just do it
Hi and welcome back to The Postmodern Family.
This is part two of a two-part series on
why Lillian became a homemaker and if you like what
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If there's anyone else out there
who is also stay-at-home mom,
let's hear your comments and your support,
yes, support us.
After getting married and we moved to Baltimore
where Felipe got his first job after his PhD,
I got a teaching position in the area and I also started
singing in professional choirs in the area
and I feel like I was getting pretty well established
and enjoying my public school post.
Yeah and actually there was a period in there where like
my contract ended with my first employment
and I specifically decided to look for jobs only
in Baltimore because she was starting to get traction
in her career.
That's right, that's right, and we were near Peabody
which is a great Music Conservatory and I was
considering going back and getting my doctorate in
musical arts, my DMA, so that I could possibly
become a college professor in the music department
in the future, so that was that first chapter of our life
was basically both of us pursuing careers
and I even compromised a bit to make sure she could
pursue her career as well.
So then, we got pregnant
and having a baby was just a life-changing experience.
Yeah, it made us ask questions we never asked before
and have considerations we haven't considered before.
Originally while we were pregnant, I had considered
just we would find an au pair or a live-in nanny and
I would go back to work.
I would have been luckier than most women who have
only six weeks paid and then 12 weeks total.
I got six weeks paid, and then I got the whole rest,
like the next six weeks plus the whole summer off
and so during that time raising a tiny little baby,
I just couldn't imagine putting her into the care of
anybody else. I I didn't feel comfortable leaving her
to go and teach other other people's kids.
It made us ask some really difficult questions
about who was going to model adulthood for her.
We came to the conclusion that we don't trust
other people or just publ--the public at large,
the public school, media, just the kind of value system
and the society that had formed around us
was not a world that we wanted her to adopt.
Every subsequent month after I handed in my resignation,
I had like a life crisis, like, what am I doing with my life?
What is my career? You know, I'm just staying at home
and what am I doing staying at home?
As though staying at home means doing nothing.
We just get bombarded with
you know equal rights, women should be,
you know, just as good as men and they should go out
and pursue blah blah and everything, and they just
make it seem like staying at home and taking care of
children, it's just so low on the bar, like, that's not
an aspiration; that is not respected.
"You have so many gifts and you're not sharing them
with the rest of the world, you're not,
you know, becoming renowned and famous and
gaining respect and honor for your family.
Meanwhile, your children are just being raised by whomever.
My hypotheses is the way, one of the reasons
why, you know, it's emphasized that women have to
pursue their own career is as a safety net
for when divorce happens, because it's going to happen.
You are protected, so you have a career to fall back on,
you have money making and not only that but
you have leverage in the marriage, basically.
That's why people always advise that
you have separate accounts and we actually don't.
We decided that we would pool all of our money into the
same place.
We avoided all the advice that everyone gives to
that builds a sort of independence, a state of separation
within the marriage for that 'just in case'.
It was quite a transition in the beginning having to
live off of one income and that one income
being Felipe's, and I kind of felt like some sort of either
like a leech or some sort of like paid servant
because he's paying for me to live and for--
and then so therefore I've gotta cook and I've gotta clean
and I've gotta take care of the baby,
so I felt like some sort of employee of his.
that's not the right mindset either.
Yeah I hand over my whole check to her every time,
basically, it's not it's not really mine it's--it's
the family's and that's what, that--that's what marriage--
that's what family really is, it's a--
it's a single unit; things are all in common.
We realize that not everyone can live off of
a single income and it's not easy, it's not like you make
tons and tons of money, there is sacrifice there that
we feel.
This is your sacred duty, mothers out there, that you
raise your children and you impress upon them the
values that you deem important.
And to the husbands, this isn't about that you
do the forty hours at work and you come home and
sit on your rear because you've done your forty hours.
You're doing the forty hours because the end goal is to
support the family. So when you get home, come home,
you still have to support the family which means that if
she's falling to pieces because there's so many things
to do at home, then you pitch in, you do the dishes,
you do the laundry, you do whatever it takes.
Leadership is about servitude, is about serving the family,
sacrificing, even giving your life for it.
The moment your--your bride--your wife sees that
you think you've you've done your bit
and you're done serving and now it's time for you
to serve yourself, that's the moment that she
starts doing that too, and then that's the moment
you start going down a slippery slope of fragmentation:
each person serving their own interests and not the
interests of the family unit.
The actual traditional model of the family
is everyone is a servant to the family unit.
Having a child was a fundamental transformation
about what marriage life was about.
There's a lot to the saying that
"the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"
the mothers of the world actually raise the children
that then go on to run the world, and so in effect,
mothers are laying down the groundwork for the ruling
of the world.
It's just--it just boils down to
what value system did you want,
did you want the value system that is just common,
out there in the public?
or do you want a different set?
and if you want a different set, then you have to take
control as much as possible.
I hope you guys like our video.
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Thanks for watching, bye!
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