Should I Stay Home?
By Meredith Efken

Whether you’ve only begun contemplating leaving the workplace or you’ve been a stay-at-home parent for years, this question is an essential one to ask yourself. Our lives are not static, and what was a good decision for one phase in your life may not be the best decision when your life circumstances change.
Ask yourself, “Why am I staying at home (or thinking about it)?” In our post-modern culture of no-absolutes, it will be unpopular for me to say this, but there are good reasons for staying at home and bad reasons. Making the decision to stay in the workplace or stay home based on the wrong reason can lead to discontent and even depression—which is bad for you and your whole family.

Some Bad Reasons for staying at home:

• Because of pressure from someone else: your spouse, your church, your parents, your friends, your favorite TV show, etc.
• Because you don’t like having to go to work.
• Because you lost your job and don’t have anything else to do.
• Because you feel guilty for not being at home or for having your kids in childcare.
• Because you are trying to live up to an expectation or ideal of how families should operate—based either on what you had or wished you had growing up.
• Because you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t stay home.
• Because you feel it is your duty as a good parent.

Some Good Reasons for staying at home:

• Because you truly want to.
• Because you and your spouse both feel it is in your family’s best interest. (Entire family, not just children.)
• Because not paying for childcare and other work-related expenses will help you reach your financial goals.
• Because you have always dreamed of this lifestyle.
• Because your child has a special need that you are best equipped to meet.
• Because you have the opportunity to run a business from your home.
• Because you need the freedom of not having to work around two work schedules.
• Because you and your spouse want at least one parent at home, and you both feel you are the best qualified and able.

Should it always be Mom who stays at home? No. Sometimes Dad is actually the better choice. Sometimes, the best choice is a combination of flexible work schedules so that both parents can take turns staying with the children. Resist the temptation to create moral values out of cultural norms. (Such as “mothers should be home with their children.”) Those sort of cultural norms are almost never based in any transcendent truth.

For example, our concept of a stay-at-home mom grew out of the late Victorian era where the upper-classes used the “woman at home” image as a status symbol because it meant they were rich enough not to have to work in factories or as domestic help. It further solidified after World War II when women were encouraged to stay home and not have a paying job in order to create job openings for the men returning from the war. They were told this was their patriotic duty, and an entire myth and ideal was created of the “American housewife” with her heels, pearls, perfect meals, and household gadgets.

The SAHM ideal was then cast in gold as practically a sacred cow for many evangelical Christians during the 70’s and 80’s as a backlash to the feminist movement that urged women to return to the workplace. Many Christian leaders combined the 1950’s Housewife Myth (that grew out of post-war propaganda and Victorian elitism) with rather dicey interpretation of certain Biblical passages and made staying at home a moral issue—meaning any good Christian mom would do anything possible to stay home with her kids. The pressure this has created cannot be understated.

This is why we have “Mommy Wars”—men and women on both sides of the issue claiming “women SHOULD work” or “women SHOULD be at home.” In reality, it is a personal choice and a family decision. Don’t stay at home unless you have a truly good reason for doing so. Staying home for the wrong reasons will cause heartache in the future.

About Meredith Efken:
Two daughters, a great husband, a fixer-upper Victorian home, and novels that make you laugh and feel like someone finally understands you—that’s Meredith. She is a student in the Vineyard Leadership Institute, a member of Christians for Biblical Equality, and has a Bachelor of Science in Education. Her debut novel, SAHM I Am, a comedy about stay-at-home mothers, is available in bookstores as of November, 2005.

Visit Meredith’s Website

This article is copyright 2005 by Meredith Efken.
Feel free to link to it or tell your friends about it, but do not repost without permission. Contact Meredith here.

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