Yesterday, my friend, Jessie, called me up to ask me about breastfeeding. She had just come back to Singapore to work after her two-month maternity leave. She had left her two months old newborn to her mother's care in Malaysia. She shared that during the first week of work here, she kept crying whenever she looked at her baby boy's photos. She missed her baby terribly and even toyed with the idea of resigning from work. However, the family's commitments (housing and car loans, especially) prevented her from making this bold step! This is what I call the "dual income syndrome" when a working mother is emotionally, physically and mentally torn between fulfilling her roles as a wife, mother and employee. And how do I spell working mom? G-U-I-L-T! Very often, a working mother feels guilty of not spending enough time with her husband and children, and of not keeping the house in order.
Many people say that it is quality time that counts. However, if a working mother has a full-time job, then it is really hard to have quality time with your children at the end of the day. And the daily grind of life outside and inside home often leaves the working mother completely exhausted!
I believe most mothers would agree with me that the developmental years of a child are the most crucial and he is better off when the mother stays home and does not work. However, too many young couples, especially, are trying to embrace the good life too quickly. They want it all, and they want it now. They marry and establish their standard of living based on two incomes. Many spread themselves extremely thin with mortgages, car payments and credit card debt. Then one day, when the first child comes along, and the wife's maternal instincts take over, she would like to quit work for a while, but she CANNOT - not without causing major stress on the finances and, ultimately, on the marriage. She feels trapped. It is no longer a question of whether she can work, but that she must work.
All of this may or may not mean that a wife should not work. Even if as a couple you decide the wife should work, it is advisable to avoid using her income for the basic support of the family, if at all possible. In other words, learn to live on the husband's income alone. I know that sounds drastic for our culture. But the alternative - dependence on two incomes - has equally drastic implications.
In his fascinating book His Needs, Her Needs, William Harley analyzed thousands of interviews with men and women about their needs in marriage. Regarding women who work outside home, he reported:
Whatever women say in public about their willingness to share the burden of making a living, in private I hear something entirely different. Married women tell me they resent working if their working is an absolute necessity. Even part-time work irritates them if their income has to help pay for basic living expenses.
I believe that most working mothers would choose to stay home and look after their children if money were not an issue. Do you agree?
"the older women ... teachers of good things - that they admonish the young women to love thier husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to thier own husbands, that the Word of God may not be blasphemed." Titus 2:3-5
God's Beloved
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