Musings of a Retired Homeschool Mom

I recently read a blog post from a patriarchal Titus 2 “influencer” with a large following asking whether it was a sin for a single adult Christian woman to have an education and a career.  While she initially stated she couldn’t definitively say, she proceeded to lay out all the bad things that happen (in her mind) to women who work outside the home, especially as nurses or teachers (traditionally female occupations). In the discussion on her Facebook page, she not only deleted whole sections of comments from very well balanced single young Christian women with careers whose parents are elderly and on a fixed income (therefore cannot support them), she revealed her true thoughts when responding to several people who questioned what would happen if women left education and health care.  “Straw man argument!” she declared, “Not all will repent and come home.” She also stated that only those who didn’t love Jesus would stay in nursing instead of being full-time homemakers or sta...

This is going to be purely my opinion.   I hope I don’t step on any toes, but the idea of girls spending a tremendous amount of time learning “homemaking skills” has confused me for a long time. Homemaking isn’t rocket science.   But it’s okay for your daughters to learn rocket science. In fact, as a homeschool mom, I feel it is easy for our daughters to learn both homemaking skills and rigorous academics by the time they graduate from high school. Let me explain why.   As a classroom teacher, we wasted lots of time in transitions and dealing with behaviors.   The days were long, but the actual amount of instructional time we had was short.   You classroom teachers know what I am talking about. At home, things are more flexible. My kids knew they had to get the work done that I planned for them, and they also knew that they were in control of how much free time they had.   Also, we all had chores we shared since we lived in the same house, so housewor...

I just finished reading Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away From Christian Patriarchy by Cait West, and I found it to be both sad and unsurprising. Some people who have observed our family may have assumed we were fans of the stay-at-home daughter idea.   After all, our three girls stayed with us after high school.   Only one went to college directly out of high school (the youngest) and all three lived with us until they recently graduated from college and moved on to their next steps. But there is a huge difference between your daughters staying with you for a time and requiring them to stay under your authority until you pass them off to a husband.   In the stay-at-home daughter culture, girls are trained to be homemakers and nothing but homemakers.   Academic work is the bare minimum in most cases, because it is assumed they will marry young and have children, so it is more important to focus on homemaking skills instead of academics they most likely won’t use...

I know I have blogged extensively about the opinions (and that’s what they are) of the “Titus 2” influencer and her edicts that apply to all women, but one of her opinions the other day really started to bother me.  *You might wonder why I bother. This influencer and others like her have a lot of sincere Christian women that follow them and there needs to be balance brought to the conversation. This influencer (and others that follow in her footsteps) insist that God’s will for all women is for them to be at home, under the authority of their husband, father, or brother.   Being a wife and mother, after all, is “God’s perfect will” for them.   And the proof of it is Titus 2:3-5. This influencer commented on one of her own posts that “Jesus is the one who commands women to be keepers at home so they don’t blaspheme His Word.”  Now, I have searched high and low for the actual Bible verse that says women should never work outside the home and daughters cannot be edu...

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be an older Christian woman lately.  Maybe because I am entering the empty nest phase of life, maybe because I have been observing certain women who claim to be doing the “Titus 2” thing the “right” way, whatever the cause, I am at the crossroad where I feel like I need to take a hard look at how an older woman is to conduct herself and choose accordingly.  The favorite verses of the “Titus 2” influencer set reads this way: “Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Titus 2:3-5   These verses, like the rest of the Bible, are good and full of truth and instruction on the best way to live.   But the way I see this playing out in real life causes...

I’ve been thinking about this as I transition into empty nest status and think back on our homeschool years while writing a homeschool resource book.  What (outside of the gospel) are the most important things to teach our children? Academics are important and should not be neglected solely in favor of teaching good character, but there are some things that our society desperately needs to restore in bringing up our children. One look at anything on the internet tells us basic civility is dead and something needs to change. The first thing I think we need to make sure we teach our children is that what we do affects more than just ourselves, and we need to treat others the way we want to be treated. My parents didn’t really push this when I was a kid, but I spent a lot of time with my very amazing grandma, and I definitely heard this message loud and clear from her.   All her grandchildren agree, we were often admonished with the verse “Be ye kind one to another” and remin...