A Thinking Love

I am a stay-at-home mother, a chef, a nurturer, a seamstress, a musician, an educator, a baker, an accountant, a writer, a wife, a student, and a lover of the arts—all without pay. I am not a housekeeper, a maid, a chauffeur, or a laundress, although at times I do the tasks necessary for those roles. I am also a feminist who worries that by embracing these roles I appear to be an unliberated housewife who has attenuated herself into a mere outline of her husband and children. This life satisfies me even as I visualize an imaginary feminist despising me for my unliberated life.

Save your contempt. I don't despise you in return. The Mommy Wars have always mystified me. I do not need to justify staying at home by persuading myself that my children will surpass those of the career-balancing mother in every way because I sacrificed my identity on the altar of motherhood. I chose this life and think other women should be free to choose theirs. While Eric works, I have the freedom to help my children grow, to watch their identities unfold. I also choose to consider it my calling, not my job.  I do not need or want a salary for my work because I love it for itself. Renumeration would only cheapen my motivation. My worth as a person and my identity do not center on what I receive money for, which I consider a hollow way of valuing a person. I think Eric sometimes envies me my freedom to pursue my interests with my children.

Homeschooling has given me my greatest purpose. Through home education I believe I can give my children an individualized education superior to any they could receive in school. I have not lost myself in the process, but instead it has led me to utilize more of my mind than anything else I have ever done. Pestalozzi said:

The mother is qualified, and qualified by the creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; . . . and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love . . . . God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point reminds undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education (Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 3).

I give a "thinking love" to my children not through the suppression of my individuality but by using all my faculties and abilities to tutor them as I work with them daily. Every mother is an expert in her own children, and I try to use my expertise to help each child develop uniquely. Suzuki wrote: "The word education implies two concepts: to educe, which means to 'bring out, develop from latent or potential existence,' as well as to instruct" (Nurtured by Love 86). As much time should be spent educing children's humanity as instructing them. Coaxing out their latent qualities requires much time and the knowledge of and love for each individual that I alone possess. In the process I realize my own potential.

Reading, accompanying a choir, writing, singing, teaching, explaining math concepts, directing a play––my week consists mainly of these activities, all of which benefit both me and my children. Sometimes I think that feminism in the 20th century could have taken a different path, that envisioned by Charlotte Mason at the century's start. She wrote:

We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession––that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours (Mason, Home Education, 3).

Educating my own children is my professional labor. It takes diligence and more of my intelligence than anything else I have ever attempted. Every day I learn a little more about the value of each child, of the difference a good education can make, and about having a large impact on a few people as their latent qualities develop. I am living the life I have chosen. In the middle of the daily chaos I find myself, no mere outline but fully fleshed, a complete woman. And yes, a mother.