You Can Choose a Career in Your Home and Also Celebrate Those Who Don't
Neither of my daughters-in-law are on the homemaker track... and that's o.k.
Later this week, we will travel to watch an important ceremony that will place one of my daughters-in-law firmly on the path of pursuing her career. We will gather with extended family to celebrate this move, which will lock her in, unnegotiably, to years of hard work and travel and all the things that I, myself, have opted not to pursue.
I will applaud with my whole heart, because this is her calling. Not mine. Hers.
And while I wouldn’t choose it— didn’t choose it— I can delight in her delight. I can cheer her on. I can encourage her to be the best at it that she can be, because I know she was made for this.
My not being made for it? It’s irrelevant. It takes nothing from me to stand beside another woman and pray for her success. It takes nothing from the validity or importance of my calling to say that another woman has been asked to walk differently.
My other daughter-in-law (I have two married sons at this time) is a career woman as well. She is passionate about her work. In our conversations, I sense the weight of her calling, the imperative she has placed on her to share what she knows with others. We are very similar in that way, she and I. But her calling has her boarding planes and putting in long days on computers rather than leading teenagers through algebra and helping preschoolers measure flour for the morning’s scones. Still, we’re not so different.
There’s a chasm that exists, though: one my daughters-in-law and I are supposed to sit on other side of, facing each other and throwing darts. I’m supposed to think they’re failing my sons, less than. I’m supposed to ask them when they’re going to become mothers, why they aren’t doing something eternal with their lives. And they are supposed to look down on me, feeling sorry for my diminished opportunities and wasted potential.
In my family at least, that memo was lost in the mail.
In this country, at least, you cannot choose who your children marry. (Well— I very nearly did. It was a bit of behind the scenes plotting of mothers that led my eldest son and his wife together.) You cannot hand pick your daughters-in-law, much as many mothers might want to. Whatever list you had in mind of traits and hopes is irrelevant. It’s your son who does the choosing, and what he is looking for may or may not line up with what you always dreamed.
All of which is to say, my sons chose well, and I am honored that they are part of our family.
Are their wives homemakers? No. Are they dreaming of the day when they’ll hold their own babies? Again, no. Neither is especially fond of livestock, despite the fact that both had plenty of experience in the nuances of raising sheep and goats and chickens. They’d both choose a quiet morning stroll to a cafe with their husband over a morning spent tilling soil. I don’t think either is a special fan of quilts, or aprons, or stained glass windows, or rain. They are not me. They aren’t meant to be.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace.—1 Peter 4:10
Sometimes in this niche of homemaking, where we are so often misunderstood and maligned for our dedication to living the life God called us to, we turn the tables. We strike out at the perceived “other side.” We deride their decisions the same way ours is derided, and we shout down any objections. What we have is the best, we scream. How can you give up this beauty I have found for that thing I don’t want?
We forget that there are different gifts, different walks, different needs in God’s Kingdom and economy that He has foreseen and planned for well in advance. We forget that just as there is value women bring to the home, there is value they bring to many work spaces which, if dominated entirely by men, would lack an element so very needed. We forget Paul’s purposeful analogy of the Body, placing such an emphasis on our own role as hearts or hands that we fail to remember the head or the arms.
We have been so hurt, so ostracized and overlooked, that we do the same to those who don’t share our calling. We assume that they see us with critical eyes, so we cut them down and find fault. This is dangerous on so many levels, but unleashed in your own family? Oh, friend. The damage would be catastrophic. Not only would you miss out on seeing how God can truly use anyone in any setting to point to His glory— you would also be the foolish woman of Proverbs 14:1, tearing down her own house.
It can be hard to see other women, the ones who sit alongside us in the pews on Sunday or who share fences with us, as equal even when they spend their days pursuing things we’ve laid aside. Our pride and our passion elevates what God planted in us, and we can see that as superior if we don’t stay rooted in His Truth, which says:
There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.—Romans 2:9-11
Seeing your son choose a woman who has thoughtfully measured her gifts and found their best uses in a place other than the home she intends to build with the boy you raised to manhood can feel like a slap if you have made an idol of your own calling. It can feel like a rejection of your years of serving, or some side statement on how he was raised. Friends, it isn’t. It’s not about you at all. It’s about them, and the life being built together, and the new thing God is doing in the lives He has intentionally brought together.
Celebrate your daughters-in-law. Welcome them, yes. Embrace them. But celebrate them. Open your eyes and see that the Lord has knit into the fabric of your family something new, something that will change and shape you all. Find joy in the fact that this season you’re now living in has become bigger, and made room for other stories. Those stories are still being written. For all you know, the career-driven young woman you can’t relate to today will, in a few year’s time, be finding her way into motherhood with an intensity neither she (nor you) saw coming. Be available for that. But also allow that maybe she will never change— and that’s a beautiful thing, too. God didn’t cut us all from the same cloth. He made us different on purpose. We reflect the variety of callings He has given us. What a loving and merciful Father to have allowed us such grace!
In Christ,
Heather
I have all daughters, so no daughter's in law. My oldest will be married next year so I will have to contend with the "So what do you do?" questions that will come up when meeting her new family. And the comparisons to the future mother's-in-law, the first of which has a career. But your message still rings true, in that, it's ok that their path is different than mine and that we are all part of the body of Christ with different callings. The only thing that matters is how well I follow Christ in my particular calling.
I agree that no good can come of judgement and young women need to be welcomed and celebrated. However, when it comes to career building, I think it requires a great deal of discernment to determine if the calling of God or the lies of the world are at work.
I whole-heartedly pursued a career at a younger age, and I know that it would have done no good for anyone to try to talk me into motherhood instead. But I don’t think the eager support of the elder women in my life- who only inconsistently pointed out the lies of the world that had become assumptions- did me much good either. A career and homemaking are not equivalent, and it was not helpful to me for others to pretend that they are.
And once the career woman decides that she does want children after all- will she give up her career to raise them? If she decides instead to put her baby in daycare at 6 weeks (which is a necessity in many careers) are we to pretend that is just as acceptable a decision as keeping her child with her? And if it is NOT as acceptable a decision, was it not cruel to avoid warning her of this problem when she was spending all her time and energy career building?
My own parents fully encouraged my career while also putting pressure on about kids, and it was confusing. My mother insisted that I would want children eventually and that staying home with them was the best option, and while I scoffed at her advice, I did prepare in some “just in case” ways, like living on one income, and I am so grateful to her for that. At the same time, I wonder what was the point of cheerleading my pursuit of higher education.
I ask the questions in all honesty, as I have no idea how to manage this situation, even having been on both sides myself. Certainly, throwing darts at the “other side” is neither helpful nor Christian. Maybe the “advice” part needs to come from a mother and not a MIL. But a young woman can’t know what motherhood looks like from the other side, and the world has no shame about bombarding her with very convincing lies. She desperately needs good advice from wise Christian women. I know I did!