Gratitude Banishes A Wife’s “Mental Load”
I created this blog forever ago to comment on current trends with the occasional snarky take that I wasn’t seeing much out there as a Hispanic Conservative Millennial.
Fast-forward a few years and I now comment on culture-related phenomena through the lens of a (still) Hispanic Conservative Millennial (and now) SAHM, homemaker, and homeschooler who hopes to inspire other young women to prioritize their families.
That’s was a bit of context that I think will shed light on the perspective you’ll read about next regarding a disturbing trend I’ve come across online that I don’t think has been rightfully labeled.
Can women make up their minds?
It started with women claiming they should prefer careers over raising a family or else they have little-to-no value.. then men were saying that’s not what men want from women.. and later women WITH careers or mere made-up lines of work retorting that their husbands are useless.
But one thing strikes me from this conversation that I don’t think has been discussed yet, and that’s honestly women having a superiority complex and carelessness about all that men bring to the table.
They don’t seem to be all that grateful, and their selfishness, their lack of gratitude also seems to extend to how they may feel about their place in the world.
All these women claiming or implying that having careers (outside the home) is better or should be one’s priority seem very selfish because they fail to see what a sacrifice it is to stay home to raise children, to take care and nurture one’s family via a clean and healthy environment, good food, and all-day tender, loving care, AND TO PUT ALL THAT above one’s being or desires.. and for their husbands to do the bread-winning.
Most providing men, I don’t think, wake up screaming for joy to get out and fill up their days with meetings, emails, meetings that could’ve been replaced by emails, emails that didn’t warrant one second of attention, presentations, complaints, the works.
Then if they work outside the home, they have a commute to add to all that, plus mediocre fast-food meals if their wife isn’t available or is unwilling to cook for him.
It’s no secret that women do a LOT at home, and that the men who go out to provide for them and their families do a LOT for them too.
If that man also decides to fill up his free time with DIY projects around the home, now we have a husband who not only works to bring home the bacon so she can stay to care for the home and love on the kids all day, but also works on cash-flowed home projects himself (meaning: debt-free and without expensive contractors) so he and his family can enjoy a home that has everything they could ever want (inside and out!).
I’m moved writing that because I’m essentially describing my husband.
He enjoys his profession and employer, he doesn’t get berated at work (the opposite, actually: he’s constantly doing work they praise), and he doesn’t have to look at annoying emails. (That bit describing Corporate America was more or less describing my former life.)
Despite of how good he has it at his company, he sometimes wishes he could spend more time with the kids. Any normal, loving husband and father would too, if I’m being honest.
He genuinely looks forward to being with us AND to working on his home projects, and we, in turn, can’t get enough of him.
He’s the man I happily gave up my misplaced dream of being a power woman (as if men even wanted that)
After a few months of getting to know him “back in the day” when we were cou rting, of experiencing what a good, kind, loving man he was, of him brightening up my day every time, I KNEW he deserved a woman to nurture his future home and children, to be there for him when he got home, and to love on the kids all day.
(How could most women not think that about their husbands and future husbands?!)
And after almost eight years of leaving Corporate America and becoming a homemaker, plus a few of them being a mom, I can’t envision another purpose, another calling for my life besides taking care of my family and spending all day with our kids.
Thank God my husband works from home and ends his workday earlier than most: that’s also allowed the kids to be around him every day since birth and for us all to enjoy most meals together.
As a very nice cashier said to me recently when I told her I was a SAHM: “Ah, that’s the dream!”
And you know what? She’s so right.
It can be easy to take it all for granted
When you forget or ignore that it’s God and His Will who are behind everything that you do, you tend to erroneously think you’re in control. That lack of gratitude turned you an entitled person. But what exactly are you entitled to?
Think about it: If you bootstrapped (or were handed) your way to success and are now a girl-boss who makes a lot of money, and/or gets to travel everywhere, and/or has a corner office, and/or has bought all kinds of luxury items because you think you deserve it, and/or gets some amazing benefits and perks, etc., it’d be perfectly normal for you to assume that only YOU have been in charge of your progress.
I think it’s because that’s all based on extrinsic motivators: the money, the stuff, the accolades. All that’s external and good and it comes TO you so you think YOU caused it to happen. That may be normal, up to a point.
In contrast, I also think SAHMs instead tend to believe that our circumstances aren’t necessarily brought on by US but rather by God, who can ultimately take them away. We tend to be more faith-oriented and realize that nothing happens unless God wills it, and so we may fall in the camp that knows that God gave us the blessings and privileges we get to enjoy and steward.
And because God gave us all that, then we better have something to show for it. We can’t just flaunt our worldly rewards to him (when they don’t mean anything to him).
Instead, He wants to see happy, peaceful families and harmonious, Christ-centered homes. And I hate to break it to the girl-bosses, but THAT is infinitely both more difficult and more rewarding.
So when you go on believing that at least half of what you own (if you’re living in a modern “marriage”) is in part due to YOUR EFFORTS ONLY like the boss babe queen that you think you are, then you’re bound to become ungrateful and then blind (or blind and therefore ungrateful?) to the actions of others who’ve helped bring AND keep you where you are.
Here’s more concretely what I mean:
Women’s supposed “mental load”
A woman recently became viral for a video where she explains that she had wanted to divorce her full-time-working husband for not helping enough around their home. They have four kids (who go to daycare and school) and she feels as though he, too, should do more of the housework, like emptying the dishwasher every morning.
Never mind the fact that he works a dangerous and unpopular job and that she gets to stay home most of the time as a mere influencer and life coach (?) telling other women their husbands should alleviate their mental loads:
I was taken aback by how little credit she gave her husband for going to a potentially deadly job all so she could stay home and berate him in public.
How he’s managed to seemingly want to stay with her despite her disrespect and careless disregard for his contributions is beyond me. But suffice it to say I thought she was extremely ungrateful.
I remember watching that with my husband with tears in my eyes because I felt terrible for her husband, and because I couldn’t imagine someone being so nasty to a spouse online–especially a spouse whose life could end in an instant if he made the wrong move at work.
Like the dude empties the dishwasher (because she can’t be bothered to do that herself or to, God forbid, have the kids do it) and goes to work oblivious to what his supposed partner is saying about him online.. Then, after a full day’s work he comes home exhausted AND in the mood to cook dinner, but with the annoying quirk to ask what she wants because he wishes to please her? The only thing wrong with that picture is her, to be honest.
What she failed to recognize or chose to conveniently ignore is the fact that it all could end in an instant, especially for people who do what that husband does.
We’re not the authors of our lives–God is. What will that woman do when God does something she wouldn’t have chosen for her husband? Go on TikTok again and lament the fact that he’s not around anymore to empty the dishwasher instead of regretting how much he took him for granted? Probably.
How feminism hurts women
(In my feminism series, I’ve addressed how feminism hurts women, men, and children, so I’m no stranger to this backwards “Women should prioritize their careers!” mentality that’s become so prevalent among Conservative women.)
Women don’t just seem ungrateful at home: They also seem ungrateful out in society in general, conveniently ignoring that much of today’s infrastructure, for instance, was built and is maintained by the very men they’re too happy to criticize.
Many Conservative women nowadays that tell men their instinctual desires are wrong wouldn’t be able to get on the airwaves if it weren’t for the male engineers in charge of running the technical side of things across the world so that people all over hear their entitled voices.
Take Megyn Kelly, who laments the fact that there aren’t many young Conservative women doing what she does, telling other women that it’s OK to hold off on starting a family til your late-30s and 40s so that you can grow your career and become a role model to many more Conservative women.
Because what young women need is to put OTHERS’ opinions of them ahead of their own biological clocks, instincts, and potential for a happy home and family.
She argues that it’s wrong for men to want women who wish to stay home and raise the children.
Part of her reasoning stems from the fact that if all the women jump on the Traditional bandwagon, then there won’t be any women left to tell future generations that it’s OK to want to spend their 20s and their 30s working to have IT.ALL, become an influencer, and promote Conservative causes to the masses.
She seems way more worried about being a role model for strangers and inspiring other women to give up their childbearing years.. than ensuring her own daughters are doing and following the right thing, like a stay-at-home (SAH) parent would be. After all, a SAH parent has–or makes–the time to prioritize time with the children.
Yet on the other hand, according to her, it’s also wrong for women to even want to stay home because they’re not valuable if they do!
I agree with both these men’s assessments: Does Kelly actually know men? Men don’t need ambition or security from a woman; they need to know that she’ll want to nurture their kids. At least the good, sane men do.
Weak/”Yes” men, on the other hand, are more like gigolos who care (more? only?) about the money she’s bringing in and would rather keep her happy at her job so that they can live off her while she makes just enough to pay a stranger to care for the home and kids.
As it turns out, it’s the “career now, marry later” mindset that sets many folks up to fail—especially women. After all, it is women who have a foreshortened time frame in which to get their lives in order since they are the sex that gets pregnant and will soon enter a nesting phase. –Suzanne Venker
As I understand it (with the caveat that I’m not her biographer), Megyn Kelly has been married before. She got divorced, met her current husband, and had their daughters via IVF. She’s been on the air for, what, two+ decades? She knows a LOT about a lot of subjects, and her contributions to the Conservative sphere are significant.
But she doesn’t know the value of family like a stay-at-home (SAH) parent does because she’s always seemed to prioritize her career, influencing other women, and being a role model. A family where a parent stays home, on the other hand, sacrifices whatever they had going on precisely to care for the kids in the way that matters the most: not with money or things, but with time, love, and undivided attention.
So young women: Please stop believing the lie that your worth is tied to what you earn. Stop thinking that your time’s better spent at the workplace earning a salary that pays a stranger to watch your kids. If you absolutely must, choose a career that will be easy to leave or that will afford you the flexibility to work while the kids are away or asleep.
If you’re already a SAHM, be grateful: to God, to your husband, to your kids. You’ll never run out of things to be thankful for. Radiate gratitude and behave as though you couldn’t be more thankful for your blessings. Gratitude really does banish one’s “mental load.”
And keep Butker’s words (see below) in mind, because the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and us SAHMs who raise strong, Christ-focused families are a force to be reckoned with.
Full text: https://www.ncregister.com/news/harrison-butker-speech-at-benedictine
