Point of View

Well, last night as Emily and I were on our way home from getting freshly dyed, waxed, and cut (yes, we go to the hairdresser together), we got into a discussion about working Mom's. Emily has a lot of professional aspirations, including marine biology (my preferred), Egyptology, or novelist. As a result she has even picked a college of choice...in Florida. Anyway, I was telling her how some people believe that a mother should never work outside of the home, and some people think it is a pretty big sin that her mother has worked outside the home all but one year of her life. She was pretty baffled by this...apparently the blond dye is working on the brain cells during YW.

So I told her my story of an institute director who informed me, during my junior year of college, that I was wasting my time actually taking the higher level science courses, after all I should really just focus on finding a husband. He went on to inform me that women didn't really need a degree, we just needed to land a worthy priesthood holder. If you are wondering, no I never went to Institute again. I have had people inform me that if I would just grow a garden, I wouldn't even miss my income. I have had people inform me with a smug attitude on their face that they have never worked outside of the home since they were married (imagine their stress when their husband was laid off).

I guess that some people would say my mother never worked outside the home, but I will be quick to point out that she did drive a swather, bailer, and disc. That she rode horses on the mountain from daylight to dark, after packing lunches for everyone, and kept the books for the ranch, among many other jobs. So I would never call my Mother a non-working Mom.

So it was with great confusion that I tried to explain to Emily that the church really encourages women to stay home. I'm not sure how to explain this, since given current economic issues, I don't even understand it. But I informed her that someday when she was older and the proper amount of guilt had been applied, she could then yell at me for being a bad Mom and working outside the home. After all, she should think of all the time I spent away from her while working...she thought for a moment...(the blond look of confusion)...then announced that if she had anything to talk to a therapist in the future about, it would be the amount of time Cub Scouts took.