proverbs31-woman.com

There are lots of discussions these days about women working at home vs working in a job away from home. I strongly believe that the Proverbs 31 Woman was a Work At Home Mum – by today’s standards. If you look into the past, beyond our grandparents’ time and before the industrial revolution, women worked on the land and in their homes, contributing to the household needs and income, with their children by their side, on their backs, or in tow in some way or another. Children also learnt to help as soon as they were able to – because that was the way of life back then.

Whilst I am not advocating we should be taking advantage of our children and getting them to work at an early age, I am saying that if the mother (or father) is working on the home premises, the children benefit from watching and learning. They see exhibited before them a work ethic, planning, preparation, how the money is used and how it is earnt. Also how skills can be learnt, established and used for the benefit of the family – not just one person.

I’ve been working from home now for over 13 years and our daughters have grown up watching me at work and play. They have all developed skills and abilities because of what we had available in the household to them and they also had the benefit of work experience in their teens without having to leave their home and go to another business, if they chose.

The Rev Brian Abshire touches on this aspect amongst others in his lengthy post about the Proverbs 31 Woman. I never abandoned my career plans – my plan and dream had always been to be home for my family. However I wanted more than that – I wanted to apply myself, use my skills (not put them aside) and continue enjoying my life, and not putting it on hold.

I’ve read about and talked to some women who feel they put their career aside to have a family, some feel that they missed the boat. Other women (on the other side of the equasion) feel they’ve missed the [family] boat by putting their career first. I believe you can have both – if your desire is to have a family and a career.

Not all women are cut out to work at home. Depression and isolation can set in.  And it’s often not easy to keep disciplined and motivated and sometimes it can seem a thankless task if clients (and employees) are not appreciative of your efforts. You have to become your own PR person, marketer, salesperson and so much more but I can truly say, in looking back, that my decision to work at/from home and raise our girls in our home was the best decision I’ve made (outside of accepting Christ as my Saviour and marrying my husband 🙂 ).  And I believe our girls have truly benefitted and are different people to what they might have been had their peers been the main daily influences in their lives, instead of having a parent to come home to every day after school.

If you have skills and abilities (which are God-given, don’t forget) that can be applied in the home to help bring income into the household, then I encourage you to consider this option and start exploring how it can be achieved. You might have noticed mention of the book ‘Worth More Than Rubies: The Value of a Work At Home Mum’ on this blog. The book covers the challenges and the benefits of working at home and even gives a list of different jobs/businesses that can be carried out at home – genuine roles using your existing skills.

Crystal on her post about the Proverbs 31 Woman and entrepreuneurialism raises some interesting points too, about Return on Investment into our families. Like me, she is encouraging women to return home to their families and consider how they can apply their skills in their home for the benefit of their family whilst remaining a shining light to their communities.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Author Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.