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| It is no secret that our free market economy tends to pervert and invert our values. People who entertain us, like actors and ball players, are worth a great deal more financially than people who shape souls. We are fairly used to the economic “realities" of our system, but as a society I am afraid we are allowing those economic values to influence and distort our own personal values. Nowhere is this more true than in our view of Mom. Mothers have always had a large sentimental value, but their economic worth has been considered negligible. They are not factored into the gross national product. However, this week Reuters News Service reported: “a full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work. . . A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for work she does at home.” I appreciate the attempt to put an appropriate comparative financial assessment on an important and an enormous job. But it is still assumes that an economic gauge is the true measure of worth. In an ironic twist, G.K. Chesterton argued against women’s suffrage at the beginning of the twentieth century precisely because her value to society was so enormous in what she was doing at home. Describing the work of a mom (he calls it “domesticity”) he writes: ". . . to be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot understand how this could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone?. . . I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness". Chesterton’s point is that a woman’s value was too great to waste in the trifling matters of running a country. I agree with his estimation of what is most important, though not with his ultimate conclusion on voting rights. But today we have arrogantly assumed that employment outside the home is more important to such an extent that many stay-at-home moms feel like they need to justify it or apologize for not doing more! I love the story Tony Campolo tells on his wife. When he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, from time to time there were gatherings of faculty members and their spouses. Inevitably, some woman lawyer or sociologist would confront my wife with the question, “And what is it that you do, my dear?” My wife, who is one of the most brilliantly articulate individuals I know, had a great response: “I am socializing two homo sapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teleologically prescribed utopia inherent in the eschaton.” When she followed that with, “and what is it that you do?” the other person’s, “A lawyer” just wasn’t that overpowering. The value of a mother’s influence goes way beyond the various chores she performs. Moms, on top of everything that you do inside and outside of the home, there is nothing more important than the spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, and social influence you have on your children. Here's to you! An excellent wife and mother who can find? She is far more precious than jewels (see Proverbs 31:10). |
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by Dr. J. Patrick Curtis, Senior Pastor |
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