Joyfully At Home: Chapter 13 - Part Three

 Our family got hit with our semi-annual stomach flu bug.  This one felt ironic more than anything; we've been social distancing long enough that you'd think a stomach sickness would have passed its expiration date.

Honestly, I think I picked it up at work.  We do our best to social distance - but there's not really enough room in the paint pit or at the service desk to stay six feet apart from each other.  Our home-made masks or cheap disposable surgical masks provided by our employer don't do much (if anything) to prevent getting an infection ourselves; they just provide a very slight decrease in the chance of passing COVID-19 on if we get infected.

Outside of that, life is good.  My son is growing and picking up new skills all the time.  That makes me happy.   I've seen him try to take a few little stutter steps on his own - and that was completely unthinkable last year.   He's started saying "Hi!" and "Good morning!" to bikers and walkers on our daily walks - and that's a huge step outside of his comfort zone.  In fact, on our last outing, he said "Good job, people!" to a bunch of older men who were riding bikes and who quickly rearranged their bikes to let my son pass in his walker.

In Jasmine Baucham's "Joyfully At Home" we're two chapters into a long rant on how Jasmine will never, ever need to work outside the home because she's going to be a SAHD until she married - and then she's going to raise her large brood on her husband's single income.   Her absolute refusal to imagine for 30 seconds that there are a lot of potential reasons that a woman may need (let alone want) to work outside the home makes me wonder if she's read "The Secret" or "The Prayer of Jabez" or any of those other awful "Power of Positive Thought" junk books.   I have this nagging feeling that she believes if she even thinks about being a single adult, a young widow with children or a wife who needs to work part-time, Jasmine is afraid she'll bring that outcome on herself.

I, on the other hand, was the kid who read all of the emergency planning guides in my Girl Scout Handbooks.  I genuinely hoped that I'd never need to escape flooding, get out of a house fire or shelter in place during a blizzard - but I figured that having thought about what to do ahead of time was far better than having to adlib during an emergency.

By the third question, though, I have to give her imaginary conversation buddy a kudos.  I'd have written Jasmine off as far too ill-prepared for adult life  (which is similar to "immature") to continue beating a dead horse

Question 3: What if you don't attend a church that takes James 1:26-27 seriously? What if you need to work, and you don't have a job or college degree? What if your husband gets laid off or injured and needs you to help pick up the slack?

Answer: A college degree is no substitute for the assurance we have in Christ.

Again, the degree is a piece of paper that provides us with a false sense of security. You'd be surprised how many times I've heard someone say, "You know, in this economy, it's really foolish not to get a college degree that will promote job security -- I have three degrees, and I just got laid off! What makes you think you'll be able to find a job when you need one?"

I have three degrees... And I just got laid off.

They don't even realize that their sentences were filled the faulty assurance they are offering you. If college degrees were buffer against job loss, then our three-degreed friend would not have gotten laid off.

This is not to say that getting a college degree is a sign of faithlessness; rather that getting it out of a sense of fear is responding, not to the Word's leading in that area, but to a scare tactic. (pg. 154)

I hadn't realized that Christ provided cash payments to believers. 

If so, Christ owes me like 20 years of back payments. I'm assuming years 1-18 were cashed out to my parents since I was a minor.

That's not what Jasmine was saying? 

But that's what the question was asking - how exactly will a SAHD turned SAHW turned SAHM do for income if that's what her future family needs? 

Jasmine's response was a fancier version of "Christ will provide!" - and that's a motto that sounds better when you are the person with extra money supporting a needy family you know than the needy family who doesn't know where the money they need for rent or food is coming from.

Jasmine's rhetorical riff on "totally real people she knows with three degrees who got laid off" misses the point of Three-Degree's worry.   Three-Degree isn't saying that a college degree is a solid gold perfect hedge against job loss.  No, Three-Degree is pointing out that people with college degrees get laid off in spite of being in a group who faces much lower rates of unemployment.   Since college degree holders face periodic job losses and economic hard times, the outlook for a SAHD who has a homeschool high school diploma, no work experience outside of her family business and no post-secondary degree or advanced training is bleak. 

The point is especially bleak since SAHD's often play at jobs that they are unqualified for outside of their family or have very high bars to entry on a wider scale.  Let's look at a few options:

 Research Assistant: Jasmine Baucham describes herself as a research assistant to her father - which is the same job description that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin used to describe their work for their brothers when their brothers were making educational films.   The issue is that all of those young women are at least 4 years and a Bachelor's degree in Science away from having the skills to work as a technical research assistant or at least six years away from having a Master's in Library Science to work as a librarian.  The only other similar(ish) job I can think of is working as a paralegal which would require at least a few college classes and an internship. 

Author: This one is a very popular career track!  Sarah Maxwell has published 11 children's books and is working on a 12th.  Sarah Mally has published two books and co-published a third book with her siblings.   Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin have published two books.  And obviously, Jasmine Baucham has written one book.   The issue, though, is that all of the books with two exceptions were published by the author's family ministry.   In other words, 16 of 18 of the books were self-published. 

The remaining two books - So Much More by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin and Joyfully At Home by Jasmine Baucham - were published by Vision Forum.   That's certainly one step farther away from self-publishing - but we know nothing of the process by which the books were created.  Did the authors pitch their books to Vision Forum before writing them?  Did the authors (or their representatives) go through rounds of negotiation on compensation?   What control (if any) did Vision Forum have over editing?  Or was this simply a deal between Doug Phillips and two of his supporters?

Even if a SAHD landed a contract with a mainstream publishing house, she'd need to greatly increase her rate of production.   Sarah Maxwell has produced her 11 short children's books over close to 20 years - and she's the most prolific writer by a long shot.  Sarah Mally and the Botkin Sisters, on the other hand, have produced around one book a decade; that's not going to be enough to live on.

Artist/Illustrator: If you have a book, it needs illustrations, right?  This seems to be the area used for younger sisters of SAHDs who have already been declared authors.  Mary Maxwell is the illustrator for Sarah Maxwell's books while Grace Mally is the illustrator for Sarah Mally's books.   I am not confident of my ability to judge the artistic merit of either SAHD's work.  I do, however, know that the job market for artists in general is always very, very tight and both young women would be going up against men and women with degrees, portfolios and previous commissioned works by non-family members.

Nanny/Childcare Assistant: Technically, I'm not sure they qualify as nannies or childcare assistants since they rarely care for kids who are not immediate family members or children of siblings.   Learning how to manage children of your employers is a different experience than caring for family members - and not always harder!   The hard bit, honestly, is going to be earning anything close to a living wage on these jobs.   Searching in-home childcare jobs in my area of Michigan gives an average wage per hour of $10.00.  That's $1.25 an hour less than I made when I started at my hardware store job - and my employer is paying me legally.  If the SAHDs would be working as independent contractors (legally or otherwise), that's a take home pay of less than $5.00 per hour.

Tutors/Educational Paraprofessionals: At least in my state, SAHDs would struggle to get independent tutoring jobs outside of their church communities.  The reason is simple: Michigan produces a lot of college-educated teachers.   They'd be going up against  retired teachers, teachers who are staying at home with their kids right now, and education students.  In other words, the market is pretty close to saturated with highly qualified candidates already. 

Well, what about center-based tutoring or working as a paraprofessional?  For center-based tutoring, SAHDs would be going up against the same quality candidates for individual tutoring - plus they would need to compete against current teachers.  Because of that, most centers require a completed college degree as a minimum entry point for reading tutoring or at least evidence of advanced college level math courses for math tutors.  In Michigan, paraprofessionals need at least 60 credit hours of college classes - so no dice for most SAHDs. 

Building a career is a lot of work.  My worry is that a SAHD who needs to enter the job market at 35 or 45 or 55 will be doing all of the druggery that the rest of us did in our teens and twenties - but have the financial responsibilities of a wife, mother or widow.  That's pretty bleak - and that's what many of us worry about when we ask these questions.