House Despot

I was dismayed yesterday to read a post from a young lady who shall remain nameless. Her post was a long outpouring of teenage angst of not being understood, not being appreciated, and wishing herself dead. Mixed in with this was the determination that she would NOT be merely a housewife or mother. She wanted to be herself! She wanted to be a feminist in order to be able to fulfill her dreams and desires rather than submit herself to raising a bunch of snotty nosed children and cleaning up after some man.

This view, of course, is not a strange one. There is this pervasive idea out there that if one is a keeper at home that this necessarily means that one is unfulfilled and life is an endless round of drudgery like that described above. Running a home with 11 people in it certainly keeps one busy and there is never a lack of things to do. And yes, it can be drudgery at times. Oh but what some of these young ladies can't see and won't see until they are able to experience it is that this calling is really one of the best in the world. Lots of flexibility and creativity is called for in this job, plus there is freedom to exercise it in a way that you won't get if you are working for someone else. Being a house despot is the best job in the world for women, if only they could see it.

Something else about what the young lady said also reminded me that we mothers who are managing our homes, some of which contain a large number of people, need to remember that while our children should be contributing to doing the chores and helping with the babies, we need to be careful not to unload a lot of our responsibilities onto their shoulders as they get older leaving us to spend untold hours surfing the net, chatting with friends, or talking on the phone. They should be learning from an active example of industry and they should be trained with lots of input from us, pulling alongside them as the more experienced yokefellow.

Having said that, I know a lot of young people, for whom the more they are given, the less thankful and self-centered they become. They complain bitterly and act mightily put upon if they are asked to help with something. Some of their attitudes are almost that we should be paying them for the privilege of raising them. I wish I could say that I am seeing this in only public-schooled pagan children, but the truth is that I have seen this attitude even amongst catechized Reformed and homeschooled children.

There is a natural instability that appears to happen in the early teen years with some children. This is the time when they start to become more self-conscious about what they think and believe. And this is when the questions begin. Do they believe Christianity because it is true, or merely because this is what they were always taught? Boundaries are tested, sometimes with lasting and disastrous results. But many have only minor stumbles, and by the grace of God are able to stand up and continue on in the faith of their fathers.

We should be in much prayer for our young people during these years. We also need to be constantly encouraging them to remember the benefits that God has conferred upon them, totally as the result of His grace and not by their merit.

But I digress....

The real reason I wanted to write this post was so that those of you who do not reac Carmon's blog and who haven't seen this article will go there and read it now.