In Defense of Homemaking
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AuthenticVoice
 November 15 2023
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    Your home is where your heart is. Your home is your refuge from the storm. Your home is the place of protection from which you can anchor yourself and find strength to go out and face the world. Your home is the foundation from which your life and the lives of your children will grow. I cannot possibly do justice to the importance of the home in this meager article, but without getting too hyperbolic- the home is crucial.

    A home is more than simply a house, or an apartment, or a place where you sleep. A home is the network of grounded and central relationships from which you orient yourself in the world. It informs how you are going to interact with everything else in life and existence.

    I have been pondering how easy it is to know how important a home life is, and at the same time deeply puzzled about how everything 

    from consumer culture to government incentives conspires to belittle, demean, shame, and otherwise ostracize people for being stay at home Moms and Dads. The social programming is in fact so pervasive that most stay home parents engage in shaming themselves. I even found myself in a conversation saying, “I am just a stay at home Dad.” As if that is something to be ashamed of. When the kind listener pointed this out to me I realized that I was even demeaning myself in my own words. I was taken aback because it made me realize that throughout my tenure as the primary care-giver in my household I have struggled with this uneasy reality that I am so busy that I have no free time to myself, and yet somehow I ought to be doing more. As if there is some unspoken responsibility to be met, some unearned debt to be paid, some cosmic guilt to atone for, for having the audacity to make taking care of your home and family your primary responsibility.

    Try as I might to ignore, suppress, or make light of this feeling of shame at being a stay at home parent, it is very real. It is palpable, and reinforced through the unconscious actions and words of almost everyone in our busy western society. The automatic picture of stay at home parent is even the stereotypical housewife sitting on the couch eating chocolates and watching soap operas. As if taking care of your home life is a wonton luxury and a sin of the most egregious type. Perhaps it is a sin- not a sin in the eyes of God, but a sin in the eyes of mammon. A sin in the eyes of mass consumerism, a slap in the face to the gods of materialism and the hamster-wheel existence…

    finish reading the entire article here:

    https://johnlaubach.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-homemaking

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