughts on “Working Mothers are Better For Children?”
When our oldest daughter started high school, the guidance counsel wanted to put her in all “AP” honors classes. That really got us thinking about her future. We researched the options and decided to send her instead to the county vocational school for a certificate in child care. She even got a part time job in a real nursery school her last year and then a full time job after she finished vo-tech. The guidance counselor was livid and three! of her teachers had a meeting with us at school where they tried for an hour to change our minds. We were so angry with how little respect they had. But they had to do what we asked and let her into vo-tech. She met a nice boy there getting his automotive certificate and he got a good job too. They are marrying soon. I hate to think what bad things she’d be up to in college now.
We have four sons and two daughters. Our sons go to the public school, but I home school our daughters. They know that they will leave their father’s house when they go to their husband’s house. They know they will not have jobs outside the home. They know they don’t need the same schooling as a man. They don’t want it. They love being safe and loved here at home. I think they would be horrified if I told them I expected them to go to college and have a career and live like a modern single girl in an apartment somewhere. But we have no tv and no liberal feminist schoolteachers filling their heads with nonsense.
We raised our daughter to be modest and obedient but she has been rebelling lately. I have posted here before because she has been begging us to let her go to college (she’s a senior in high school). The problem is that she is going to be her class valedictorian and has really high test scores and is being pursued by colleges. It is making her very vain and willful. She is talking about wasting her life as a housewife and that kind of thing. Our preacher has a friend from seminary who is planting a church in the mountains in East Tennessee with his wife and their large and growing family. It is very poor and very remote and they are very traditional strictly following the Church of the Nazarene — no makeup, no dancing, modest clothes for the women. We’ve told our daughter she has to do a year of service after high school and then we’ll talk about college. We’re going to send her up there to help the preachers wife with the house and kids and garden. We’re hoping that helps teach her some modesty and respect again.
The only thing I can think of is ‘guilt induced delusion.’. Even women I know that love their jobs tell me they feel guilty about working. They admit that it would be better for their kid’s if they were home BUT will then give me 5 reasons why they MUST work lol. It’s hard to hear about financial reasons when they live in a Mc Mansion, drive 2 new cars, etc.
As for working mom benefits, hmm. Both of my brothers used drugs heavily and I ended up with an abusive boyfriend in high school. Who was around to notice any of it?!
When we were first married, my wife had in mind to keep teaching school. We tried using condoms, but gosh darn it the only thing harder than remembering to buy them was remembering to use them and keeping them from breaking or falling off was even harder. ? Despite my best efforts we somehow ended up with two in diapers and third on the way just like that. The first three years of our marriage she never managed to teach a full year, so she stayed home after that. It was such a relief to be able to worrying about those condoms since they never worked anyway. ?
“Men with stay-at-home wives are less likely to promote and support women in their workplace.”
If you are a stay at home mom (homemaker) then your husband clearly supports it because your doing that instead of a 9-5 job. That’s just a dumb comment.
Why argue with feminists? They are delusional and/or evil.
What a travesty.
The models from education, the media, schools, and tech companies for the last fifty years that boys and girls have seen a that marriage and children are tremendous wastes of time, energy, and money. Why is that? Because the most powerful and wealthy people in our society are tremendously threatened by loving Godly families, just like Pharaoh once was.
The devise the elites have resorted to is the internet.
The entire internet is a gigantic death trap. It is used to feed us lies, to deceive us, to hide the truth, to spy on us, to manipulate us, and to control us.
To prove this, all you have to do is type in to Google, the number one search engine in the world, “women who want to marry and have a lot of children”. Not a single response in the top twenty that is a website supporting this. Instead you get the usual fake news sites with “experts” lecturing men and women that getting married and having children is a terrible idea.
Meanwhile, there are millions of sites on birth control, homosexuality, pornography, and abortion, along with dating websites for people looking to fornicate or commit adultery.
The internet is the greatest satanic mind control device in human history.
For most salaried full time jobs, the company says you can have no other jobs which means no side gigs or moonlighting. The policy is you can have only one job. Think about it.
I agree Lori, the quotes by Jill Filipovic are nonsense, there is no factual evidence behind them whereas there are a lot of statistics that show stay at home mothers give by far the best environment for children. Funnily enough we had a very similar experience to Connie. Our daughter is 16, 17 this year, and in Britain you have to stay in education or training until you are 18 so she has remained at her private school with a college placement to do childcare. When she was 16 she had careers adviser come to the school to interview all the Y11’s about what they wanted to do post 16 and then as a career. Our daughter said didn’t want a career but instead she wanted to marry and become a mother. It resulted in a stiffly worded letter to my wife and I from the Headteacher saying we should ensure our daughter had more “aspirations” and “ambitions” and we should “encourage her to broaden her outlook” .
“Everything about feminism leaves children in the dust. There isn’t one thing about feminism that has helped children; the most innocent among us. It has only hurt them immensely and the results are clearly seen in our culture.” What you wrote is true. The tenderest amongst us always suffer the most due to feminism.
Also her assumptions have no validity. She quoted no studies or statistics. In fact, I’ve seen statistics contrary to several of her assertions. I’m sure she was heralded as “stunning and brave” by the woke crowd to which she was pandering.
When my children were in elementary school, I taught elementary school. My first day in the classroom, I felt like I was cheating on my own children. I just had an ache in my heart. I realize they were in school too, but the ache was there, nonetheless. I was grateful for the job since we had the same breaks and summer vacation to spend as a family. But I will never forget that feeling that day.
Literally all of the thing’s she cites as bad are good and the thing’s she cites as being good are bad. These are all very solid reasons for a woman to be at home where she belongs.
Great outcome, Connie. Wise parenting.
The lines above that Mrs. Alexander is rebuffing, seem more like a desperate justification of choosing to abandon the home and joys of motherhood, to work like a man. It is a woman rejecting her womanhood, and telling others that it is better than God’s way.
No judgement for women who MUST work, but surely one must recognise that if you CAN, you ought to follow the way God has set out – which is for our own benefit!
And often we think we can’t, but if we try, we may just find that we can do it after all.
We are the same, boys at school girls homeschool, doubtless for much the same reason. It is certainly our hope that the girls will go from our home to their husbands.
Daughters want to please their father. What we praise and encourage makes a big difference.
So many people grow into resentful adults. May I suggest in order to combat potential future resentment from your daughter as well as fostering a good attitude in her for the current time you present her with a “carrot”? Perhaps the promise of something fun she could do in place of college like an oversees mission trip either short term with family or long term in a trusted environment. Or special training in cosmetology or midwifery or herbs and natural remedies. Something where she can further develop necessary skills but not feel as if her life isn’t her own. If she herself chooses to go and serve another family because it is in her heart to do so than you’ve raised a daughter amongst daughters. But if she is being “forced” even by loving parents like you who have her best interests in mind, she may think of it as one step up from slavery.
That is a really good point.
While it’s true that there are many evils on the internet, I also think there are many positives.
Without the internet. The evil elites of the world would have 100% control of television, radio, news, etc. All outside content would be controlled by them. The internet is vast and impossible to control and completely reign in. We have wonderful blogs, podcasts, independent journalists, and truth tellers on all over the internet. We can freely share information around the world and can see through and expose the lies being spread by the main stream media. The internet will ultimately be their downfall because they can’t control it. I definitely believe there should be safeguards in place. And google is an evil company that filters out search results to support their liberal agenda. Duck Duck Go and other search engines are much better and give a much more accurate view of how people really feel. This is just my perspective. I use the internet for good. I share the Gospel over it almost every day, I encourage and pray with people, I share news exposing the liberal agenda and the lies told by them, etc. Discernment is key! <3
My mom stayed home with my siblings and I, and it is one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given. She was always there for us, and it helped me to always feel secure and cared for. We didn’t grow up in a huge house, but it was a house filled with delicious home cooking, beautiful gardens, and a close tight-knit family. I am now a fulltime homemaker for my incredible husband and it has been such a blessing for our marriage. Hopefully, God will someday bless us with babies. We plan to homeschool as well. The families I know with working moms seem to constantly be in chaos. Overstressed, rushed, and overflowing with tension. The men are unhappy, the women are riddled with guilt. When home they think about work and at work they think about home. It’s so sad.
Jack, I thought I was the only one who just never could get the hang of using condoms. I think actually trying to use them correctly is a requirement
Very funny! But, you know she meant the men don’t support their female boss.
I would go a bit further and say why argue with any woman? ?
Well said!
I know people think “keep her barefoot and pregnant” is a joke, but it really is the simplest solution sometimes. Thank goodness my wife’s obstetrician is my hunting and fishing buddy. He and I had a little talk, and when she went to him after baby number three and wanted to go on birth control, he flat out refused to put her on the pill because of the health risks and instead fitted her with a diaphragm. She kept worrying that he had made a mistake and fitted her too small because it kept falling out. She was right about it being too small but wrong about that being a mistake. Like I said, he’s a good friend. She was expecting again within a month.
She should be making babies and cooking supper not making up nonsense.
Two in diapers and a third on the way is impressive!
Inside every “career” woman is a girl who wants to give up her career and marry a big strong man who will keep her safe and secure as his barefoot and pregnant bride. The problem is as much with the guys these days as the girls. The boys are practically emasculated effeminate and timid. Of course the women want careers. Somebody has to wear the pants and these days the young men might as well be in dresses.
The husband is the steward of his wife’s fertility and is entrusted with making wise decisions because the wife is by her nature foolish and vain about such matters.
True!
People can come up with lies to justify anything.
The young women coming of age now have so few role models because their moms and even grandmothers were full time workers too.
A woman who tried to be a wife and mom and a professional just ends up being second rate at everything.
Nothing wrong with being kept at home barefoot and pregnant!!! My husband brought me home from our honeymoon barefoot and pregnant and I stayed that way for several years. Our kids are grown but after nearly 25 years of marriage I’m still 100% at home and barefoot! Wouldn’t change anything for the world!
We started our family in our honeymoon too!
Being a wife and mother is a full time job.
I can see the wisdom in that.
I agree!