Wife Work ---Full Time Mother re-thinking

It has been a long time not to update this blog. Yes, many things happened, especially, I discovered the unexpected expecting of our fifth baby two months ago, followed by almost two months "morning sickness", now I finally get back to "Normality".

Have to admit that life is full of unexpectedness, "HE(God) hath made every thing beautiful in his time, also he hast set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

I was a bit upset when the news of this new baby came, cos I thought we had finished our family and I can do something else, maybe, "greater or better". But,man proposes, but God disposes. Now I surrender myself unto the hand of my creator, HIS plan is far above mine and HIS will is always best.



Just last week, I attended a focus group discussion initiated by National Family Council (NFC). It is encouraging to know that our government has the political will and means to support families in Singapore, especially in current economic downture. One of highlighted areas for NFC to work on is to uphold family values. The attendants made many insightful suggestions on how NFC and other government agency can promote such values even to our children.

Family, as the basic societal unit, has under attacked by many liberal ideologies. Some have challenged the traditional functions of family and its value system ; some have suggested alternative lifestyle. Sociologists, I am afraid to say, had played an important part in justifying some of those claims. It will not an easy battle.

Women' role has changed dramatically in recent years. The author of "Wifework" made the following observation:

"A generation ago, the man was going out to work, for pay, and the wife was staying at home for free. In those days, nobody, not even sociologists, had a problem with that. It may have been a drastic division of labour, but it was also a coherent and rational one, with boundaries high enough to trip over. Equally importantly, both parties to the agreement gave it their full consent- often, admittedly, because there are no alternatives....But it had at least the virtue of balance, of stability.
Like all enduring family systems, the homemaker Mum- breadwinner Dad model was built on a foundation of intense mutual dependency.

By the mid-twentieth century, having a full-time wife at home- someone who would in a sense live life for the two of them- made it possible for a may to be 'married' to his job. And only a man who was 'married' to his job could afford to have a full-time wife at home.

At one level, acquiring a wife was for a man a form of conspicuous consumption, a marker of his elevated economic status. As recently as forty years ago, the 'no wife of mine is going to go out to work' mentality reigned supreme in our cultural consciousness, if not precisely in our economic reality. A wife who worked for pay may have been an economic asset. But far more importantly, she was a social and psychological liability- a direct hit not on a husband's status in the community but on his very identity as a man."

Wow, this was also an unexpectedness for me, as I mentioned early, at the beginning of starting this blog, my intention was to encourage "Full Time mothers with knowledge and understanding". Now I must admit my lacking of sociological understanding of "Full Time Mothers" as result of many societal changes in our contemporary world.

Yet, I hold the belief that God's word will not change. "...young women to love their husband, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home...."(Titus 2:5). I wish, if possible from sociological point of view, to explore Full Time Mothers' advantage and benefits to their family as well as to society. God's willing!