End of an Era

It looks as though I will not be homeschooling for much longer. The Dancer would like to join the Equestrienne in online schooling next year. Since we like the Equestrienne's online school, that is not a huge problem, but there a couple of difficulties I'll have to get over. One, feeling like a failure for not homeschooling anymore. So many people that are pro-homeschooling are also rabidly anti-everything else. This makes me feel like maybe there's something I could have done or should have done to make homeschooling work out. I also found the picture of the homeschooling life attractive. Trouble is, it didn't work out this way very often in practice. I don't know if it was my daughters' personalities or mine, or both, but we never had anything resembling my ideal Little Homeschool on the Prairie.

Secondly, a lot of the social networks I know revolve around homeschooling. I also don't know many stay-at-home moms that don't homeschool. And it's hard to find people with any time at all to socialize, much less moms who work outside the home all day. For some reason, there does not seem to be a lot of online schooling activity on this side of town, either. I'm afraid I'll end up very isolated and that won't be good for me. I hope I can work through these issues.

Day Care Scare

This is one of the scary things about leaving your child in the care of others. And yes, I know that parents have been known to forget their kids also, accidentally leaving them in locked cars and such. But doesn't that usually happen as the parent is rushing off to work, full of thoughts of the job? I know not every mom can stay at home, but the stay-at-home mom can often live a much more relaxed lifestyle, where the kids *are* the job.

Women and Work

I was not surprised to see the results of a new study that shows most women would prefer to work part-time. Personally, I prefer to work full-time... from home! :) Teaching my daughters, doing housework, sewing, cooking, are plenty of work for me! But this study goes along with the idea offered by people like the women at the Independent Women's Forum, who also noticed this study, that any discrepancies between the pay of women and men can for the most part be attributed to the fact that women generally prefer to not push as hard on the career fast-track as men. I'm not going to offer any anecdotal evidence about others here; I'm just going to say that I have found my talents and abilities best suited to managing my home, and if I ever do work outside my home, I hope it's not more than part-time.

Stay-at-Home

Do any of you who are stay-at-home moms have the same problem I do? On the weekends, my husband likes to hang out at home and just veg, whereas I get moody and depressed just sitting around on a Saturday. I like to have plans and do things, get out of the house. I suppose having my daughters around me pretty much 24-7 just exacerbates the situation. Yeah. I need to get out of the house more.

The Next Generation

Was just over at the International Women's Forum reading a review by Charlotte Hays of Leslie Bennetts book, The Feminine Mistake, Are We Giving Up Too Much?. You may remember Bennetts most as being one of those "alarmed by a New York Times report that an increasing number of women with degrees from top colleges are choosing to become stay-at-home mothers." The review brought two things to my mind that I'd like to discuss here.

One was the observation by Hays that many of the women in this book were living the stay-at-home lifestyle until the husband came home and announced he was leaving, often for someone else. Like Hays, I am the child of divorced parents (there are far too many of us.) I saw what my parents' divorce did to my mother, who after twenty years or so of staying home and looking after the home and my sisters and I, was now compelled to go out and re-join the work force, with only a high school education. It was very difficult for my mother, I know, but I believe she slid over-far into jaded cynicism. She found it very important that I go through college, and I found in her insistence on a career for me the unspoken addition "so you can get a job when your husband leaves you."

Consciously, I've rejected this idea. I've chosen to be a stay-at-home mom, and I'm even homeschooling them now. Deep down, my subconscious does fear being abandoned by my husband, being abandoned by people with whom I have relationships in general. I've just chosen to make the conscious choice to trust my husband, that when he says he meant our marriage vows and will not leave me, that he will stand by his word. It's not always easy to trust, but it's my decision to do it. I feel staying home with my children is the best choice for them, and it's what *I* want to do as their mother.

Which leads me to the second point I wished to make. Hays gives a quote in the book from Heidi Hartmann, founder of the Institute for Women's Policy Research: "As I once said at a conference, unless you are the mother of an Einstein or a Madame Curie, which most of us are not, your own work, if it is significant, is probably more important to society than raising your kids." Well, most parents are not Einstein or Madame Curie other. Many jobs done today, when looked at in the big picture, are not really significant in a long-term, world-changing way. Most jobs could be performed by someone else equally well. But no one else can bring up my children the way I want it done. No one else can care about them as I do; no one else can understand them as I do. Influencing the next generation of people has far more impact on the world than crunching numbers, or managing an office.

Workin' for a Living

So what would you do as a job if time and money were no object? That is, if you had enough to support your family and enough time (and money) for all the schooling required beforehand?

I'm not sure what I would do! Since I'm interested in fashion history, though, I'd probably be working in a museum, or perhaps doing history reenactments, or maybe working as a costumer in the theatre or for film. It might also be fun to create historically correct sewing patterns, but I think I might get frustrated with all the work required for making patterns in different sizes. And while I might never get to do any of those things, I am fortunate that I can pursue my interests while working on my main career as "Mom," and who knows what I will do when being "Mom" is no longer my main focus?

Happy Friday the 13th!

Anyone else out here a 13th baby? Well, I suspect Lutheran Lucy is. :) Anyway, my husband and both have birthdays on the 13th of a month, two months apart. We wanted to get married on June 13th, directly in between our birthdays, but Leap Year messed it up, so we got married on June 12th instead. I believe I turned 13 on a Friday the 13th!

Although I gave the girls off of "school" this week for the most part, I've been busy, doing some sewing and cleaning up my sewing room. I finished two shirts for the Scientist yesterday. I suspect she'll wear the Pooh one as a pajama top, but that's okay, she needs new pajamas too.

I may be getting an old pattern file from a sewing store in Youngstown, OH, that is going out of business. Woo hoo! No more stacked up cardboard boxes, if my brother-in-law was able to snag one for me.

Speaking of kids being off from school, does anyone else think it's a shame that so many kids today seem to spend their vacation holed up in day care anyway? I mean, I know a lot of moms have to work, and all that. But still, it seems sad that so many kids spend their time at school, or in some sort of day care/"camp" program. My girls love being able to be home and play with their toys, or play a video game, or ride their bikes or putz around the yard.

Life Interferes

with blogging. But the Scientist's dress is almost done, in time for her first communion tomorrow night. Yay! I just have, wait for it, the hand sewing left to do; I'm turning over and hand sewing the bodice lining, and I might hand sew the hem.

I had a lot of things to think about today at lunch. Wednesday is Lunch with Daddy Day, since we're fairly close to his office after Latin class in the morning. But today was a going-away lunch for a couple who work with my husband (through tomorrow!), so the girls and I had lunch with my husband, the couple (with no kids), a single woman with no kids, and a married man whose wife is a surgeon and who also has no kids. It was strange for me, the stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, to be with this crowd. Not that they were anything but nice, but I couldn't help but wonder if they were looking down on me, a little. Still, I would still rather be the stay-at-home, homeschooling wife and mother. I can't imagine not having kids; I've wanted to be a mom since before I can remember. And I love being able to stay home with them, although we've made sacrifices to get here. And homeschooling is definitely the best option academically right now. I was even able to remember all that at lunch today. Especially when my girls wanted to snuggle with me and give me hugs at lunch. They need their Mommy, and I need to be there for them.

Modern Life

So, I get these ideas, but I hesitate to share them, because I don't have solid data to back it up. I base my thoughts on observing those around me, and on my reading, which hasn't been prolific for a long time. But I'll throw an idea out here that I've been pondering and see where it goes.

Even though there currently seems to be an increase in the popularity of being a stay-at-home mother, at least while children are young, I'm not sure that we will ever see moms staying at home with children again at the level of, say, a hundred years ago. Now, I would like to see mothers staying at home with their children, and, horror of horrors, maybe even staying home just as wives to maintain the home with no kids around. I don't want to thrash out here all the reasons it is best for moms to be at home, just that why I think many moms still won't do it.

For me, it's all about how people will avoid everything they possibly can. As humans, we take the easy way out, even if the harder route is better. That's a duh moment, really, but I think it is behind so much. Take cooking. Lots of people don't like to cook. I'm not particularly fond of it. If I could ever afford it, I'd hire a cook before I'd hire a maid. Now, my husband is a born cook. He loves to tinker around with recipes and flavors. I've increased my cooking skills because of my husband, which gives me more enjoyment, but I'd probably scarcely do it all if I didn't have to do so. But I do cook because it is healthier and less expensive. With today's options, however, people don't have to cook, so many don't. That is, unless you call warming something up in a microwave, "cooking."

Or take sewing. Did you know that Laura Ingalls Wilder did not like sewing? And neither did Ma? But in those days, unless you could afford a seamstress, you did not have a choice. Ma had a family of six to clothe, and so she had to sew, and she taught her daughters to sew, because they would need to clothe themselves and their own families someday. Some writers, like L. M. Montgomery, decried the sewing machine as impersonal, arguing that clothes were more special when made by hand, that one could imbue the garment with loving thoughts as one made each stitch. Ma, on the other hand, was thrilled with acquiring a sewing machine, because it made the process easier and quicker. She looked at it purely from a practical viewpoint. Today, people don't even need a sewing machine, and of course many people don't know how to sew. Any type of garment today can be purchased, at all price and quality levels.

Just as new advances enabled people to give up household tasks they did not wish to perform, women today can almost completely give up the household. I don't pretend to know all the reasons why women working out of the home became such an approved option, but most of the mothers of today I personally know who are working, do so because they prefer it. Yes, they also enjoy the bigger home, the newer cars, the fancy vacations and so on. But many women just don't seem to want to be at home. I do think many could be happy at home just the same, if they chose to be. That sounds sanctimonious, but I think it's true. I don't believe women of yesteryear always enjoyed every task they had to perform, but at that time, most of them had no choice. If you were going to be happy, you had to decide to do so in spite of circumstances.

But today with so many more options, we women (and men) don't often have to live with things that we don't enjoy. I'm guilty myself, of course, of wanting to avoid unpleasant tasks, and not being content with the incredible gifts I have. I do enjoy staying at home, and it's what I've always wanted. In a world of fallen humans, however, I'm not sure that enough women either want to do it, or will choose to do it.

Curve Ball

We found out today that our minivan has developed engine problems that would cost about as much to fix as we paid for the minivan (used) in the first place. So for now we will be down to our little (used) four-door Mazda stick-shift that needs a new muffler and has almost 200,000 miles on it. This is where I have to throw in the comment about how lucky I am to be able to be a stay-at-home mom!

I have to admit, the car news has been physically and emotionally draining, and life will get trickier for us for a while, not to mention more time-consuming driving my husband to and from work when necessary. Still, we'll work through it. I feel like there are things I can do, I have a specific goal to work toward, and that helps a lot. I've made a few tentative tries at sewing doll clothes to sell, because it's something I enjoy very much, I can do it from home, and I can use fabric scraps on top of it! If I work at this more seriously, hopefully I can help get us another vehicle faster. I'm sharing an example of an outfit I made to keep for myself (the dress and hat.)