Home: The Woman's Realm

The home is the perfect career for a woman. It is here that she owns the things around her, many of them gifts from loved ones. It is here that she creates a routine based on the needs of her family. Here, also, she is free to enhance the beauty and comfort of the dwelling, according to her own desires. No one can hold her back from career advancement, for she can learn new things and implement them whenever she likes. She can find ways of saving money and still live richly, but a career at home has rewards beyond money. During her tenure as a homemaker, she develops untold amounts of skills and talents. Resourcefulness and creativity are more likely to develop during uninterrupted days at home. One of the greatest motivations of being a good homemaker is being able to experience the results. It is very uplifting to the emotions to have a clean house that has a feeling of joy and beauty in it. Sometimes little corners that have been arranged with love and care, become the focus of photography or art, such as these paintings by Susan Rios. I have sought many paintings from the online art stores and have yet to see very many paintings glorifying women in factories, offices, institutions or other places of work outside the home. The 19th century paintings nearly always portray women doing something of a serious and peaceful nature at home.

When the mistress of the house confidently assumes her role, home life gets better and better. She provides for the family a safe and lovely place to dwell. She makes the house look good, feel comfortable, and smell sweet. She learns all the ways of her home, and from that, figures out how to remedy problems and rise to certain challenges. She looks around her to see things that need to be done. She does things without waiting for someone to tell her. She needs no supervisor. By instinct, the ant and the spider industriously make and provide for their homes. By instinct, women can manage her home.

Married women and daughters at home do not require a committee, a study, a group, a march, placards, or an act of Congress in order to be liberated. It just takes one woman at a time taking up her God-given role in the home. It doesn't take a lot of noise or slogans or any kind of a "women's studies" class to convince the next generation that a woman functions best as queen of her home. What it takes is persistant attention to the tasks at home, discerning the most urgent to the least important. It takes women who are willing to live the role of homemaker. Standing around arguing with friends about the viability of such an occupation will not prove a thing. Doing it will.

When you come home, life will be more exciting and fulfilling if you will determine to do it excellently, not half-heartedly. You will have sick days, for sure, and there will be times when you need more rest. There will be interruptions and emergencies, but at least you will be there to tend to them.

Though she keeps an eye on the time, a woman at home will not be in any particular hurry. This is a great advantage to her health and her mental state. Being at home gives her a chance to think deeply about what is important. Though she is the social director of the home, keeping track of appointments and expected company, she has the power to curtail that side of her life just because she feels the need to. She is not obligated to let the public into her life, yet she can chose the people she wants to associate with. She is not obligated to keep the same hours as the rest of the world, but she is free to make a schedule for herself if she sees the need. That is perfect freedom.

I realize there are women whose husbands are gone during the brightest parts of the day and it can get lonely. I've always drawn great comfort from the women of the past who kept so busy at home. Nearly all of them could make something with their own hands. They had an absorbing interest in life. I think this is important for all women to know, so that they can be content when there is no one to talk to. Most of the time, when a man does come home after being around people all day, he just wants to relax and not talk much, any way. That is why having some interests in life that can be pursued from the home, are such a great advantage.

Being home is like owning a little world of one's own. Inside that world, there is freedom from all the things that oppress us in the rest of the world. Here there is freedom, but from that freedom, a woman at home can influence the world in a great way.

There are many houses that remain empty all day while both the husband and the wife work. I believe many women would like to be liberated from the workplace and be given freedom to be home. They would much rather live in a small place of humble stature and be able to live on their husbands earnings, than have to be away from home every day just to pay for it. I hope all who are in that situation will take hold of the liberty to be homemakers, a liberty that Christ already gave women in His will, and come home. Home provides freedoms for women that no feminist movement could ever guarantee:

The freedom to rest when needed.

The freedom to create without the rules and regulations of the employment place.

Freedom to develop family ways and humor distinct and apart from everyone else.

Freedom to sing aloud, laugh, and talk about important issues with the family, without censure.

The freedom to take sick days without losing your job.

The freedom to conduct your day according to your personal needs.

The freedom to dress as you really want to, without the dictates of current fashion.

Freedom to learn new talents and skills and do with them as you like--keep, give away, or sell at your own price.

When you are home-based, you need not compete with the traffic of the working world, and you don't have to fill your gas tank so often.

Quotes about the home:

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.Samuel Johnson1709-1784, British Author

A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to make a home.Chinese Proverb

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserved; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing.Harriet Beecher Stowe1811-1896, American Novelist, Antislavery Campaigner