What is the Role of a Homemaker?
If you’re a woman who takes pride in creating a peaceful and loving home for your family, you may be wondering about the role of a homemaker. While there are certainly different opinions on the subject, it’s important to remember that homemaking is a personal choice, and there’s no right or wrong way to approach it.
I believe that homemaking is a ministry, and I’m here to support and encourage women who feel called to this important role.
Table of Contents
The Role of a Homemaker
As a homemaker, your role is valuable and worthy. It is an act of service, duty, and responsibility.
If you and your spouse have decided that you will be a full-time homemaker, then that is your job. You have several hours every day to work at your job, just like your spouse has several hours to work at their job. You have different jobs, but that doesn’t mean one is better than the other.
Caring for your home and family is a noble and worthy role. It involves overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of your home and managing other domestic concerns. You are responsible for creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere for your family and all who enter your home. What a privilege!
Your duties as a homemaker include routine upkeep and minor repairs of your home. You are responsible for handling the laundry, such as washing dirty clothing and doing the dishes to ensure that the utensils are well kept in their specific places and in good shape. Most homemakers look for ways to decorate their homes in a way that creates a cozy, comfortable, and inviting space.
Appreciating your role as a homemaker is important. It is not demeaning to care for your home and family. Rather, it is an act of love and tender care.
When you serve your family with joy and kindness, you are ultimately serving the Risen Savior. Jesus said, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
Keepers at Home
As a homemaker, your role is incredibly important. You not only care for your home but also for everyone who enters. You see to it that the details are taken care of. You organize your day so that all the seemingly small details are taken care of, such as fluffed pillows on the bed or warm blueberry muffins cooling on the counter. These sweet and thoughtful gestures bring life and love to the heart of your home.
And just think! You know all your family’s favorites. You know what foods they enjoy, what blanket is the most comforting, which toy is needed at bedtime, and what your child’s favorite bedtime story is. You are the one who gets to make sure all those details are paid attention to.
The role of a homemaker involves not only sweet and thoughtful gestures but also mundane and ordinary tasks that you oversee on a daily and monthly basis. These tasks include fresh, clean laundry folded and placed in drawers, floors swept of crumbs, and bathrooms tidied and wiped clean.
As a homemaker, you may be scrubbing, sweeping, and cleaning, but you are also managing, delegating, and organizing. You aren’t necessarily the one washing the dishes, but you see to it that there are dishes, that they are clean, and that there is cause for using them.
Your home deserves a dignified daily response to its care.
Your duty as a homemaker is to take the resources of the family and distribute them as required to care for the family. You provide comfort and a base of operations not only for your family but also for your community. You oversee the home economy with care and diligence.
Homemaking is a lot of work, but it is also a labor of love. Even after years of homemaking, I can honestly say that I love it more today than ever. I’m so very thankful for the opportunity to care for my family, to feed them good food, to make our home a warm and inviting space, and to be a homemaker.
Serving your family is not “less than” a career outside the home. If your husband goes to work each day, appreciate his hard work. Being a homemaker is an important and equally valuable job. But please know this:
If you work outside the home, you can still consider yourself a homemaker. If you are single, you can still consider yourself a homemaker. If you have a home to care for, you are a homemaker.
Is Homemaking The Wife’s Job?
It’s important to have consideration for each other and be willing to go the extra mile. Dividing up the chores in a way that seems fair and equitable to both of you is a good idea. Many husbands take care of the outside yard work while the wife manages the inside chores. Or perhaps your husband has an incredibly taxing job so that he comes home completely exhausted. In that case, as a wife, you might do the majority of the household chores.
It’s essential to have the right attitude towards chores. If you as a wife have an attitude of pride, selfishness, and power, demanding your way, that’s not any way to have a kind and loving marriage.
Having a kind and generous attitude, thinking of each other’s needs, and caring for each other with tenderness and appreciation is a precious way to serve your family.
Being a homemaker is a valuable and worthy role that should be respected. Women who care for their homes and families deserve the utmost respect and appreciation for the love, care, and tenderness they put into their homemaking efforts.
Homemaking is Not Easy, but It is Worthy
It’s important to note that being a homemaker is not easy. It requires diligent and persistent effort. Life is messy, but it’s also beautiful. There is so much beauty in the care and keeping of a family. Home is where the precious, private moments of family life happen. It’s where we live and grow and worship together. Your role as a homemaker is valuable and worthy and incredibly sacred.
You and I are called to the ministry of homemaking.
“to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Titus 2:5
I’m proud of my role as a homemaker.
I hope you are encouraged by these words in your role as a homemaker. Being able to care for your family and home is a noble calling and I hope you find much joy in your role!