Joyfully At Home: Chapter Five - Part One

Hello!

Spring has finally arrived in Western Michigan.  I received my yearly shipment of tomato and pepper plants which are hardening off on the front porch right now - and I'm not living in fear that they will be frost-nipped.  I've gotten a late start on my cold-weather crops but they are growing in a part-sun space this summer so I think they'll do alright. 

I've started a section of parsnips.  I love growing parsnips - with one caveat.  Be sure that you like parsnips AND like parsnips growing in the bed you start them in because that bed will be the domain of parsnips forever afterward.   For example, I seeded a raised bed with parsnips at my in-laws' house six years ago.  The last time I did anything to that bed was a week before my son was born when I harvested a late fall crop in hopes of switching from a frantic and often forgotten spring harvest to a fall harvest schedule.   We're still getting parsnip seedlings in that bed six years after seeding and after three years of benign neglect.  I view my new parsnip section as a perennial bed - and that makes me happy.

I've added two more pseudo-perennial beds this year: tomatillos and sunflowers.  I think the correct term for these is strongly self-seeding annual plants - but they act like mildly invasive perennials in garden beds.  I like that habit because I have a weedy, gravelly area between our backyard and the farm yard that just looks grim.  Sunflowers will do pretty well there and I like watching all the different spontaneous crosses that happen.  A favorite from my inlaws' patch was a 8-10 foot tall scarlet sunflower with a good sized terminal flower that also produced little flowers along the axials.   Tomatillos are a nice, somewhat leggy plant, that grows to between 2-3 feet tall/round, will cover itself in small yellow flowers and grow green fruits in abundance.    Hopefully, I'll get enough fruits for two canner loads of salsa verde.

I'm enjoying my job at a home improvement store a lot.  While I had originally applied to be a cashier, I feel like I dodged a bullet by accepting a position in the paint department.  I like staying busy during a shift; having nothing to do makes time drag.  Unlike my previous cashiering job, the amount of work for cashiers at the home improvement store is flood-or-famine.  There are either a million people who need to be checked out - or no one.   Now, the paint department has moments - and sometimes hours - of floods of people who need paint, but having a few aisles of merchandise that must be stocked means I always have something else to do once everyone has gotten their paint fix for the day.

Having a job that lets me get out of the house for 25 hours a week along with the return of outdoor chores sits strangely with Chapter Five of Jasmine Baucham's book "Joyfully At Home".  In this chapter, Ms. Baucham tries to give detailed advice for young women living at home to make their lives less boring.

And, really, that's the irreducible problem of the stay-at-home daughterhood (SAHD) movement.  Being a housemaid, classroom aide, sous chef,  and nanny for your mother while being an intern/go-fer for your father's business makes a bit of  sense when you are 12-16 and no sense at all once you are 22-26.  The thought of being twenty years into life as a household servant and ministry underling like Sarah Maxwell, Jana Duggar, Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin are fills me with stultifying boredom interlaced with dread for the future.

Apparently, though, no one thought that permanent SAHDhood was on the table when they started according to Jasmine Baucham:

When we first decided to shift our focus, to turn our hearts towards home, we were enthusiastic in vibrant, purposeful and driven, meticulous and focused, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We had a grasp of the bigger picture: a vision for the home as a hub of ministry and discipleship, as a training ground for life ahead, as a place where we can bless those nearest and dearest to us, and in turn, turn that blessing outward, towards others in our church and in our community. (pg. 66)

My translation is that the SAHD advocates figured they'd be living at home for a few years while picking up tricky skills in cooking, cleaning and toddler-wrangling - but mostly enjoying good, clean, wholesome company with fellow church members as they did ministries that kept their young female minds safe and didn't require any advanced education.   Around the time that living at home became tedious - one year? three years? - they'd meet Prince-Charming-Of-Correct-Theology-Without-Baggage.   A chaste, romantic courtship would cement the SAHD's purity credentials while showing off how much of a better wife she'd be since she already knows how to sort laundry and roast a chicken unlike those slatternly college-graduates who are working and must not, therefore, be able to wash clothing or cook poultry.   She'd demurely walk down the aisle dressed in white - a deserved white wedding unlike those college graduates who have kissed a man before! - and start an easy, pain-free middle class life with their bevy of well-behaved kids and enough income to make being a SAHM look easy.

Well, with the benefit of time, there's two ways this story ends. 

The lucky SAHDs manage to be found by Prince Charming and start their own families.  Mrs. Holmes' website is a bit wonky right now, but she alludes to how hard it was for her to be newly married, recovering from a miscarriage, moving frequently for job opportunities and living in a rural place with a newborn and a husband who worked long hours to support their family of three.  Jill and Jessa Duggar have had similar trajectories, although their financial situation have been mitigated by a television show and the largess of the Duggar real estate business.

For the rest of the SAHDs, they learned eventually that 'the training ground for life ahead' was far more literally settling into the role of dependent daughter for the remainder of their parents' productive lives. WIth the sole exception of the Mally Sisters, SAHD never switch into an outreach beyond their immediate family or possibly a carefully curated experience like running a Bible study group for kids.  It's a pretty grim scenario.

In a deliciously funny twist, 19-year old Ms. Baucham attempts to blame the tedium of being a stay-at-home daughter on society at large:

The home is a hub for ministry and discipleship. Perhaps you haven't found your niche yet. Ministry in and from the home is something that you're still getting used to. Turning your focus outward instead of inward is a difficult journey in the individualistic society we live in. You're used to focusing on your own plans, and now you're working as part of a team. It's difficult to adjust. (pg. 66)

Let me see if I understand the basic assumptions in this paragraph:

Assumption One: Most CP/QF teenage girls who have been homeschooled and sheltered are confident and secure with their role in the wider society but are completely adrift in their own family structure.   They've been happily fulfilling their dreams of becoming feminist union leaders (or androgynous statist Marxist in Botkin terms ) without any guidance from their parents - but are completely baffled by the idea of cooking dinner, watching their younger siblings and folding church bulletins.

Assumption Two: An "Outward" focus means collapsing your goals to fit within 1950's gender stereotypes for white, middle-class, married women with a college education because Jesus wants that.

Assumption Three: These teenage or young adult women have never been on a team before - despite living with siblings in a homeschool environment.

So...either CP/QF daughterhood is a whole lot more rebellious than I've ever seen before - or this paragraph is a sad attempt to blame 'the world' for the fact that doing the same thing every day is borning.

This next quote is still a favorite of mine because the SAHD movement is full of young women who independently learn that Betty Friedan was right - without ever picking up the irony:

We can also be a blessing to those in our church and community. Hospitality. Service. Cooking. Cleaning. It may seem romantic when debutantes on the 1950s TV shows don June Cleaver aprons and get to hacking, but perhaps cooking just isn't your forte, cleanliness and organizational skills don't come easy to you, and social climates make you antsy and nervous. You have just realized that, no, because you decided to embrace the high calling of a keeper at home does not mean that your heart thrills at the sight of dirty dishes. (pg. 66)

One of the major themes of second-wave feminism was that expecting women to be intellectually satisfied with a life that consisted of cooking, cleaning, mild community volunteerism, and raising a few kids was crazy-making for a lot of women. Throughout time and place, women and men have worked together to feed, clothe, and shelter their children while caring for dependent adults.  The introduction of a cash economy weakened women's labors compared to men's since women's work produced no wages- but women's labor often allowed cash to be saved, stretched or supplemented.  The Victorian Era brought the idea of ensconcing women in a safe, home bubble protected from the sullying influences of economic marketplace - but the number of women who were wealthy enough to live that dream were dwarfed by the number of women who worked as servants, merchants, or factory workers. The economic collapse of the 1930's followed by the uncertainty and demands of the 1940's war era were stressful - but at least women mattered during that time.    The 1950's in the US created a short-lived economy where most white men could support their wife and family on one income regardless of educational level of the man.   This was the first time that the Victorian Era ideals could be realized without huge numbers of women working as servants thanks to technological innovations like electricity. 

 And what was the outcome?  Unending boredom for women.

It turns out that no one really enjoys doing the same chores everyday.  Even worse, once kids are in school, a woman had eight hours of time to fill - and there just aren't that many chores for a suburban housewife.

For CP/QF wives, the picture is slightly more exciting.  Pregnancy can be a grind - but babies are an instant source of public approval.  Newborns are a lot of work - but the sleep deprivation takes the edge off of boredom.   Older babies and toddlers are a lot of work - and they create more work as they explore their surroundings - but that does limit the boredom of empty time.  Plus, toddlers turn into preschoolers who need a homeschooling mom.  Added bonus: tight finances mean there is never enough of anything to go around - so that's a whole lot more work to conserve and modify what resources a woman has.   

For a CP/QF SAHD, all the work is there - but none of the glory.  Babies reflect praise to their parents, not their teenage sisters.  Toddlers know who has the power in a household - and it's not their older sister.  The Duggar's television show has shown us that sisters who raise their younger siblings can certainly have deep relationships - but those relationships exist at the discretion of the parents and will likely be disrupted by the marriage of the sister eventually.  To me, there is a pathos to the fact that Jessa Duggar Seewald always chooses to have Jennifer who was her "buddy" announce the birth of Jessa's kids to Jessa and Jennifer's siblings.  It's a super-sweet way to keep Jennifer connected to Jessa - but Jessa still had to leave the first daughter she raised behind to have biological kids of her own.    In that respect, I can understand why Jana Duggar may prefer being single since she'd get to be with the kids she's raised until they are fully grown.

My last point: where in the Bible did Jesus advocate domesticity as the epitome of Christian life?  Jesus encouraged people to leave their parents to spread the Good News throughout the land.  He expected his followers to heal, support, and live as members of a larger community.   Yes, there are probably people who do need help cooking, cleaning and taking care of their homes - but is that the only issue a community is facing?  How can a SAHD who becomes a SAHW/M help communities that are struggling to find work?  How can she reach out to people of different economic or cultural backgrounds when she's had less exposure to people than most? 

I think it is important for all people to know enough cooking and cleaning skills to keep their home in order - but people also need to acquire skills to help other people.   The focus on practical human services in CP/QF land like teaching, nursing, social work, community building and advocacy has become squashed into a puerile oversimplification of anti-abortion politics - and that's sad.

In the next post, we learn about the issues when your spiritual advisors are your parents.