Monday, April 02, 2007

Motherhood by Degrees

I recently came across an archived article by Tim Bayly: Marriage, student debt, and motherhood. He recounts the story of his personal friend, Mrs. Cuffey, who gave up a prestigious graduate degree from Harvard to stay home to support her husband and raise her children. Mr. Bayly asks,
Was this a waste of good intellectual talent? Would those children have been better off—even intellectually—had Mrs. Cuffey completed her graduate work and been awarded the terminal degree?

If we teach our daughters the high calling of motherhood and they take that calling on as their own, it will often lead them to make decisions similar to the one Mrs. Cuffey made. In such cases, certainly their own parents, but also the people of God, must be prepared to provide them fulsome support for any steps they take to decrease, that their husbands and children may increase, especially when those decisions close doors behind which lie prestigious honors and large financial rewards.
Mr. Bayly also shares a quote from Dorothy Patterson's book, Where's mom: The High Calling of Wife and Mother in Biblical Perspective:
Homemaking, if pursued with energy, imagination, and skills, has as much challenge and opportunity, success and failure, growth and expansion, perks and incentives as any corporation, plus something no other position offers—working for people you love most and want to please the most…. Homemaking—being a full-time wife and mother—is not oppressive restraint of intellectual prowess for the community, but a release of wise instruction to your own household; it is …the multiplication of a mother’s legacy to the generations to come and the generous bestowal of all God meant a mother to give to those entrusted to her care.
This is quite a long article that not only covers this topic, but many other related to the choice between college and motherhood. Take peek and come back here to let us know what you think.

(Hat tip: Icky at The Homeschooling Revolution)

Update: Here's an encouraging article on the historical importance of homeschooling mothers from John Glenn Reynolds.

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