Housewife: Guilt?

A housewife is defined as a woman whose prime occupation is to care for their family and/or home. Finding a term to describe the modern woman who stays at home and leaves the paid workforce to care for her family is problematic.

Likewise, the term "housekeeper" has come to describe hired cleaning help, and is no longer used -- other than in a derogatory way -- to describe homemaking. None of these terms adequately convey the diversity of activities an individual homemaker might choose to pursue, such as volunteer work, small-scale farming, education, religious ministry, political involvement, home schooling, etc.

Traditionally the role of "homemaker" has been filled predominantly by women. It is still the case today that in many societies and groups, men and women alike view homemaking as the natural and most fulfilling role for women.

Whenever I introduce myself as a housewife, I am looked down at as a dumb beautiful who was too stupid to use her brains so got married so as to ease her life. The moment I tell them I am a double post - graduate, the reaction is not any more encouraging with such sentences as "You should work. You are wasting your time and your talent." The shock increases when I tell them that I used to run a full fledged Institute for training young adults for higher studies and then was running a kindergarten. This opens their mouths and they look at me with that look which says without their saying it out loud "She is dumb to have let the opportunity go by".

Sometimes even I feel the same. I feel that I should get back to regular working instead of working from home. But then I stop to consider the effect on my son and I feel that in my struggle to be better my son would suffer. I totally respect the decision of my friends who are pursuing a full time career. I often find myself justifying to my friends my decision to stay home and look after my family. Although, given a choice I would definitely go back to work at the drop of a hat, but once I have made the decision to stay home (even if everyone around and sometimes even I don't see the logic in it) I plan to stick to it.