A few weeks back I briefly caught something on the Today Show that’s weighed on my mind ever since. It was about a college that had instituted a new degree: homemaking. Apparently some had taken exception to the fact such a thing was being offered and controversy ensued.
Initially I thought it was the radical feminists creating a stink. That’s something they’d find offensive. And to an extent they did factor in, but even more offensive than the concept of a homemaking degree was the fact it was being offered by a Baptist college. (The College at Southwestern.)
Feminists felt it was a step backwards. That it was not right to encourage women to stay home and tend to their husband’s and children’s needs while forgoing their own because God ordained it so in the Bible. (I’m being a little liberal with their wording, but that’s the gist of their argument.)
Not being a religious sort myself, I don’t have any room to condemn or extol anybody else’s beliefs. But I was intrigued by this debate nonetheless.
Would I have gone after a homemaking degree in college? Especially given the fact that Wayne and I had already been together for several years and were as steady as they came?
No.
But I also had no idea I’d wind up a stay-at-home wife either. If I had, I still wouldn’t have chosen it though. I nearly failed Home Ec in junior high, and I flat out failed Economics in college. (Something about “Ec” and me don’t jive.) I would have stayed away from any other “economical” classes.
But I also wouldn’t have begrudged anyone else for pursuing such a degree. Because in addition to the required courses you’d expect to find –cooking, nutrition, and sewing— homemaking degree seekers are also required to take two years of Greek and Latin in addition to studying “history’s great philosophers.” That’s nothing to sneer at. Even though some are.
Some may say that degree is worthless, a waste of time, not worth the paper it’ll be printed on.
I say, “Phooey!”
It sounds like that degree will turn out educated, concerned, compassionate women who put family first.
Because I’m of the opinion if we focused more on that these days than material gains, both our country and its citizens would be better, stronger, more productive, informed, and respectful. The young women who know at such an early stage of life the kind of role they’d like to play in creating such a world should be applauded. They’re already listening to their hearts, which some of us spend years trying to hear (or ignore, as the case may be), and following them.
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.” ~-Confucius-~
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