Three Cheers for Michelle Obama
Posted by deangonzales on December 4, 2008
12 Comments
Michelle Obama has declared her chief project as the nation’s first lady. It’s being a mom! In an article entitled, My First Job as First Lady is to be First Mom, Michelle Obama stated: “Now that Barack has been elected president, it will be an honor to be First Lady. I will work daily on the issues closest to my heart: helping working women and families, particularly military families. But, even as First Lady, my No 1 job is still to be Mom. At 7 and 10, our daughters are young. My first priority will be to ensure they stay grounded and healthy, with normal childhoods – including homework, chores, dance, and soccer. Our girls are the center of Barack’s and my world” (Timesonline, Nov. 7, 2008).
Albert Mohler recently wrote: “As for Mrs. Obama, she has made her position clear — she will devote herself first and foremost to being the wife of the President and the mother of their children. She is willingly and eagerly choosing the role of First Mom. She will not practice law and she will not be actively involved in policy development — at least for now” (AlbertMohler.com, Dec. 2, 2008).
Well done, Mrs. Obama! I know you’re taking heat from feminists. But you go girl! And I assure you that your Princeton University and Harvard Law School degrees won’t go to waste in your challenging new vocation.
Here’s an extended excerpt from Womanly Dominion: More than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit (Calvary Press 2008), pp. 108-109:
Homemaking motherhood is no refuge for the inept woman who can’t cut it in the real world. Rather, for the biblically thinking Christian, stay-at-home mothering is the ultimate profession for the elite of her gender.
Her skill set must be highly diversified. She’s no mere babysitting caretaker. She realizes she’s raising thoroughbreds for the kingdom, and so she studies and reads and prepares meals with the inspiration of a dietitian and a nutritionist. Her health care duties summon her often to rise to the level of nurse and physician. Domestic engineer is a suitable title for her who exercises dominion over her household headquarters by subduing swarming details into workable order. She is an economist in keeping the budget, holding the purse strings as the accountant, and acting as the purchasing agent for the family corporation, averting bankruptcy and maintaining solvency. She’s a psychologist in analyzing the peculiarities of each temperament, tracing the development of each child, and bringing the apt word as a counselor in every situation. She’s a personal trainer and disciplinarian as she cultivates obedience and self-control in her natively wild herd. She’s a teacher and professor in instructing her students in reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, history, science, and art. This is exceptionally and overwhelmingly true of a home schooling mother. She’s a pastor and theologian as she educates her children in the lofty themes of morality, spirituality, and eternity.
With a job description like that, I advise young women to get all the education they can. Any liberal arts or professional university degree will provide money in the bank knowledge from which a mother will daily make heavy withdrawals.
I know that some jobs don’t really count, don’t make much of a difference, don’t actually matter that much, don’t have much lasting significance. Not so with mothering. I know that in some jobs the worker is only handling cleaning equipment, or car parts, or computer keyboards, or insurance policies, or court cases, or political legislation, or stockholders’ funds. Not so with mothering. A mother is handling things of a far greater magnitude. She’s handling never-dying souls. She’s daily conducting heart surgery on eternal spirits whose forever destinies are influenced most profoundly by the hands that rock their cradles, wipe their noses, spank their fannies, open their Bibles, prepare their after-school snacks, and turn off their bedroom lights. Those motherly hands are molding characters which will become men and women who will turn the world upside down either for good or for evil. Now that’s a job that counts.
Mark Chanski
Author of Womanly Dominion: More than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit
