A Husband's Amazing Response To 'She's A Stay-At-Home Mom? What Does She DO All Day?'
Matt Walsh is tired of people telling him how lucky his wife is to be a stay-at-home mom and to not be "working". This is his message to those people:
It's happened twice in a week, and they were both women. Anyone ought
to have more class than this, but women — especially women — should damn
well know better.
Last week, I was at the pharmacy and a friendly lady approached me.
"Matt! How are those little ones doing?"
"Great! They're doing very well, thanks for asking."
"Good to hear. How 'bout your wife? Is she back at work yet?"
"Well she's working hard at home, taking care of the kids. But she's
not going back into the workforce, if that's what you mean."
"Oh fun! That must be nice!"
"Fun? It's a lot of hard work. Rewarding, yes. Fun? Not always."
This one wasn't in-your-face. It was only quietly presumptuous and subversively condescending.
The next incident occurred today at the coffee shop. It started in
similar fashion; a friendly exchange about how things are coming along
with the babies. The conversation quickly derailed when the woman hit me
with this:
"So is your wife staying at home permanently?"
"Permanently? Well, for the foreseeable future she will be raising the kids full time, yes."
"Yeah, mine is 14 now. But I've had a career the whole time as
well. I can't imagine being a stay at home mom. I would get so antsy.
[Giggles] What does she DO all day?"
"Oh, just absolutely everything. What do you do all day?"
"…Me? Ha! I WORK!"
"My wife never stops working. Meanwhile, it's the middle of the
afternoon and we're both at a coffee shop. I'm sure my wife would love
to have time to sit down and drink a coffee. It's nice to get a break,
isn't it?"
The conversation ended less amicably than it began.
Look, I don't cast aspersions on women who work outside of the home. I
understand that many of them are forced into it because they are single
mothers, or because one income simply isn't enough to meet the financial
needs of their family. Or they just choose to work because that's what
they want to do. Fine. I also understand that most "professional" women
aren't rude, pompous and smug, like the two I met recently.
But I don't want to sing Kumbaya right now. I want to kick our
backwards, materialistic society in the shins and say, "GET YOUR
FREAKING HEAD ON STRAIGHT, SOCIETY."
This conversation shouldn't be necessary. I shouldn't need to explain
why it's insane for anyone — particularly other women — to have such
contempt and hostility for "stay at home" mothers. Are we really so
shallow? Are we really so confused? Are we really the first culture in
the history of mankind to fail to grasp the glory and seriousness of
motherhood? The pagans deified Maternity and turned it into a goddess.
We've gone the other direction; we treat it like a disease or an
obstacle.
The people who completely immerse themselves in the tiring, thankless,
profoundly important job of raising children ought to be put on a
pedestal. We ought to revere them and admire them like we admire rocket
scientists and war heroes. These women are doing something beautiful and
complicated and challenging and terrifying and painful and joyous and
essential. Whatever they are doing, they ARE doing something, and our civilization DEPENDS on them doing it well. Who else can say such a thing? What other job carries with it such consequences?
It's true — being a mom isn't a "job." A job is something you do for
part of the day and then stop doing. You get a paycheck. You have unions
and benefits and break rooms. I've had many jobs; it's nothing
spectacular or mystical. I don't quite understand why we've elevated
"the workforce" to this hallowed status. Where do we get our idea of it?
The Communist Manifesto? Having a job is necessary for some — it is for
me — but it isn't liberating or empowering. Whatever your job is — you
are expendable. You are a number. You are a calculation. You are a
servant. You can be replaced, and you will be replaced eventually. Am I
being harsh? No, I'm being someone who has a job. I'm being real.
If your mother quit her role as mother, entire lives would be turned
upside down; society would suffer greatly. The ripples of that tragedy
would be felt for generations. If she quit her job as a computer
analyst, she'd be replaced in four days and nobody would care. Same goes
for you and me. We have freedom and power in the home, not the office.
But we are zombies, so we can not see that.
Yes, my wife is JUST a mother. JUST. She JUST brings forth life into
the universe, and she JUST shapes and molds and raises those lives. She
JUST manages, directs and maintains the workings of the household, while
caring for children who JUST rely on her for everything. She JUST
teaches our twins how to be human beings, and, as they grow, she will
JUST train them in all things, from morals, to manners, to the ABC's, to
hygiene, etc. She is JUST my spiritual foundation and the rock on which
our family is built. She is JUST everything to everyone. And society
would JUST fall apart at the seams if she, and her fellow moms, failed
in any of the tasks I outlined.
Yes, she is just a mother. Which is sort of like looking at the sky and saying, "hey, it's justthe sun."
Of course not all women can be at home full time. It's one thing to
acknowledge that; it's quite another to paint it as the ideal. To call
it the ideal, is to claim that children IDEALLY would spend LESS time
around their mothers. This is madness. Pure madness. It isn't ideal, and
it isn't neutral. The more time a mother can spend raising her kids,
the better. The better for them, the better for their souls, the better
for the community, the better for humanity. Period.
Finally, it's probably true that stay at home moms have some down time.
People who work outside the home have down time, too. In fact, there
are many, many jobs that consist primarily of down time, with little
spurts of menial activity strewn throughout. In any case, I'm not
looking to get into a fight about who is "busier." We seem to value our
time so little, that we find our worth based on how little of it we
have. In other words, we've idolized "being busy," and confused it with
being "important." You can be busy but unimportant, just as you can be
important but not busy. I don't know who is busiest, and I don't care.
It doesn't matter. I think it's safe to say that none of us are as busy
as we think we are; and however busy we actually are, it's more than we
need to be.
We get a lot of things wrong in our culture. But, when all is said and
done, and our civilization crumbles into ashes, we are going to most
regret the way we treated mothers and children.
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