Joyfully At Home: Chapter 12 - Part Six

Tomorrow, I start two actual full days off from my job!  I've worked something like 60 hours in the last week because several of my team members have needed time off due to chronic conditions.  Physically and emotionally, I've been through the wringer.  My legs are constantly sore from being on concrete all the time while hauling multiple 10 gallon paint pails around.   I'm completely over humoring people about getting the right color for their walls when there's a god-damn pandemic going around. 

Needless to say, two days off feels great. 

This is the last section from Jasmine Baucham's "Joyfully At Home" chapter 12 where she makes some enthusiastic, but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to teach young women how to defend their choices of being a stay-at-home daughter in the face of tricky questions like "Shouldn't you be starting a job or career or something?"   The last question is "Is your dad making you do this because he's on a power trip?".   I mean.....that's worth thinking about.   This is a worldview, after all, that claims that adult women who are old enough to marry and become wives and mothers are incapable of choosing a spouse without extensive and invasive input from their parents during parent-lead courtship.

Jasmine's answer is haunting:

Answer this particular question emphatically, because the honor of your parents is at stake. " I am at home because I want to be. Because I realize the advantages of living under my father's protection and my mother's discipleship, and because I am so grateful that God's word makes provision for the home to be such a thorough training ground for my future."

I am so grateful for the Lord's hand in my life for turning my heart towards home when I was inclined on a different path. If you find yourself struggling, as I did, with what may be a new emphasis by your parents on a daughter's place in the home , I would encourage you to go to the Scriptures for answers and show grace to your parents, even when they don't have all the details sorted out yet. When it all comes down to it, though we may be accused of being coddled and cosseted, our consciences need to be right before God. If that is the case, we have nothing to fear or to apologize for. (pg. 147)

The first paragraph is a pretty solid defense of being a stay-at-home daughter.  We've already covered extensively that "thorough training ground for my future" translates to "I'm going to marry a guy who is rich enough to never need me to work outside the home while raising a huge group of biological kids.  We'll be married until very old age and I'll die just before him so money is never an issue."  But ignoring that issue, Ms. Baucham comes up with a catchy and memorable defense that makes it sound like the daughter is totally on-board.

If she had stopped writing at the end of that paragraph, I'd have believed her.

The next paragraph, though, has the truth of the story trickle out.   Jasmine wanted to go to college and do something big.   Honestly, I don't remember what her life goal was - but she did want to do something that required advanced career training.   Her story is generally that God somehow turned her heart back towards her family.    That does happen in life - but usually because of a major crisis that requires a child's support of a family member.   The young women I'm thinking of had family members who developed a severe illness or cancer while they were college-aged and the daughters took some time off from college to help out while the family member was recovering from surgery and chemotherapy. 

Jasmine's family was doing fine when her aspirations changed - and the person who lead the change was her parents Voddie and Bridget Baucham - not Jasmine.   That doesn't surprise me.  The only thing that surprises me is that that admission made it through the proofreading process by her family and Vision Forum.

In terms of being "coddled and cosseted", SAHDs are coddled and cosseted most of the time.  The amount of responsibility on the shoulders of a junior housekeeper, teacher's aide and general mother's helper in her family of origin is low compared to the same girl working for a neighbor's family.   It's a whole lot lower than the amount of responsibilities that a young women balancing school and a part-time job or starting a full-time job would have.   The level is even lower compared to a young woman who is living on her own while getting advanced training or starting a career.

It's not even an accusation; it's a description.

The funniest bit, though, is the fact that having a SAHD is a way of advertising the relative wealth of a CP/QF family.    CP/QF families who have highly educated and high earning breadwinners are much more likely to keep their daughters at home than the average CP/QF family with a breadwinner with a high school diploma.  The Maxwells can keep three adult daughters at home because Steven Maxwell had a good paying job and a fairly small family.  Compare them with the Duggars who have married off  four of their daughters very quickly once they hit adulthood; the family finances probably can't support more than one adult SAHD.  In my community, being a SAHD is more of a idealized mindset than a practicable one.   Families aspire to keep their daughters living at home before marriage - but I've yet to met one that can afford to have a daughter who has graduated homeschooling skip getting a job.   There's just not enough money to do that.