You are here: Home / Archives for National Womanhood Issues

I’m Home! Now What Do I Do?

May 21, 2012 4 Comments
A Woman New to Homemaking

        Welcome home!  Congratulations on becoming a homemaker!  The rewards of this role are of inestimable worth!  Below a few things are shared that can help make your transition smooth and have you on your way to sailing into homemaking bliss:

1. Don’t Believe Homemaker Stereotypes - Don’t believe that all homemakers are like June Cleaver or Peg Bundy.  Not all homemakers are excellent, not all homemakers are nurturing mothers, and not all homemakers are lazy, spendthrifts, and ill-kept in appearance.  You are you, and the homemaker you become is completely up to you.  No stereotypes, no molds – break the mold and become the homemaking woman you are created to be!

2. Give Homemaking a Real Chance - Perhaps you’re giving homemaking a try, but really think that you will get bored or not like it much.  Most women who are bored with homemaking fail to really give it the effort it deserves, and if they do, they may fail to explore creativity in homemaking and enrich their lives by volunteer work a few hours a week or month.  Go the extra mile in homemaking and gain the skills required to homemake well, and find joy in creating for your family home.  This is an amazing world full of possibility and happiness, now that you’re here, embrace it and give it all you’ve got!

3. Realize Your Worth in this Role – There is no way to underestimate the value and worth of a devoted homemaker, click here to read a past post that delves into this a bit more, if you’d like, and click here to read “The New Women’s Movement: We’re Coming Home” that explains some of the multitude of things that such a homemaker does and their worth.

4. Don’t Believe that You’ll be Poor - A family can be very well-off financially and rich in many ways, regardless of its size, on the husband’s income alone.  There may be an adjustment phase at the beginning of your being a homemaker in which times are tight financially, but this can be worked-out as you go through it. There is no need to worry that you’ll always have to buy nothing but thrift store items and that your children will have to wear hand-me-downs from others, that you’ll never be able to afford to get your hair done, never have a family vacation, and have to eat cheap, inferior quality foods, all because you don’t provide any income.  You are in a position to be an extraordinarily wise investor, and in so doing, can contribute more to your family’s economy than many women who work outside or inside of the home for money.  Click here and here for two past posts containing information on this subject, if you’d like.

5. You don’t need to Bring in an Income – You’re a homemaker; this is a more than full-time job.  You have a lot of things to do as a homemaker in addition to fulfilling your role as devoted wife and mother.  Your family’s health, safety, welfare, and happiness depends in very large part upon how you do your job as a devoted wife, mother, and homemaker.  Your business, your profession, is making your house a home, which takes a lot of time, thought, and work.  In addition, if you are raising children, especially homeschooling them, you have a full plate.  You can learn to make it on your husband’s income alone, and make it very well.  Learn to live on your husband’s income, to invest it as only you can, and make your house a home and you’ll be extraordinarily rich in far more than money.

6. Enjoy Yourself – Being a devoted wife, mother, and homemaker does require work, but it can be, and is for many women, the most enjoyable, rewarding work on earth.  Enjoy what you’re doing and be creative, let yourself go into creating your family’s one-of-a-kind home and life.  You are free to create a masterpiece home and family, free to take materials or ideas and make them into unique things for your family.  The possibilities of the outstanding life you can create for your family are endless.  Explore this, enjoy this!

7. Educate Yourself – Now that you are a homemaker, you have time to become an extraordinarily well-read woman.  There is a lot to know about decorating, family health, homemaking, and such that can keep you busy learning, and there’s also a wealth of knowledge to be found on probably anything a woman is curious about or would like to know more about.  You have the time to schedule time to learn, to broaden your mind, to really become an outstanding wife, mother, and homemaker as well as a very liberally educated woman.  You needn’t take college courses to do this, just read and self-study.  A well-read homemaker can be extraordinarily interesting to speak with and such a delightful woman to know. 

8. Become Yourself – You have the time to really get to know yourself because you’re your own boss, on your own time, and “running your own show” (as the old saying goes).  You have time to polish-up areas of yourself that need it, time to see things that need changing about yourself and change them, and time to really think about – and create – the life – your life – that you want.  There is no more “what others require of you” like there was at the workplace, it’s what you require of you now.  Your mind and body aren’t working to do a job for someone else for pay, you’re doing a job for you and your family, and you’re free to think about whatever you’d like, not what the boss requires or paying job outside or from the home requires.

9. Build Your Marriage – A happy, healthy marriage is the foundation of the home, so work to make yours the best it can be: one of Celestial Love, mutual dignity and respect, and deep adoration.  To do this, get a copy of the 2007 (the latest) edition of Fascinating Womanhood by Mrs. Helen Andelin, read it, and apply its teachings.  There are online courses and live study groups to go with this book, and participating in one of these is highly recommended.  No matter how clean and materially comfy a home is, if one’s marriage isn’t happy, the home isn’t. 

10. Learn the Skills Necessary to Do Your Job – To be a successful homemaker one needs skill in how to do the job.  There’s sometimes more to many homemaking jobs than meets the eye.  Become an expert and do your job as such.  The book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson is an outstanding, modern, how-to book for all facets of homemaking, from washing dishes to piano care to caring for books properly to setting the table and everything else!  Get a copy of this book and refer to it for any homemaking job you need to learn how to do, would like to know more about, or would like to learn to do correctly.

~ ~ ~

        Again, welcome home to the world of homemaking!  This world – your world - is completely unique and one-of-a-kind; no one else in the world can make your family’s home what you can.  So much of your family’s life (and remember, you are a part of your family) revolves around the home you create, give them what they (and you) deserve, which is your very best!  Excelsior!

Filed Under: All About Raising Children, Being a Domestic Goddess (House Cleaning and Home Making), Being a Wife, Cheerfulness and Charm, Encouragement, Family Finances, Family Health, Feminine Physical Beauty, For Newlywed Wives, For Young Women (Approximately Ages 18 - 28), Investing for Homemakers, Marriage, Mothering, National Womanhood Issues, Wholesome Romance, Worthy Character

Grand Investments of the Devoted Wife, Mother, and Homemaker

May 14, 2012 12 Comments

        A wife can actually make her family more money, as a homemaker, by carefully taking every penny her husband provides her, investing it, and multiplying it, than many women can through years, even decades, or their entire lives, of working outside or inside of the home for someone else’s money.  An example of this would be gardening…

        A very small part of her husband’s income is used by the wife to buy very carefully selected heirloom vegetable seeds (which cost approximately between two and three dollars a packet).  The wife doesn’t waste her husband’s money on a hodge podge of seeds that might work, but invests in the right kind of seeds, with knowledge she has gained through studying gardening in their locale, and buys the proper amount needed for her family.  She then works with her husband to prepare a garden to grow the seeds in, plants and tends to them with non-toxic, healthy-for-her-family and healthy-for-the-garden fertilizers, and has food in the summer that is abundantly healthy and unique to her own family’s yard.  She has extra to share with neighbours and those who could use the healthy food, like the poor and widows in her community.  She has enough to preserve for the upcoming winter, and she has seeds to save for the years to come because she purchased non-GMO heirlooms.  She, her children, and her children’s children will have heirloom seeds in abundance, and if God so blesses them and their gardens, will never know hunger.  Her family’s health and dental bills are reduced because of the truth in the old saying “you are what you eat”, for the majority of us, our health is directly tied to what we put into our bodies; the better the food, the better one’s health (and energy).  Eating like this builds health, which is helpful and wonderful presently, but in the future, as well.  As she and her husband age, they do so in good health, as do their children.  This saves not only them, but often fellow taxpayers a lot of money on healthcare.

        Gardening is just one example, there are a whole lot more investments that are comparable in inestimable value.  It’s easy to see how such a grand investor can truly be a large part of making her family rich in far more than material gain and money ♥. 

Filed Under: Being a Wife, Encouragement, Family Finances, Investing for Homemakers, Marriage, National Womanhood Issues

FW~A (Near) Daily Encouragement: Change from Within

May 3, 2012 Leave a Comment
A Happy Homemaker and Her Husband

        Have you ever heard or read the saying that the only way to really change things is to change them from within?   This is the same on a personal level as it is a national level.  If you are concerned about our nation’s present condition, please know that you, in your role as wife, mother, and homemaker, are an essential part of the cure for its ills.  As a matter of fact, you and your husband are the main two “medicines” necessary to cure it.  We must repair our nation home by home, family by family, to completely cure its ills – there’s no other way.  So let’s do it!  Let us every one grab hold of our jobs as wives, mothers, and homemakers with all of our might and get busy doing these jobs in excellence.  Let’s do our job right, with love, in immeasurable quantities!  We’re created to do just that!

Filed Under: Being a Domestic Goddess (House Cleaning and Home Making), Charm, Encouragement, FW~A (Near) Daily Encouragements, Mothering, National Womanhood Issues

United We Stand: America’s Marvelous Women

April 13, 2012 Leave a Comment
America the Beautiful

        Many readers have likely read or heard about the very recent incident involving Mrs. Mitt Romney being criticized for never working outside of her home by another woman, and how our President and his wife, as well as others, defended Mrs. Romney and women whose professions are homemaking (not working outside or inside of the home for money, providing full care for their families).  This has been a beautiful thing for all women: feminists, non-feminists, homemakers, female paycheck earners, and any other woman, because a vocal, large percent of us has declared that “the Mommy wars” or the “war” of women against women mindset isn’t only over, but that these “wars” never really existed.  Many of us are making it clear that we are American women, women with choices, who are growing more and more respectful of each others’ choices and working together to make our nation the best it can be.  We’re not nearly as divided as those seeking to pit us against each other for their own personal gain or agendas would like us to think we are – and we’re making that known.  It’s not the time in history to underestimate the power of American women.

        This whole thing is awesome breaking forth – a new day in our country in which women stand together in dignity and let those who seek to destroy us on either side know that we’re not buying it.  We’re important.  We’re together.  We’re changing the world.  We’re women – created to love, to be magnificent, and to nurture the world, ourselves, our families, our friendships, and our sisterhood.  We’re unleashing the astounding power of the love in our women’s hearts in amazing ways.  We’re loving and accepting each other, and heaven help any man, woman, or entity that tries to go up against the power of that.

        Thank you to all of the women and men in America who have turned this page to this new day in our history: a day in which we have decidedly, strongly, stood together from across the nation to treat each other with dignity and unity.  The message we are sending to each other, our children, and our world is loud and clear: America is regaining her strength, dignity, and honour because we are acknowledging these things in America’s very heart and soul – its women; and achieving this is a huge success for all women. 

Filed Under: National Womanhood Issues, Worthy Character

FW~A Fascinating Womanhood Success Story: Hope and Happiness

March 30, 2012 Leave a Comment

     Many, many American families have suffered financially during The Great Recession.  The following testimony was recently written by a woman who took the Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska online Fascinating Womanhood  course within the past year and can offer women something money can’t buy: hope for not only successfully working through financial problems the Fascinating Way, but building a happier marriage at the same time:

“I’ve been working as much as possible on the inner qualities of FW. I’ve been focusing especially on the three A’s (admiration, appreciation, acceptance) and making my husband number one. I had originally planned on writing in the evening, but have decided that if I can’t get any in during the day, I won’t even bother. My husband needs my attention after he comes home from work and that need usually lasts all evening. He’s okay when the kids interrupt (unless he’s had a really hard day) but he gets hurt if I put writing above him as well. So now the evenings are mostly focused on him. The funny part is, when I do that, he often has energy to take the kids somewhere or help around the house. Not always, but it happens more often than it once did.

“I’ve also been focusing on becoming a domestic goddess/queen and inner happiness. I figure if I start with inner happiness, radiant happiness should be easier. Plus, my husband is big on sincerity. If I do what we call “the chick fine”* he’ll get upset because I’m not being honest with my feelings. So, I’ve been trying to get back into FlyLady and I’ve been focusing more on writing (during the day). I’ve even been testing the waters with self-publishing. Oh, and because I love manga, I’ve started learning Japanese. It’s difficult to fit all this in, but I try to stay relaxed about it and do the best I can.

“So, the result? My husband switched jobs.

“We have, through various circumstances, accumulated a lot of debt. It’s bothered me for some time. When I took the FW course last year, one of the questions was “What is your greatest financial wish at this time?”. I put down, “To be debt-free.” But I didn’t think anything of it because my husband has a very different view of credit than I do.

“Time passes and I struggle with FW, though I gradually get better at living the principles, including following my husband in how he wanted to spend the money he earned. (This, by the way, was very different from when we first married. I would have come unglued at the thought of using credit the way we have in the past few years. I came unglued over far smaller things and, as a result, made him feel less than adequate as a leader in our home, even though I thought I was being a “partner” to him.) I eventually gave up on the Wife’s Budget because the amount is too small. I do try to keep as much off the credit cards as I can and more than once my husband tells me he appreciates it. Still, it’s discouraging.

“Then, one of my husband’s co-workers mentions Dave Ramsey to him. Now, my husband knew who he was because I’d checked out books by him at the library (back when I hadn’t let go of my husband’s money). He hadn’t looked at them at the time. This time, he starts reading the book his co-worker loans him.

“It is really amazing the change that came over him. For a long time, he was willing to let things stay as they were with our finances. But the past few months, he’s been trying to make the budget work. The result of this change was that he realized he wasn’t making enough to cover our family’s expenditures. An opportunity for a job that paid better came along and he took it. He loves his old job, he loves the location, he loves almost everything about it, but when we talked about it, he told me that he took the new job for our family. I almost broke down when I heard that.

“He has a plan in place that will wipe out the debt we’ve accumulated. And it’s looking like it might actually happen. So, even though life is stressful right now, it’s a good kind of stress. I’m really happy.

“*Note: the “chick fine” = when a woman is upset or something is bothering her and, instead of saying it, ends a discussion regarding the topic with “Fine.”  It’s not fine, but she’d rather stuff her feelings than face whatever nastiness might occur from being honest.

“P.S. I’ve made a note of this in my Love Booklet. For those who are resisting making or buying their own Love Booklet, I strongly recommend it. I tried living FW without it and got very discouraged. When I took the FW course Nikki offered, I still resisted because it sounded corny. I only did it because I promised myself to do whatever the lessons required unless I knew for a fact that the assignment wouldn’t help. However, after I started the booklet, I found living FW became much easier. On days when I struggled or when I thought FW wasn’t working, I got out my booklet and read about all the changes that had taken place so far. It kept, and keeps, me going.”

Filed Under: Family Finances, Investing for Homemakers, National Womanhood Issues, Success Stories

FW~A (Near) Daily Encouragement: Fascinating Womanhood for the Working Woman

March 28, 2012 4 Comments

        Some women would really like to quit their jobs, but feel that they can’t.  Some women have no children and fill hours of their week working for enjoyment.  Some women who spent years being homemakers get jobs outside of their homes when their children are grown.  Some women are single by choice or situation and work to support themselves.  There are all sorts of other reasons that women work outside of their homes and for money from their homes.  Though these women work for pay doesn’t mean that they can’t find support, encouragement, and happiness in the pages and teachings of Fascinating Womanhood.  Mrs. Andelin wrote FW for all women, and it has helped, and continues to help, all women who apply the teachings as best they can. 

        While Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska offers a lot of writings about full-time homemaking and directed to full-time homemakers, working women can find helpful information in these writings, too.  All women have a large part in making their houses homes, and many women enjoy making their homes the best they can be.  FW~A writings about feminine beauty, recipes, character, and so forth are very applicable to all women, whether they work for pay or not, too. 

        Fascinating Womanhood and Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska exist for every woman, everywhere in the world, who would like to learn from and share in its teachings.

Filed Under: All About Raising Children, Being a Wife, Encouragement, Fascinating Womanhood, FW~A and the Working Woman, National Womanhood Issues, The Family Home, Womanhood Issues, Worthy Character

It’s Understandable, but It’s not a Solution

March 23, 2012 2 Comments

        The feminist movement of the 1960s has left an indelible mark on America.  Many see this movement as constructive, many see it as destructive.  But one thing everyone can plainly see is that it happened, and it happened enormously.  There are all sorts of theories as to why this movement took off like it did and went so far, too far in many areas – which is something else most people on both sides of the feminist fence agree upon.  In the world of Fascinating Womanhood, which has been called the anti-feminist movement or the “other” women’s movement, surprisingly perhaps to some, the take-off of the feminist movement is understood.

        Men, in large part, are treated today in the media and by others very disparagingly.  Most all of us know the stereotypes: dumb boobs who are mostly like trained robots who amuse themselves when not robotically working and let their wives and the women in their lives or the women in superior positions over them rule the roost at home and work.  Or the faux-tough guy who receives no earnest dignity and respect due to his undignified and disrespectful treatment of others.  Or the women as sex objects, trophy woman seekers.  The point is made, there’s no reason to keep writing of such disingenuous tripe. 

        Did the feminist movement usher in and perpetuate these stereotypes?  If it did, perhaps it is because what goes around comes around.  Before men were treated and seen as they are now, women were, on a large-scale, treated and seen just as desparagingly.  Even worse, yesterday’s American women had very limited ways to change the way they were treated and the way that they were portrayed. 

        No human being, male or female, can tolerate being treated unjustly, unfairly, as having no rights, and treated as though they are of little or no worth indefinitely.  Had the majority of men living in the pre-feminist movement era that really took-off in the 1960s - and this definitely includes men who considered themselves religious - treated women as full-fledged human beings of equal worth, dignity, and respect as men, the movement would have never happened on such a large-scale.  Today, women are treating men just as badly as our foremothers were treated.  Two wrongs don’t make a right, they make a situation that needs remedied worse. 

        There is a solution to this entire thing, and that is for America’s men and women to stand together in treating each other as humans of great and equal worth, regardless of their sex.  Humans, who, regardless of their sex are of the same great worth to The Great Creator Who Is No Respecter of Persons, whether that person is a man or a woman.  He created each and every human as an integral part of a whole.  Who are we to treat any other human, including our husbands and wives, as though they are not worthy of being loved as we love ourselves? 

        Fascinating Womanhood teaches that men and women have different roles to fulfill on earth that are distinct to each sex, but that each sex is of equal value and worth in The Eyes of God, thus should be seen as and treated as such by fellow mankind, and specifically, in marriage.  A king and a queen.  Both beloved and treated as such.  Both integral parts of a stupendous, marvelous, God-created whole.  No one half of the whole any more special or different in value than the other – a true fully functioning whole.

        There’s no need to lay the blame of what’s wrong in society today on the feminist movement, the men, or women in general, but a real need to take a look at ourselves.  Have we personally been guilty of treating our own sex as superior or inferior in our own marriages?  If so, it’s time to change.  Our nation has gone from one extreme of maltreatment to another (women then men) with devastating results upon our society, which is made up of every individual human in it.  We must build again.  We needn’t look to some time past for a golden era of men, women, and families, but must usher in a brand new era in America – one in which each sex is free to live distinctly and wholly as God Almighty created them to and to be respected, valued, and loved as God commands.  God created the sexes, both of them of equal importance and human value – you can’t have one sex without the other - and it is now time in America that we all, whether we are of a feminist, anti-feminist, or somewhere in between mindset, embrace this true love of each other, and begin building a nation of human respect, dignity, esteem, and value belonging equally to each sex.

        The pre-feminist movement can be thought of like early labour pains, the feminist movement can be thought of like hard labour, and now we are arriving at the moment of birth in America.  The pain from labour is ending; it has been a grueling, tiring, very hard, difficult labour, we are in such need of relief, and praise God, it’s very near.  We are giving birth to a new day and age.  It takes a loving mother and father to raise a child, we have been given this “baby” by God.  Let’s work together as men and women to raise it to thrive and reach its inestimable potential for good.

Filed Under: National Womanhood Issues
« Older Posts

Information/Disclaimer

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska - Copyright 2010 - 2012. All rights reserved. Feel free to link to any blogpost or page on this site, but do not copy, repost, or publically distribute any post or page on this site or any part thereof at length or in anywise outside of United States "fair use" copyright laws without the expressed written consent of the author of this blog, Mrs. Wayne Hunter. I, Mrs. Wayne Hunter, will legally pursue action against any copyright violaters as well as libelers and or slanderers.

Use of the title "Fascinating Womanhood" is by permission of Renaissance Society, Inc. Executive Director Brian Andelin. However, this blog is not the official Fascinating Womanhood website. The official FW site is fascinatingwomanhood.net .

Disclaimer: This blog is written by an authorized Fascinating Womanhood teacher for the purpose of sharing the teachings of Fascinating Womanhood, The Fascinating Girl, and All About Raising Children by the late Mrs. Helen Andelin. Other than being an authorized Fascinating Womanhood teacher, I am in no wise a professional and none of my writings and teachings on this blog, via e-mail, and otherwise are to be construed as the giving or sharing of any type of legal, medical, or professional advice, care, counsel, diagnosis, treatment, help, or cure.

If you'd like to e-mail me, my e-mail address is FascinatingWomanhoodAK(at)hotmail(dot)com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 104 other followers