Work, Work, Work!

As a stay-at-home mom, the home can sometimes feel like a cage, if I’m being completely honest. Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE being able to stay home my son, and I am grateful to have the house as my domain. But all of the dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc. CAN get pretty tedious. However, I never really realized how important work is for a family until getting married myself. How would we survive if both my husband and I worked equally hard to run the home? We wouldn’t survive! Or at least, we’d be living in a pigsty!

Growing up, my mom didn’t give me a lot of responsibility around the house, aside from the basic room-cleaning or dish-clearing. I don’t think I ever fully cleaned a bathroom until I got to college! Part of this was because my mother is a VERY clean person, but part of this was also because it stressed her out to teach us kids how to do things that she could just do herself!

A few weeks ago in my Family class, we discussed the importance of work within a family. In an article titled “Family Work”, Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless explain that in today’s world, the value of work is underappreciated, particularly in the family/home setting:

“Even the purpose of family work was given a facelift. Once performed to nurture and care for one another, it was reduced to "housework" and was done to create "atmosphere." Since work in the home had "use value" instead of "exchange value," it remained outside the market economy and its worth became invisible. Being a mother now meant spending long hours at a type of work that society said mattered little and should be "managed" to take no time at all.

Prior to modernization, children shared much of the hard work, laboring alongside their fathers and mothers in the house and on the farm or in a family business. This work was considered good for them--part of their education for adulthood. Children were expected to learn all things necessary for a good life by precept and example, and it was assumed that the lives of the adults surrounding them would be worthy of imitation.”

Parents have the responsibility of teaching their children how to work hard (The Family: A Proclamation to the World, para. 8).

Since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden and were commanded to work for their livelihood, humankind became a race of working beings. We are made to work! (Bahr, Manwaring, Loveless, & Bailey Bahr, 2012).

Running a home is not supposed to be a one-man (or woman) show. Spouses should work together, involving their children, to keep the family home running smoothly. And it IS important to keep a home running smoothly. In Successful Marriages and Families, Bahr, Manwaring, Loveless, and Bailey Bahr described the term “housework” as something that “no one wants to do”. However, this very work is what can help bring families closer together. “The daily work of feeding, clothing, and sheltering others has the power to transform us spiritually as we transform others physically” (Bahr, Manwaring, Loveless, & Bailey Bahr, 2012).

It would do families a lot of good to work together in a common effort- as a team- to maintain and take care of the home. Family work is necessary work, and it shouldn’t be considered meaningless.