Motherhood, Making a Home, Homeschooling, and Working at Home

Over the weekend I spent a few hours reading through the entire discussion thread on Auntie Leila’s {bits pieces} 144 dealing with women making a home. Since I don’t run in Catholic homeschool circles, I didn’t know about the brouhaha until she emailed out the next {bits pieces} the following Saturday. I subscribe to her blog because I appreciate her thought-provoking take on things and the many links she shares each week.

I’m not going to quote anything she wrote because you should read her original thoughts in their entirety as well as the clarifications she wrote after the blow-up. So you’ll have to click over and read what she wrote to understand the context of what I’m writing.

I also thought about leaving a comment on her post, but since I had a lot more to say than would fit in a comment I decide to write a post. What follows here is me thinking out loud and inviting you to discuss these topics with me.

Principles Regarding Motherhood and Making a Home

The discussion in the comments grew rather heated at points, especially due to a couple of individuals who simply could not let it go. (One of the commenters reminded me of Miss Bunting in Downton Abbey who insisted on badgering Lord Grantham about his views long after it was necessary. At one point while reading the comments, I actually said out loud, “Just let it go!”) It was clear that some people were unwilling to discuss universal principles but instead had to make everything a personal attack.

As a Baptist, I could have taken offense to some of the negative remarks made about non-Catholics by a few of the commenters, but I didn’t because that wasn’t the point. The overarching point Auntie Leila was making is true. How it works out in each home is going to look a little different. But it’s sad that in a Christian context it is somehow a shocking statement to say what she said.

Cogs in a Consumerist Machine

I thought one of the comments was so worth pondering I actually bookmarked it so I wouldn’t lose it. Here is part of Victoria’s comment (bold mine).

Since both D and Missy have asked me to defend my assertion that a child loses a part of his humanity by being dropped in all-day care or school, I suppose I should say something about that. My bachelor’s is in sociology, with a focus on family dynamics. From a cold research perspective, we know that children have the best outcomes when they are cared for by their mother, full-time for the first three years of life. There is also some pretty ugly research about the effects of daycare on empathy and learning; that said, higher care-giver to child ratios correlate to better child outcomes, so day care is not always terrible, but I certainly wouldn’t want to normalize it. Basic psychology tells us that we are each the most connected to the people we see, touch and talk to the most.

Stepping away from the research perspective, if we consider human experience from the dawn of history until now, what culture has placed its children en masse in institutions where they experience next to nothing of nature on a daily basis, have little to no contact with any blood relatives and learn next to no practical skills (ex. keeping a garden, keeping livestock, carpentry, machining)? What is American society trying to turn our kids into? Highly efficient and interchangeable cogs in the consumerist machine. In order to push back, we have to build a strong edifice against it to protect our children from becoming cogs.

Related to this quote, someone shared A Little Mother Prevents Big Brother from The Federalist. It’s lengthy but well worth the time to consider the significant overarching principles at stake.

(This would also be a good time to bring up the book The Benedict Option and the questions it raises, but I’m already covering enough topics at once in one catch-all post so I’ll just mention that it relates.)

Whether you agree or disagree with the discussion about where and how women should invest their energy, I thought the last two lines of that quote were so true and relate to what we so often discuss here regarding homeschooling and parenting.

Homeschooling Vision

Related to all this is the fact that I’ve read more and more long-time homeschoolers express concern regarding how homeschooling is changing. One could say it is simply people who can’t let go of how things used to be, but I think there is some validity to the concerns they are expressing.

The homeschooling movement grew out a recognition that something was terribly wrong with education in our country. The parents had a desire to shape their children in a way that they would never get in a traditional school setting. They also had a vision for family life that encompassed placing a higher value on both the individual and the family bonds. For Christians, it also encompassed the faith.

There was a long-term vision attached to it that fits well with the bolded comment above and the thoughts in the Federalist article. There was a sense of saying that we refuse as parents to give our children to be cogs in the secular, consumerist machine. Those parents (Christian or not) believed that human beings were created for more than being a cog. Looking at the generally horrible outcomes among students graduating from traditional public schools who have grown up under the radicalization of public education and the pressure cooker it has become, those early homeschoolers were prophets in their own way.

(David has taught for twelve years as an adjunct and he can clearly see how much students have changed in that time and not usually for the good. There is a brokenness and exhaustion about students now that did not exist even a decade ago.)

Things in the homeschooling world have changed. I can see it even in the past seven or so years. Homeschooling is increasingly becoming a pragmatic choice. It isn’t about having a grander vision for our children, their God-given uniqueness, and the imperative of creating a God-honoring family, but about giving them a better education that meets their educational needs. It might not sound like much of a difference, but the difference is profound.

Whereas early homeschoolers (Christian and otherwise) believed that their children would flourish more thoroughly outside of a stifling impersonal education system, increasing numbers of homeschoolers today are focused on replacing public education with something that is more personalized for their child but that will still give them the desired outcome. What is that outcome? In the end the desired outcome is really the same – the best college entrance possible which results in the best chance of the best cog location in the consumerist machine.

I’ve even found myself slipping into this pragmatic way of thinking at times. Before I had children, I was fairly certain I wanted to homeschool because I had a vision for what it meant. I believed it encompassed a higher purpose for our family and our society. As a former teacher who knew what it was like to be in schools, I thought homeschooling was a vastly better choice.

Homeschooling for our family became a necessity because there was really no feasible option that would meet Caroline’s personality and learning needs. And so at times I have seen homeschooling pragmatically as something I had to do, not something I have a vision for. At times I have honestly felt trapped by homeschooling. There have been many days I’ve been so weary I would have loved to have used a school for her. The reasons I felt that way were not even necessarily about homeschooling or her but other pressures such as my health and finances.

Part of that pragmatism seeping in was also due to the fact that I don’t have a community. Unlike Auntie Leila’s large Catholic family, I don’t have sisters and sisters-in-law and cousins in close proximity in location and worldview to share the parenting and homeschooling journey with. Other than online friends, I’m pretty much alone. I don’t think I’m the only one who lives such a fragmented life.

And so I have found myself at moments becoming more and more pragmatic about homeschooling. Doing it because it is the only option for our family rather than focusing on the bigger, overarching principle involved. To be sure, I never completely let go of that vision. But I’ve had to step back and refresh my vision for what I’m trying to accomplish as a homeschooler rather than getting bogged down in the daily details of homemaking, health, and business.

Which brings up the other aspect of the earnest discussion over there.

Moms with Little Ones Working on a Home Business

The other big part of the discussion centered on women working. This is a topic I haven’t tackled much because I always feel like my life doesn’t fit the mainstream in this area. I have an only child. My husband is self-employed primarily at home. Our life is not like the typical mom who is home fulltime with the children while the husband works. So I offer that disclaimer to know that my life doesn’t look like the life of many moms who might think about working on a home business.

By way of background, I worked as a teacher before I was married and the first two years of our marriage. I liked being a teacher in some ways, but I have always wanted to be at home as a wife and mom. I quit teaching, in part, because I was burned out as a teacher and have never seriously looked back.

I’ve worked from home with David since 2001 when he was downsized out of his career corporate job. Our goal was to create a home-based business that could be flexible with location and in which we would both work. The main goal was that between the two of us we would generate a solid income that would allow both of us to be involved in the lives of our children on a daily basis. (At that point we assumed we would have more than one. We are thankful to have one at all.)

While our self-employment sounds easy and ideal, it has been challenging. So when I critique the idea of a mom with children having a home business, I’m not writing this in theory or in a vacuum.

Balancing motherhood, homeschooling, homemaking, and owning a business is frankly next to impossible with small children. There is simply no way to do it all well unless you have a tremendous support system or you have the financial means to hire out some of your work. That is the only way it can be done without sacrificing your health by skimping on sleep.

Personally, I’ve come to the point I do not actively encourage moms with young children to pursue a business. I don’t suggest it to a young woman with little ones. I would not discourage a woman if she had made up her mind already. I will help her with knowledge I can pass along and I do in various groups I participate in. But I don’t suggest it.

The siren call of being able to do it all from home with the advent of the internet is so tempting and yet so much more difficult than most people realize. The reality is that most women who try to bring an income into the home in a side gig invest far more time than they get out of it financially. There are always those few who do (seemingly) spectacularly well and they become the beacon beckoning to other moms who want to have it all while still technically being at home. And I’m not going to argue that it can never be done. Only that it is very, very difficult and the number of women who succeed at a significant level are a very small number compared to those who are actively pursuing it and earning very little.

I do believe that pursuing a business often creates a lot of angst and frustration on the part of the mom. The more of a go-getter she is with gifts and abilities, the more challenging it is because she can almost never live up to her business vision or everything she is learning. With an online business like blogging, it never ends. Ever. There is always something to learn, something to update, something to improve. I wonder, in turn, how much frustration and negative feelings it creates between the mom and her children as she feels torn between doing what she knows she can do with her business if she only had more time and knowing she cannot.

I know that my situation is a bit different in that David and I are both home and so that’s why I’ve rarely ventured into this topic. In some ways it is comparing apples to oranges. We share the parenting duties. We share the working responsibilities. But even then…

Sometimes I long to be “just” a mom and homemaker without business obligations and expectations. And I can’t. The way our business is structured, a significant portion of it depends on what I do. This is the decision we made and I’m so happy for David and Caroline that they have had huge amounts of time together every day of her life. But I feel like I always struggle a bit to relax and enjoy the various parts of my life. No matter where I put forth effort, other areas suffer.  I can see how my need to work even at home pulls away from being a homemaker. It pulls away from simply enjoying being a mom. And it can be very hard to turn it all off.

Women Making a Home

So do I think it’s a sin for a woman to work at home? No.

Do I think some women are happier with something other than mothering to do? Yes.

Do I recognize that some women truly have to work? Yes.

But I also have lived with the consequences of the choices we’ve made and I would be lying if I said there aren’t times I wish I could be “just” a mom and homeschooler.

Those are my random thoughts that came to mind. The bottom line is no one gets it all. Caroline has gotten more time with her daddy by age eleven than most people ever get with their father in a lifetime. But she’s also gotten less of her momma than most children get with a stay-at-home mom. Such are the tradeoffs.

She has the freedom of being homeschooled and home with both her parents. She also has parents who sometimes are distracted and work too much at times.

She has the security of being in strong, positive relationships with her parents. But she also knows the stressful reality of the financial insecurity that comes from her parents being self-employed.

There’s no perfect answer. But I do believe with all my heart that the wife and mother is the heart of the home. I am thankful that even though I struggle to balance it all that I live in a place where I have the option to undertake that struggle. And I will continue to do my imperfect best to give Caroline a life that offers her more than being prepared as a cog for the consumerist machine.