Ladies,

Did you know that you are a “working woman” when you become a wife?

Were you ever told about the job of running a home? Do you know it’s ok to earn money but that is not what qualifies you as a “working woman”?

I wanted to be a wife running my own home, but I knew to never admit this was my primary ambition. No one was ever presenting this to me as an option. But there was more than just the lack of this option being spoken about, I noticed more and more as I grew into a young adult woman, the utter disrespect toward women who worked at home, doing laundry, making dinner, and keeping a clean house.

The very things I wanted to do!

Fifteen years into my full-time career as a homemaker, I have been blessed to do this work.

Women have been constantly told in casual conversation for decades that we do not work at home. We are asked when we will “go back to work” after having babies as though we are not already at work. We are expected to be in the workforce as married women if we do not have children. We are asked constantly what our plans are after graduation, but we never answer, “get married and keep house!”. It is just not an acceptable answer.

But I always wanted to do the work of my own home. I had seen remarkable examples of homemaking wives in my life that inspired me to do the same. Their homes were clean, inviting, pleasant and safe. They had home cooked meals to consistently feed people. And all of that was done by full-time homemakers who were afforded the time and putting what energy they had toward such things.

I have held jobs while maintaining my domestic one, and it is always more difficult because it really just gives me two jobs. The work of the home never POOF goes away. But we are never told that what we do at home is actual work. It is treated like a hobby we pick up and put down as we wish.

We can use modern conveniences like premade food, grocery services, robot vacuums, etc. but our household still requires hard work. Robots don’t do the mental gymnastics of planning the dinner for picky eaters or food allergies. They don’t load or unload the groceries for you. They don’t cook it. Robots don’t fold my laundry or scrub my shower. And not every wife prefers to outsource her duties. Not just any wife can afford to outsource her duties! Not every wife prefers to eat convenience food day in and day out. Some of us enjoy the skills of the home and want to master certain aspects of it that we find immense value in like home grown and home cooked food, baking bread, and sewing our own items among other things.

Moreover, there is no hired maid or robot vacuum that can offer emotional presence, spiritual guidance, and love as a woman who is home can offer.

And when a woman is run down from doing the work of her home and the work outside of her home, she’s tired. Maybe more tired than she was ever meant to be.

Many of us would spend our entire paychecks to hire a maid, grocery service, and daycare so that we could be gone working! The reason we have to pay others to do these tasks in the home is because it’s work. And yet, these services still do not take care of everything. What about the messes that happen in between the weekly maid service? Do we just let everything rot? No, we’re still there to clean the countertops, the floors, the toilet, day after day. Who is doing the laundry? Taking out the trash? The list goes on. You could never hire enough help to do all of the work the homemaking wife does for her household daily.

The Bible does not say that women are to be “staying” at home. It says we are to be “working” at home. By calling women “stay at home moms/wives” instead of “work at home mom/wives” seems another way to dismiss their Biblical role.

Women in the workforce are not called “stay-at-desk-wife” or “stay-at-company-mom”. They are called “working women”.

The entire culture has asserted that unless a woman is in a paid job, she is not working, and she does not have a job. But this is not what the Bible says. Clearly, we have work to do at home if the Bible says we are to be “working at home”. We can see historically that women have always had to work by hand to keep their families fed, clothed, and clean. Even with modern help, our duties remain. The Proverbs 31 woman had maidservants helping her just as we have the help of the dishwasher, but that doesn’t mean we suddenly have no other work to do at home. My dishwasher doesn’t load and unload itself and it certainly doesn’t wash the by-hand-items by hand.

With just the job of the home, you are a “work-at-home-wife”, or a “work-at-home-mother”. By working at home, you are a working woman.

Our language matters when we train and teach people. We must instill honor and respectability into women about their role of work in the home and stop only giving respect to work outside of the home. We all need to show honor unto the wife as husbands are directed to do.

We are free as working women at home to extend our skills and our talents to others to enterprise and create income. We are free to also work outside of the home and earn money. But working outside of the home does not cancel the work of the home. It only adds to it. We do not become “working women” when we earn income. We are already working women when we diligently work in our homes to love our family and honor God by it.

As a full-time homemaker, when people asked me “Do you work?” I learned to answer accurately, “Yes I work; I am a housewife.”

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