Going Into the Family Business
Traditionally, children often follow in their parents’ footsteps and go into the family business. Lawyers beget lawyers. Store owners beget store owners. Even actors beget actors. This works well enough when the children are gifted in these areas. And not so well when they are not. Can you see the Sinatra kids as I write this?
Being a homemaker is following in the family business.
I have noticed that following in the family business even extends to homemaking. I coach many talented stay at home mothers who once had careers. They were in law, medicine, business, sales and financing. They are now in the world of homemaking and motherhood with a strident determination to do it as well as their mothers once did.
Homemaking is literally, the family business. And I continually watch my talented, intelligent and lovely clients beat themselves up when they compare themselves to their mothers. They have chosen to follow in the family business and expect to be perfect at it regardless of their talent, skill or even interest in it.
Oh how that makes me cringe. I just sink inside as I see them diminish themselves. I ache for them. So in honor of Mother’s Day, I want to share something I learned from my mother.
Your worth and lovability are not dependent on how good you do anything.
Just like any activity, homemaking requires some talent and a lot of skills. Not being brilliant at it is no reflection of your worth or lovability. My mother was not a great homemaker and I still loved her. She felt inadequate because she couldn’t organize a house like her own mother did. It didn’t seem to matter that she was her own person. She was not cut out to follow in the family business. She wanted to entertain. And she did. She was a wonderful singer, a great TV host and a pioneer as a working mother. Still, her failure as a homemaker bothered her.
But did it matter to me that she couldn’t really cook or clean or organize the perfect family? Not for one second. What did I care about? I cared about her. She was warm, fun and full of life. Her happiness was what I cared about. And watching her fret about herself because of the stupid laundry made me sad.
Our culture pressures women.
I see this cultural pressure on women to be perfect happy homemakers regardless of their inclinations as another way that women are demeaned in our culture. Watch TV for one day and look at those commercials. Women are cleaning everything. The only man who even comes close to a vacuum cleaner is the man who builds them! The messages are clear: Real women clean bathrooms until they shine like a diamond. If you don’t then there is something wrong with you.
Rethink what really matters in the scheme of things.
If you are relating to this, do yourself a big favor. Rethink your perspective. Reflect on what really matters to you and to your family. Your worth and self-esteem are not dependent on how well you fold the laundry or even if you do it at all.
Become your own person.
Imagine separating yourself from the looming specter of your mother and commit to becoming your own person. Be the one in your family to break this burdensome cycle of the family business and not pass it on to your own daughters.
Burn your bras!
When I was a teenager, we symbolically took off our bras and burned them. Okay, so I won’t be doing that any time soon. But find your own way to symbolically liberate yourself from the invisible bonds of your family business. Do something to break the cultural trance we are being conditioned to regarding what it means to be a good wife, mother and homemaker. Decide for yourself what matters to you and focus on that. You are worthy now. You are wonderful now. You deserve to be happy now dirty dishes and all.
Get out that kerosene. I feel a bra burnin’ coming on! Yee Haa!
