The world has told so many lies in regards to Christian wives, mothers, and homemakers. Those lies have now become the common beliefs among many. One of the common myths about the Christian homemaker is that she is lazy. Here’s why I think that’s completely false.
If you missed the first post in this series, you can read it here. In that post, I shared the first common myth about the Christian homemaker: that her job isn’t important. As you can see by the title, the second common myth about the Christian homemaker is that she’s lazy.
Is Homemaking Important work?
I think this is a very common misconception that sort of stems from the first myth I shared. If you think the homemaker’s job isn’t important, you’re going to believe that she isn’t really doing much at home, and therefore that she’s lazy. For some reason, many people don’t view homemaking as work. To them, work is only a job that brings you a paycheck. Or, at the very least, that that’s the only type of important work. But that is so far from the truth.
“The American Dream” has convinced us that money is the most important thing in our lives. If we aren’t doing something that brings in money, are we really doing anything at all?
In past societies, when money wasn’t as big of a priority for the average person, work was primarily done at home. Even the men worked at home as farmers. A lot of the time, the work those men did at home was a lot harder work than the work men in later generations did outside of the home. I’m talking about things like corporate office work. Sure those types of jobs are hard in their own way. But I think we can all agree that farming is one of the hardest jobs out there. It’s especially hard physically.
Even today, pretty much everyone can agree that the work men do at their homes is hard work. Things like mowing the lawn, doing yard work, chopping wood, etc. So, why don’t people view the woman’s work at home as hard work as well?
Contrary to Popular Belief, Men and Women are Different
I think a huge reason for this is because our society treats women the exact same as men. And therefore, they expect women to do the exact same things as men. By this I mean that women are expected to work just as hard as men. Men work outside the home all day and then come home and do more work like the things I listed above. Our feminist society expects women to do the same.
However, those expectations ignore the fact that women are physically and biologically different than men. Men are physically capable of working all day and then coming home to do some more work. Of course they still need time for rest, but in general, their bodies are capable of doing more than the female body is.
Of course, the woman can do that as well. She can work all she wants. But it comes at a cost. The female body uses up a lot of energy internally. Female physiology is very intricate because it’s capable of creating new life. That means that at any given time, there’s a large number of things going on inside the female body that is never going on inside the male body. Things like intricate hormonal responses and production.
Those things take a lot of energy and they are also greatly impacted by stress. That means that women can’t do as much as men. That’s not discrimination. It’s just the truth. I honestly think that accepting that fact and acting in such a way that supports it is empowering to women. Not the opposite. Ignoring that fact only wreaks havoc on the female body. Embracing it allows the female body to thrive. I’ll talk more about the details of that topic another time. For now, you can go listen to this podcast. She describes the differences between male and female physiology so well.
But, all that to say, the female body can’t work full time and then come home to do more work without paying a price. Usually that price comes in the form of health issues. So, if a woman wants to properly take care of her body, she needs to choose one or the other. Either work full time and not have as much energy to give to her home. Or be a full time homemaker who is able to give all her energy to her home and her family.
a good Homemaker can’t be Lazy
When a woman chooses the latter and decides to give all her energy to her home and her family, a lot of the time she’s seen as being lazy. I think that’s because of what I mentioned above. She’s expected to do just as much work as a man. So anything less than working full time and doing housework is seen as being lazy. And again, that’s because our society views men and women as the exact same physically. It’s not common for people to understand that men have more energy to give to their external endeavors than women do. And it’s never going to be common to understand that if we don’t accept the fact that men and women are different.
But once you understand that, you also understand that the homemaker isn’t choosing to not work outside the home because she’s lazy. On the contrary, she’s just choosing to focus all her energy on the job God tells her is the most important.
Being a good homemaker takes a lot of work. In order to do it well, a woman can’t be lazy. I emphasize the words “good” and “well” because it doesn’t have to take a lot of work to take care of a home. It’s really simple to do the bare minimum. Just come home from a long day of work, throw in a frozen prepared meal, do a quick clean up around the house, and call it a day. For a lot of women that’s good enough. But it shouldn’t be for the Christian. And in order to be a good homemaker and to do it well, it takes a lot of work.
As I talked about in the first post of this series, the Bible shows us that the woman’s job in the home is important. Taking care of her home is part of the way a woman obeys the Lord. Therefore, it should be done to the best of her ability unto Him. Doing it to the best of your ability doesn’t mean just doing the bare minimum. It means going above and beyond so that you can glorify God even in the mundane tasks.
It means that there is absolutely no room for laziness.
A woman doing her job as homemaker well is anything but lazy. Her day is likely full of chores, cooking, baking, cleaning, child-rearing if she has children, and more. All of those things take hard work. The world sees them as easy because they’re mundane and monotonous. But like I said in the last post, those chores build a home, a home builds a family, and a family builds a society. Therefore, those mundane chores shouldn’t be taken lightly.
It’s also important to note that homemaking is essentially an all day job. It doesn’t stop at five o’clock like the “typical” job does. It never ends. The work may not be as physically demanding as a lot of jobs outside the home, but it never ends. Because of that it’s very demanding, especially for the female body. The homemaker is constantly either doing things, creating things, or thinking about things from morning to night. And if she has a small baby, she’s also feeding all throughout the night as well.
Another huge part of being a good homemaker is being willing to put the work in to learn how to do your job well and how to increase your skills. In order to take care of your home to the best of your ability, you need to know what you’re doing. Increasing your skills and knowledge on homemaking tasks takes a lot of time and work. So again, being a good homemaker means you have no room for laziness.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, this myth is mostly based on ignorance and misconceptions. Thinking a homemaker is lazy is ignorant of the fact that taking care of a home well takes a lot of time and effort. And that belief also stems from the misconception that women should be doing as much “work” throughout the day as men.
It’s time to change our views on women, men, money, and work. Our families will be better off because of it, and therefore so will our society.
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