Moms Judging Other Moms, Homeschool Edition

 

I was poking around the internet after reading Jinger Duggar Vuolo’s latest book (full review coming soon, but it’s a good one!) and I came across a Christian wife/homeschool mom blog that has gone viral a time or two for trying to say anything other than this mom’s way is sinful and unbiblical (I will not name this blogger in order to not drive any traffic to her site) and it had me thinking about how homeschool moms, especially the most fundamentalist ones, tend to be the most harsh in judging other moms, and I just have to ask, who decided that there was only one way to have a good marriage or raise godly children?

I have known homeschoolers who raised wonderful children; I have also known homeschoolers who raised children who walked away from not only their faith, but also from relationships with their parents. I have known women who worked and sent their children to school who raised wonderful, godly children; I have also known some who didn’t. I have seen couples that followed a very strict courtship standard that wound up divorced. I have seen couples that dated and made mistakes wind up finding grace and crafting wonderful marriages. I’ve seen college turn kids away from their faith, and I’ve also seen the college experience strengthen the faith of others and make these young people firmer in their convictions.  I’ve seen submissive wives in abusive situations. I’ve seen submissive wives stick it out and eventually wind up with Christian husbands.  I’ve seen submissive wives whose husbands not only left their faith, but left the wives high and dry with no way to support themselves. 

If I have learned anything in my almost 50 years of life, it is that I cannot say that what I do will work for someone else.  I can give you ideas to try based on my experience as a wife and mother and homeschool mom, but you also have permission to not do it my way, because your personality and situation does not necessarily work the same way mine does.

This mom blogger definitively states that college is terrible for your daughters.  A commenter on her Facebook page said this: “I have to seriously look at the discernment of parents who send their daughters to college. I seriously doubt that they truly love and desire to protect them the way that God instructs parents to do.”  I sent this to one of my daughters, whose response was, “My goodness. Well, I guess you don’t love me then. How dare you send me to college.”  We got a good laugh out of it.  I am no feminist, and neither are any of my girls.  They all would like to get married and have children.  I think they all would at least consider homeschooling, because we had a really good experience with it. But for this season of life, marriage isn’t happening. And none of us think sitting around learning “advanced homemaking skills” is what God has in mind for them during this season. Over the years, there has been a segment of homeschooling that says females are definitely supposed to get married and have children, and not to do anything else.  Can I just say, while I think motherhood is a wonderful gift, I refuse to reduce my daughters to only being someone’s wife and mother?  God gave them gifts, and has not yet provided a husband for any of them.  We don’t know if He ever will. They just need to do the next right thing until God shows them a different path.

This blogger had a post criticizing women like Allie Beth Stuckey and Candace Owens for being out there doing podcasts and writing books and so on. In her view, they cannot possibly be good wives and mothers because they are out there doing these things. But this lady does not personally know these ladies. Perhaps they are just better at juggling their time than she is. And I suspect their husbands are not only okay with what they are doing, they encourage them to use their gifts. I have felt this criticism in my own life. I once had a stay-at-home-daughter minded mom visibly react with a horrified, “Interesting…” when she found out I did an hour weekly on a local radio station arguing about politics with a man who believes very differently from me in every way.  My husband not only encouraged me to do it when I wasn’t sure if I would be good at it, he was my biggest fan and listened every week.  This same mom had a daughter who asked me if I wished I had more children.  Since I only have three, I must have regrets.  After all, this family believed they were to have as many kids as possible. But I have a minor (though not minor to me) fertility issue, and while it is treatable, for a lot of reasons, we stopped the cycle after three girls.  I felt that I had gone from an object of scorn to an object of pity, but this young lady actually conceded that I would not be able to do all the things I do if that hadn’t been part of my story. I hope she realized that not everything is as black and white as she had been taught. (Although the blogger mom that prompted this post would probably say I was afflicted with fertility issues because of some sin in my life…)

In closing, if I have learned anything at all in my life, I have learned that I cannot automatically and definitively state that God has one way we should live and every other way is wrong.  You have to raise your kids the way God leads you, and it will look different for every person.  And I have seen enough people who tried to do things by this lady’s formula and not have it turn out the way they thought it would to see that there are no hard and fast answers when it comes to raising children.  And that’s okay.  You can be different than me and we can still be friends.  In fact, it’s better for us to all be different.  Trying to make everyone the same is dangerous and not God’s design.  I could go into a list of wonderful dystopian books that warn of this, but this post is already too long, so I will leave it at this. 

"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;  and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord;  and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills."

1 Corinthians 12:4-11