Musings of a Retired Homeschool Mom

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...

It seems every few weeks I find something else from that “Titus 2” blogger/influencer that makes me cringe.  Last week was another one I sent to my girls…naturally with the eyeroll emoji.  Not very mature of me, but I digress…this week’s topic was when the lady in question reposted a screenshot of a tweet from a fundamentalist pastor who said, in summary, his wife is too busy raising his 6 kids to fret about whatever “psyop” the news wants her worrying about.  Now, I can understand being busy and not watching the news.  Sometimes it is good to take a break from whatever is going on in the world.  But I don’t think we should totally check out of things, for a lot of reasons. It isn’t just the original post that made me roll my eyes.   Sometimes the comments and the “Titus 2” lady’s replies are worse than the original post.   Despite the fact that this woman says she only teaches women (because that is Biblical) there are many men who love to hate on w...

I just finished reading Jill Duggar Dillard’s book, Counting the Cost , and I have a lot of thoughts.  This is going to be less of a book review and just some observations after reading both her book and her sister’s book and personal contact with some IBLP families.  On the book, it was good.  Nothing in it surprised me from what I know of IBLP.  I felt she was much more charitable towards her parents than I thought she would be.  She clearly still loves them, and the hurt is deep from her father’s actions.  The thing that stands out to me the most is that a lot of what she struggled with is due to the “Umbrella of Protection” idea that is one of the cornerstones of IBLP teachings.   If you aren’t familiar with it, a graphic is below. Under this idea, the father and his wishes are supreme, and he must be obeyed without question. After all, God placed him in authority over you, and to question what he says is akin to disobeying God.   And if yo...