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| Homemaking skills passed on from experienced moms to learning daughters |
by Johanne Martial
MAR02001@BYUI.EDU
Scroll Staff |
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What exactly is a typical LDS housewife?
Does she know how to make salads with green Jell-O and shredded carrots? Can she make bread, jam and clothes for her children?
Maybe an ordinary housewife can only do one of the talents listed, but being a skilled homemaker is more than adding a lace doily to a Relief Society table. In this day and age, motherhood and its sacred duties are mocked on every side.
“Entreating voices may tell you that what you have seen your mothers and grandmothers do is old-fashioned, unchallenging, boring, and drudgery. It may have been old-fashioned and perhaps routine; at times it was drudgery. But your mothers and grandmothers have sung a song that expressed the highest love and the noblest of womanly feelings. They have been our nurturers and our teachers. They have sanctified the work, transforming drudgery into the noblest enterprises,” President James E. Faust said of homemaking skills.
Homemaking is not a world of drudgery, a Cinderella-type duty that has one on hands and knees scrubbing floors while hauling a child on each hip. It is a sacred covenant that daughters of God have made with our Heavenly Father, to protect and nurture families in a peaceful environment worthy of the Spirit. Sometimes it can seem that homemaking is too much of a hassle, but in simple ways, homes can be made peaceful and inviting to the Holy Spirit, President Faust said.
President Faust continued, “Homemaking is whatever you make of it. Every day brings satisfaction along with some work which may be frustrating, routine, and unchallenging ... There is no more important job than homemaking.” As C. S. Lewis said, “A housewife’s work … is the one for which all others exist,” he said.
Tina Hill, a junior from Ririe, Idaho, said her mother taught her how to cook and sew. She has learned how to make tantalizing dishes, such as lasagna and pizza.
“Perhaps the one skill of the homemaker which draws the fullest appreciation from all family members is the ability to cook. Every household [family] has the right to expect nutritious, delicious, satisfying meals as a part of their daily living. Is there anything which can draw a family closer together than gathering around the family table to enjoy good food?” Marian R. Boyer, former General Relief Society Homemaking counselor, said.
Hill worked with her mother on various sewing projects and has made a patchwork quilt. She learned how to make patterns for store-bought clothes that fit well and make a pair just like them. Her cooking and sewing skills have been put to good use at college.
“I wouldn’t be able to cook my own food if [mom] didn’t teach me,” Hill said.
“I’m sad that many women today have almost no time or feel that they have no time, for domestic art, whether it be sewing, cooking, knitting, gardening, making home decorations or any of dozens of other activities that serve practical needs as well as offer creative outlets. There is a joy that comes from sewing a pair of pants, designing curtains or even scrubbing floors to make one’s home shine,” Camile Anderson said in the September 1996 Ensign.
“As my hands shape the environment of my family, I love even more that place in which I labor,” she said.
“One of the most important duties of the homemaker in promoting family preparedness is to teach, to train, to pass on to her daughters the homemaking skills which her own training and experience have taught her. Every young woman deserves to begin her own home prepared with at least a knowledge of the basic skills required for every needful household task,” Boyer said.
Homemaking creates a great challenge in many different aspects of life, Anderson said in her Ensign article, “The Fruit of Her Hands.”
“The homemaker is healer, comforter, and counselor; architect, builder, and maintenance engineer of a learning and research center equal to any university; artist, sculptor, creator of the greatest masterpiece: a human being. How can any thinking person say that being a homemaker lacks challenge? ” she said.
Homemaking may be a great challenge to mothers everywhere, but when mothers turn to their daughters for a helping hand, it can be a joyous work.
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