I read a blog entry I found on Pinterest* and an essay in The Mail Online by Alice Walker’s daughter, Rebecca.  It reminded me of so many things.  The title of the Pinterest post is, “The Day that Ironing Changed Me” and Rebecca Walker’s essay is “How My Mother’s Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart.” Then, I saw a guest post at Michael Hyatt’s blog about “How Leadership At Home Affects the Rest of Life.”  Linked inside that post was another guest post titled, “Leadership Starts at Home.”

I was born in 1960.  That means I grew up in a time of great change in our nation (as opposed to the quiet little backwater today has become, sigh — insert sarcasm font).  I’m on the leading edge of the generations of women who were expected to have a career, and attending college wasn’t solely for the purpose of meeting a man and getting an “MRS” degree .**  But something got lost in the revolution.  Something very, very important.

I fully appreciate the opportunity to be a woman in nearly any career I wanted.  I am amazed at the support I had growing up.  I was visiting grandparents and asked my aunt, “Can girls play professional baseball?”  My aunt, without missing a beat, said, “Yes.”  I later learned about the professional women’s leagues that played during World War II while men were serving in the war (see the movie, “A League of Their Own“), but to my knowledge, in the mid-1960s, there weren’t any women playing professional baseball.  What a remarkable answer.  That’s one reason I was thrilled (and remain so) when the WNBA came into being.  I was a little old, but a generation younger than me has been able to take full advantage of the league.

In 1980, approximately 8.9% of the military was female.   By 2011, that percentage had increased to 19.1%.  I enjoyed a 28-year career in a traditionally male field.  But, possibly because I knew very early in life that I did not want children, I had never considered becoming a homemaker an option.  In fact, I suspect after the 1950s, any young girl expressing a desire to be a homemaker became an aberration instead of the norm.

While working at McDonald’s has become the defacto loser job (as in, “Do you want to wind up working at McDonald’s all your life?” as the threat to get kids to pay attention in school), I contend that the true “loser” job became homemaker.  It’s viewed so poorly by our society that it isn’t even considered an option.  Even for years before it became fashionable not to be one, women described themselves as “just a homemaker.”  Women today who aspire to be homemakers in the traditional sense of the word are considered unusual at best.  But more likely they are considered unrealistic or lazy.

I have begun to think that is the biggest problem with our nation today.  We do not have enough homemakers.  The homemakers we do have are put down as worthless (except when purchasing life insurance to pay for the replacement of their services should they die an untimely death).  Before we get too much further into this, I do not believe the homemaker must be a woman.  I believe it must be SOMEONE in an adult partnership (usually between a man and a woman, but it doesn’t have to be) who chooses to take responsibility for making the house a home.  For making sure the home is an inviting place for the other member of the partnership to come home to.  For, if there are children in the household, taking responsibility to ensure they are properly taught the moral beliefs and values of the adult members of the partnership.  For ensuring the home is a safe and inviting place for the occupants and their associates to live and relax in.  The homemaker is the one who primarily enables the other members of the partnership — let’s call it a family — to fully embrace their duties — whether that is providing an income for the household or learning to become productive members of society who fully understand the principles of this nation and how they fit into them.

I think we would do well as a nation to rethink our “progress” over the last fifty years.  Women and men should have equal opportunities in their chosen careers.  Yes, there should be equal pay for equal work.  But we need to rethink the two income household model if we’re going to choose to have children, because turning them over to daycare and the schools to raise is not working.  They deserve better than that.  They deserve to be a priority for you as parents.  They deserve to learn their day-to-day life skills from you.  And if you never learned, you need to learn yourself.  In two generations, we’ve lost the ability to feed and provide for ourselves without a restaurant nearby.  I should not need to tell you how utterly wrong this is.

For those who believe homemaker is a demeaning title, consider your home is a small business. Homemakers run that small business.  What are the major aspects of a small business?  Someone has to handle inventory, personnel (including disputes), accounts receivable, accounts payable, ensure the janitorial staff performs their functions, ensure the structure which houses the business remains functional as well as presentable to customers, and a myriad of things I’m not thinking of right now.  Lastly, if there are children in the home, children are considered our nation’s greatest asset.  The first five years of their lives pretty much determines what happens in the next years of their lives.  They can change direction after that, but it’s extraordinarily difficult.  If you don’t believe you’re the best person to influence your child’s most critical phases of development, you need to rethink whether you should even be having a child.  If you’re the best person to influence your child, why on earth would you ever turn that responsibility over to someone else — especially the State?

In 2008, as I was preparing to retire, I found myself looking forward to playing that role in my family.  I cannot tell you what a surprise that was to me, but I have been much happier  since that discovery.

*Pinterest is a social networking site that pins pictures to various boards on your account.  What’s difficult to tell is what goes with those pinned pictures.  Frequently, there is a recipe linked to an attractive food item.  To find out, you click on the picture you want to know more about, then double click on the item to get to the story behind it (there may be an easier way to find out of there is content associated with the picture, but I haven’t learned it yet).  If you’re interested in an invite, let me know, and I’ll send one along.

** Listen to what I just said there — “and attending college wasn’t solely for the purpose of meeting a man and getting an “MRS” degree.” See above for reference to WHY a college degree is important for a woman seeking  an “MRS” degree.  You can tell I was thoroughly brainwashed as to how that was a bad thing, can’t you?  Listen to the tapes our minds play.  I didn’t hear that at home, by the way — I leanred that out in the world.