Living-Deliberately.com

I know there are readers out there who are wondering why I would consider the disclosure that we are in the process of becoming a two-income family to be “safer in the closet”. Why such a strong term?

It is interesting to me how quickly my fear of rejection and belittlment bore out regarding my hesitation to say out loud what has been true for a few months: We are a two-income family. The first comment there was one placed by an old friend and her husband, who among other things, are the epitome of the kind of viewpoint I thought would respond with hostility: the single-income, homeschooling, uber-right-wing christian. This camp is where I got my start so I know it inside and out. I know the lingo, the sterotypes, the judgements, the haste.

I knew that they would assume if I was doing ANYTHING more than a hobby aside from full-time, single-focus mothering that I was harming my family. I know they see the woman/mother as a one-dimensial being who has “one-purpose” and that anything else is seen as a dangerous distraction. I knew they would see any success at what I did as a threat and a perversion of what I claim to want, and that the first attack would be to insinuate that I’d already started the process of becoming something I didn’t want to be.

Knowing this, I posted. Seeing it, I find that, most especially because of *whom* it came from, it still smarts. But I still posted. Heck…just a year ago I went to a church with this mindset, was excommunicated, and was accused of “leading my family into damnable heresy and idolotry”. Those in that camp see a big threat in a vocal woman; that excommunication and the following accusations sprang mostly from the fact that I BLOG.

And so it must follow that this rejection may have been predicatible but it does not change the fact that they are wrong. That *I* was wrong when I was in their shoes, looking down on women who work from home. And it was that look into the mirror that drove me to seek to be open and authentic with how our lives are changing, come what may.

I know who I am. I know my core beliefs very, very well. I know that I not only believe Moms can be the best Moms when they are home with their kids, but that Working Moms have it harder than those who stay home. I know that for a decade I gave myself to birthing, nursing, grieving, teaching, growing, feeding, nurturing, reading….and that this next decade will look different than the last because I’ve not got a household of babies anymore. I know that my family’s needs are changing AND that we’ve been equipped to meet those needs. I know that adjusting to parenting older children has been not unlike it’s own transitional labor. I know that there is nothing wrong with hard work and that teaching-by-doing that our family is a team will be a good thing for all of us.

And I think there is virtue in living honestly. Not letting fear of rejection or unfair judgement stop me, I am going to share, as best as I can, why and how we are going through this change. We don’t live in a little box, even the little boxes we once tried to put ourselves in.

So to some of you, who are familiar with the idea that there are strong opinions on whether or not Moms should work outside the home already well-presented elsewhere, I present you with the reality that there is a more extreme camp: the one that says mothers should not work at anything not related to childcare, being a wife, or a distant hobby (that also should have some home-keeping related value). I think this lifestyle is a beautiful one, where it’s possible, and one I fought hard to maintain, and for, while my children were babies. I will explore it more heavily in coming posts, but I also likewise feel that the pressure to stay within that lifestyle, to the ruin of finances, maternal health, and familial impact when either the needs of the family have changed, the circumstance demands it, or the family would corporately benefit from it, placed by an idealogical group, is an abuse.

I had to come to terms with all of that over the course of this year, as I started and then grew, and now hope to continue growing, a business that in some ways takes, and in other ways gives, from and to my family. To single-income legalists fond of scripture-charged arguments, may I suggest proverbs 31. The girl worked at home alrighty. That she did.

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