Comments on: Did your seminary have a class on homemaking?

By: Mary Beth

Mary Beth — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:14:18 +0000

4alarm, I think you make really good points. As a SAHM, with a Master’s Degree and a previous career in local church ministry, I have to agree with most of what you said. Thanks for your words.

By: 4alarm

4alarm — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:05:51 +0000

note: 4alarm was a women’s studies major, and there is some ranting ahead that is sort of related to chutney’s post, but it also sort of veers off…

i would contend that homemaking and housekeeping are not the same thing, and i think that the undervaluing of homemaking, how much work it is and how much skill it takes to do it well should be one of the major feminist issues of the third wave.

not that i think this particular degree is progressive in any way, especially, as ms. t notes, it’s only for women.

but as hafidha mentions, the concept of the curriculum could be fascinating. and really, why is homemaking any worse or less valid a pursuit than any other? the ministry of motherhood is the most intense spiritual endeavor that i anticipate taking on in my life.

society undervalues professions that are historically associated with women, and i can’t help but think that this is any exception. prereq for an MRS degree, chutney? building a new generation of good people or building more widgets… which seems more critical to social progress to you?

society would be a better place if more smart, sharp, topnotch people became teachers and nurses and, perhaps, homemakers. the world doesn’t need more lawyers, business people and most of the other professions that the arbiters of middle classness tell us are “worthy” of our brains.

and it certainly doesn’t need bright women who want to pursue higher education pushed into mental illness because they want to choose to be homemakers and “waste” their education. or because they feel they have to be both the high-powered attorney and the perfect wife and mother in 24-hours-or-fewer a day.

By: jacqueline

jacqueline — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:16:26 +0000

If you can’t say something nice… I am from the generation that didn’t have home ec and although there are things that I miss not knowing… I am happy I have the skills to find out what I do not know.

By: Mary Beth

Mary Beth — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:14:31 +0000

Somehow this just doesn’t surprise me. I, too, wonder how you can get an entire degree’s worth of material.

By: Ms. Theologian

Ms. Theologian — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:21:24 +0000

You know, few people know of my considerable honor in the area of homemaking, but I won Best in School for cooking and sewing in junior high. Unfortunately, I fear there was a tad bit of sexism in that honor, not just praise for my pie-making abilities.

My only problem with the course is that it’s women-only. I think home-making is really hard work, and it’s definitely real work.

By: hafidha sofia

hafidha sofia — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:08:46 +0000

Considering some of the amazing things that happen to women in the Bible, I would be really interested in the curriculum. I can totally imagine Biblically-based courses about how to serve as a wife/homemaker – a little harder to find a whole degree’s worth of material. Maybe this is some type of “Biblical Women’s Studies” degrees. I imagine there’d have to be a strong dependence on secondary sources, though.