Family Work

I was sent an article about family work, it makes a whole lot of sense to me. I feel saddened that this way of life is not possible for many people and a lot of people don't even know what they are missing.

Here is the jist of it.


Parents and children used to work along side each other. Fathers ploughing the field would have their children following them planting seeds. Mothers used to have their children around them during the day cleaning with them, cooking with them, laughing and joking with them. As well as educating them. All of the industrial advances of the last century have made it so that fathers go to work and are isolated from their families. Mothers go to work and are isolated from their families. Children go to school and are isolated from their families. Even if mothers stay home, like I do, the older children are sent to school and their kind company is definantly missed. We are supposed to establish relationships through play, but really how natural is that?

It is natural to weed along side your child and bring up the important things that come to your mind to talk with them about. They are able to bring up things to talk to you about. It is natural to laugh while cleaning your home and cooking dinner. It is natural to rake leaves while your children take turns jumping into them. It is not natural to be separated almost all the hours of the day then thrown together to eat a hurried meal before everyone slinks off to their computer, to their book, to their music or television show. It is not natural for children to have to be shifted about in the school system. Constantly lining up as criminals to their ordered places. How friendly is it to sit eating your pathetic food (which I consider all school food to be) with people around you who may or may not be your friends, but either way don't have your best interests at heart, they have their own concerns.


This article struck a chord with me, I am increasingly feeling saddened and isolated by my childrens absence during the day. I want to be more connected with my children, I want to raise them. Yet they are going to school, it is a product of my own upbringing, a force which is hard to fight against. After all I don't really know what to do with them when they are here, that's how far I have gotten from them. Yet there is something more, there is learning and edification and care from both mother and children. The day is fuller when you are able to teach and help shape the future of your children.

How stupid these feminists!! I read a paper written by my mother when she was in college. I wonder if her teacher had a sense of humor, or reality. It was about how women had been repressed, how they should be allowed to persue their intellectual interests. How children could be raised without imposing upon the mothers freedom to do this, I agree!! Yet the way that I agree is different from what she meant. As you stay home with your children your intellectual capacity is expanded, you learn by teaching!! As the feminists would have it, you should be free to work, HA!! You are free when you are able to bring up your children. Feminists live a harried life. If they choose to have children, they rush about to bring them to day "care," to get to the office on time, then they are "enslaved" all day to their work. They finish the day exhausted then have to pick up their children bring them home to an alway's messy house with no dinner to serve and the only option is the fast, the cheap, the blah that the modern industrial revolution has made ready for them to offer their family. This "Junk" is then the cause of the suffering of their own and their family's health and doctors and illness is their only choice.

Contrast that to a mother who stay's home. She is more able to wake up when rested and her children too. She can cook them breakfast, they can do some work, then go out for a walk. They can talk and chat and laugh together. The meals they eat are nutritional and they all feel good about their day. Sure sometimes things get busy, but I noticed that when I was trying to homeschool my kids during the summer that things went smoothly and I felt so happy at the end of the day.

Now their in school, curse my inability to communicate with my husband, our inunderstanding of each other. I want to cry everyday because I feel like I am missing something, that my time is being wasted on the meaningless and mundane. Somethings gotta give here, I hope I can figure out what to do.

~Strawberry Girl