The Art and Science of Homemaking

The wife of my youth and mother of my children (d. 1992) was awarded the Betty Crocker homemaker-of-the-year award at her high school.  She was also a prom queen, a student body officer, and named best all-around student in her senior year.  As a rather average boy from a different high school, I of course, considered her to be a great catch. I was well-aware of her attractiveness and sparkling personality, but I had no idea at the time the significance of what her homemaking potential would come to mean to me and our family-to-be. 

My current wife in many ways raised a large family by herself.  She proved herself to be an excellent mother and for me is a fine wife and companion and stepmother.  Fortunately she had learned the art and science of homemaking from a loving and competent mother of her own, from teaching and role models observed in our church, and from her own tenacity, strong faith and hard work.  

Not all men or children are fortunate to have women of this caliber in their lives.

The schools of the past several decades, at least in California, no longer offer Homemaking classes.  Many girls today would not appreciate the honor of receiving the Betty Crocker homemaking award (or its equivalent), or have a clue in their young age of the value of learning what went into earning it. My point today is they are missing a crucial aspect of their education.  

  

I, of course, do not fault the girls—they do not set the curriculum in the schools and many, I am aware, do not have stellar parental role models in their own  homes who are providing a happy, functional, and effective home environment.  As the years have passed I have come to appreciate the great importance of homemaking skills for a woman, especially when the woman becomes a wife and mother. 

The reality is that many girls really do not know how to purchase healthy food, cook a good meal, keep a clean and orderly house, manage money, calendar and time, take care of clothing (sewing is long-gone), know how to mother and teach a child, know first aid and practices of healthy living, or take care of the myriad other details of the business end of home management. Neither do many young women know the psychology of how to manage themselves, let alone a man and get him to willingly and happily perform his role as husband and father.  

 I have particularly observed how overwhelmed many young mothers of this generation seem to be with their first child let alone their second, and how few white women in our general population even consider having more. 

Our young women have not been trained for one of the most challenging yet rewarding jobs of mankind.  The school has not trained them and many of their own mothers were working out of the home during their formative years and did not have the vision or time or energy or knowledge themselves to do an adequate job of preparing their daughters.

Indeed, many young women (and young men) are ill-prepared for marriage, let alone parenthood. They see, or have experienced dysfunctional family life and may have become afraid of it and have opted for the lucrative career as the higher value.  I still believe, though, they yearn for what they too often have been denied.  Dysfunctionality and fear, I believe, often stems from lack of knowledge.  And homemaking skills are a branch of that knowledge that builds confidence and maintains strong marriages and families. 

So where does this leave us?  Maybe one thing caring mothers and fathers of these ill-prepared adult children might do is to update their own requisite skills regarding marriage and parenthood.  They could then try, or at least offer, to teach their adult children now what their children should have learned by whatever means in their pre-adult years.  

Or, since the parents’ own children may not be too receptive to hearing these things from their own parents who failed them during their own growing-up years, older adults might make themselves available to their extended families or, through churches or neighborhood associations or civic organizations, to mentor other struggling young marrieds and parents.  After all, ‘a prophet (or parent) is not without honor except in his own country (or home) but may be valued by others.   Maybe our older folks could be something like a ‘visiting professor’ in someone else’s home—not to do the work (too many grandparents, in my opinion, are raising their own children’s children) but to show how it should be done and where the responsibility really lies.

  

It might help both the grandparent and the parent generations to bring up a happier, more responsible and better-prepared young generation. 

This nation needs it now and will need it more and more in the years ahead.