Working Outside the Home

From the beginning of creation, through many cultures and circumstances, homemakers have worked outside the home or worked an outside job in the home. Some do it out of necessity to put food on the table, to reach a family goal, or simply because they enjoy it.

Is this wrong? Is it wrong to work outside the home as a homemaker? No. No. No. No.

Working outside the home as a homemaker isn’t a sin. It’s not wrong or unwise.

On the other hand, is it required? No. The Proverbs 31 woman is engaged in wisely managing her home, and that wise management has her engaged in her community and the marketplace. She is a guideline of wise home management, not a new law. I’m not required to wear red in the winter. I do need to make sure my household is seasonally provided for. I’m not required to have servants and maids. I am required to take care of my home and estates, getting the help I need and tending to that help, whether that is a dishwasher or a microwave or a contractor. Proverbs 31 is principle and guidelines of wisdom, not a law, or we’d all be sinning because we’re not buying fields and growing grapes.

So are you sinning by having an outside-the-home job? No.

Are you required to have an outside-the-home job if you wish to match the wise woman in Proverbs 31? No.

This is a total and complete area of Christian Liberty, husband authority, and wife ability. Some of us have been blessed with enough energy and intelligence to manage a home, children, and a job. Some of us do not have the energy, wisdom, or ability to manage all those things and manage them well. Some of us are in a position where we need the job and some of us would positively cry if we had to add one more thing to the list of things to do. Some of us find our homemaking organization leaves hours in the day that need to be used wisely. A job outside the home keeps us diligent and responsible. Others are gifted at seeing the intangible things and use their extra time in service to others. All these are good things. We are finite and we are not all gifted with the same things. Not every woman is going to bake bread to share or be able to be on-call. They might be tempted to drift into boredom and laziness. Others may find that having an outside-the-home job limits their intangible productivity and decide it’s not worth it. We must all know ourselves, both our temptations and our gifts. We must all obey our husbands. And we must all see the phase our family is in. In some phases, it is a good thing to have an outside-the-home job, and in some phases, it isn’t.

So now that we all see the fact that this is a personal choice, let’s talk about having a job outside the home and some of the pitfalls you have to keep in mind.

(Please remember, that I have had both a pretty much full-time career and two different part-time, outside the home, jobs. I am still currently employed in one of those jobs. I’m not bashing working outside the home, I’m sharing my own experiences and temptations.)

First, you are commanded to tend your home. Older women are to teach younger women to take care of their homes, not how to have an outstanding career. We are to be busy at home. We are homemakers. Home is our great work. So we have to face the reality that we need to start at home and work out from there. Home is where our hearts are and our hearts should be in the home. It is very easy to quickly make a paying job our focus. We’re getting paid for them. It’s easy to see the value. We are going to be tempted to see laundry, food, cleaning, children, and even husbands as inconveniences. Check yourself. You have to focus on him and them first, and then move out to other things.

This will limit what you can do and how big a career you can have outside the home. This is why so many women are retail workers and not CEOs, teachers and not bank presidents. It’s very difficult to be a CEO or bank president when you view that as a job and your home as your career.

Second, when you have a job outside the home, you must be aware of the fact that you have added another layer of possible conflict between authorities in your life. You have your husband and you have your boss. (You might also have husband, boss, and church membership conflicts.) There will be times where they come into conflict and you will have to deal with that. Your boss can’t come first any more than your job can. Your home is your priority and your husband is your main authority.

This will limit you. You may have to stay in a lower position and pay because your husband has set different priorities for you and your job isn’t high on the priority list. Having an outside-the-home job, even one you work from home, will on a small level or big level require your husband to relinquish some of his authority. This has the potential to cause conflict in your home, your marriage, and your job. If nothing else, it will limit what job you can do and how far you can go in your career.

Third, your abilities and different phases of life will affect how and when you can work outside the home. We live in a time when women are told we can do it all, but very little is said about whether we’re doing it all well, or about the fact that some of us literally can’t do it all. I can’t work a big job outside the home. I’m physically incapable of managing my home and having some high-profile career. My home is my career and my outside the home job is small and very part-time. It’s what I can handle. Also my husband’s career demands a pretty heavy support level from me. He needs me available both to just talk to and to be ready to host people and travel with him. Working my own outside the home career wouldn’t be helping him.

A mom with lots of kids has to consider if paying for all the extra help to tend her hearth is worth her outside-the-home job. I’ve met many women who realized it cost them more to work outside the home than it did to be home.

You have to take into account phases of life and physical ability. Not all women can go from early morning until late at night. Not all women are in a phase where they can do anything beyond just raise their children. Some families are in a phase of needing that outside income and some families need the wife at home 100%.

Phases of life and physical abilities will limit you and your ability to have a job outside the home. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s the honest reality.

Fourth, women aren’t cookie-cutter, and we’re not meant to be. What I love you may find boring or even impossible to do, and what you love I may find stressful. It’s very good that we aren’t all attracted to the same things. Some women are born loving everything about homemaking down to their core. Some of us desire it, but have to learn to truly love it, and some of us don’t have any love of it and have to go to work on our attitude. If you are in this last camp and you love and adore your outside-the-home job, make sure you don’t forsake your home. You will need to constantly work on loving your home. Don’t let your work outside the home be an excuse for leaving your home, no matter what age or phase you’re in. Stay in the fight.

If you are one of the other two, don’t belittle the woman who loves her job. Neither of us needs to be defensive. Neither of us is sinning. You have to work to find your identity in Christ, not in your home. Stay in the fight.

Just on the side, the women we’re taught to exemplify have a mantra: homemaking is boring. That lie can slip into your head faster than you think. To quote my favorite band, “Boredom sets into the boring mind.” I would venture to guess that all those who find HearthKeeping boring aren’t doing it right. They are fixated on the repetitive surface things, not the heart of the things. Creating a safe environment of warmth, comfort, calm, and love in support of your church, for your husband, and as an act of hospitality to others isn’t boring work unless you allow it to be.

No job in the world doesn’t become rote after a time or is always glamourous. Our emotions follow our thoughts, so watch what you think!

Our desires will limit us and create boundaries as well as our phases and abilities.

Fifth, Christian liberty is the freedom to obey God from the heart with the outflow of diversity and diversity is scary. It’s scary because we can’t judge people by what we see. It creates a whole heck of a lot of gray. You can from the heart obey the Lord by wearing something that I wouldn’t be able to wear without being immodest. Gasp! You can from the heart manage your home in a way that if I did it might be sinful. “Well that’s not helpful. Give me a list, black and white, tell me what I’m supposed to do”: tend your home.

*Sputter* “But she tends her home by working outside it and she tends her home by never having any other job.”

Exactly.

Ladies, we are bound by so many fences, let’s not create unnecessary cages for ourselves. But let’s all tend our Hearths! Our hearths are our starting point, not our leftovers, not boring, not unimportant. If you find them that way, get some help to guide your attitude and open your eyes to the rich service of homemaking. Working outside the home isn’t a sin, nor is not working outside the home. Don’t judge your sisters who do and don’t. Trust them to obey God while you obey God with the freedom to do that from the heart and with a clear conscience.

Lastly, for any of us who have jobs outside the home, we must evaluate the cost. The lack of focus on the home, the extra authority, the expense of hired help and personal maintenance (clothing, cars, etc.). Again, not bad things, useful things, but we must not let them keep us from keeping a pulse on our homes. We have to proactively work at tying ourselves to our hearths. It’s easy to be bound to our hearths when we do all the cooking, cleaning, and washing. Just like it’s easy to be bound to your kids when you’re raising them full-time, but you have to be proactive when you’re not their full-time caretaker. The same goes for homeschool moms, you have to be proactive about your homemaking or it will fall by the wayside. We’re all in danger of our hearth fires growing cold. It’s easy to do anything else but tend them.

We all need to be diligent to keep our hearths warm. This starts in our hearts. Choose to love your home, every day, even when you’re not there, or you have to do that other job, or you’re educating your children. Choose to love your home. Keep it at the forefront of your mind, and then from there be creative about making home special. Keep your work at work as much as possible. Focus on, notice, your family traditions and encourage a warm coming together: movie nights, game nights, special meals, sexy pajamas, shared wine, shared coffee. If you are often away, or busy with kids, find ways to communicate warmth and comfort when you are home. Choose to love your home and warmth will come naturally. And this isn’t just choosing to love your family, this is choosing to love your home, the place that you’re in, humble or stately, love it and it will fill with warmth. Choose to love the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, and the caretaking.

Things we love don’t become uglier, they become more real. Love your home, and it will stop being a house, just the place you come to sleep at night. Instead, it will be the place everyone wants to be. A place of light, warmth, comfort, rest, and beauty in a cold, dark, stormy world.

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” –Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit