Just thinking..

Just thinking out loud about this quote from Larry and Nordis Christenson, who wrote in 1977 in their book, The Christian Couple:

The role of homemaker is suffering a severe loss of status in our culture. A variety of social and economic factors have combined to move the home out of it's historic position at the centre of life. The family's provision of food and clothing, their education, health care, employment, entertainment, social life, and religious expression are centred to a large degree outside the home environment.
Considerable rhetoric in the feminist movement can be translated into the simple complaint, "Why can't we be where the important things are happening?" The home has become a sleeping and eating adjunct to the important activities of life.

The centre of life has moved, and the wife who still wants to be primarily a homemaker is made to feel it, painfully.
"You can't make your house and husband and kids your whole life. You have to get out into the world - find a job - become fulfilled!"
Many wives, who do not necessarily incline toward the feminist movement, nevertheless do suffer from the loss of status which has come to their traditional role as homemakers. They see their husbands wrapped up in their jobs, with little time for them, the children, or the home. They hear the society around them either downgrading the role of homemaker, or damning it with faint praise. They see their own children, as they grow up, finding fewer and fewer interests in the home. They see the media featuring women who are making a mark in the world; traditional homemakers seem almost by definition to be uninteresting, certainly not newsworthy. All around them they see people spending their major energies on activities which take place outside the home.
Generally speaking, a mother with small children has a full time job right at home. When the children are grown, she might turn some of her energies to meaningful work outside the home, but that cannot become a substitute for her status as a wife and homemaker, or it will further downgrade the importance of the family.

So really..after 33 years has anything much changed, in the general attitude towards the woman who's heart is centred in her family and home ?

I still hear young mothers tell of their struggles to keep a cheerful heart, whilst pouring themselves into their vocation as full-time homekeepers, because of their lack of support - especially from other women!
As an older wife and mother with grown children, I also feel this. People assume that I should suddenly wish to be free from the 'burden' of working in my own home because I now have 'nothing' to do all day..sigh!

How sad this is! How times have changed - and not always for the better. Where are the older women who stand as vanguards to lead the way for the next generation of homemakers?
There seems to be a dearth of them ..even within the church!
Thank goodness for the inter-net, where one can find some like-minded women who take time to encourage one another via blogging or other websites. Personally speaking, I have been blessed enormously by the writings of godly wives and mothers on the Web.
We women have always been good at networking and sharing information; and nowdays there is a "small world" of christian bloggers out there who do try to support each other in the pursuit of biblical homemaking. They are a gift from God to the lonely and isolated lady trying to maintain her role and fulfil her vocation as keeper of the home.
We now have the ability to connect, through the advances of technology, with encouraging friends and godly mentors right across the planet :-)
And that, my friends, is something that has changed - for the better!!
blessings..trish