Homemaking School

The girltalk conversation has been all about homemaking lately. So many of you have written to tell us of your delight in and commitment to homemaking. Your example is inspiring!

But in addition to our example, we must also provide specific and intentional training to the next generation of homemakers. For in Titus 2, Paul urges the older women not only to “do what is good” but also to “train the younger women” to be (among other things) “busy at home.”

Sadly, while there are many women who are godly examples of homemaking—both single and married alike, I fear that many young women are not being trained to be busy at home.

Although written many years ago, this woman’s concern is more relevant than ever:

“The fact is, our girls have no home education. When quite young they are sent to school where no feminine employment, no domestic habits, can be learned….After this, few find any time to arrange, and make use of, the mass of elementary knowledge they have acquired; and fewer still have either leisure or taste for the inelegant, everyday duties of life. Thus prepared, they enter upon matrimony, Those early habits, which would have made domestic care a light and easy task, have never been taught, for fear it would interrupt their happiness; and the result is, that when cares come, as come they must, they find them misery. I am convinced that indifference and dislike between husband and wife are more frequently occasioned by this great error in education, than by any other cause.”

Moms of daughters—this challenge is first and foremost to us. Are we more concerned with our daughter's present happiness or her future usefulness as a homemaker? Are we taking seriously our responsibility for their "home education"?

My prayer is that God would help us to be faithful to pass on the legacy of biblical womanhood to our daughters so that they would eagerly embrace our Savior’s call to what G.K. Chesterton calls, this “generous, dangerous, and romantic trade” of homemaking.