Homemakers

To answer Linda S. Moon’s concern (Letters, July 16) that the traditional full-time homemaker will be “ill-prepared” to be financially productive should divorce, death or disability of her spouse thrust her into the work force, I would like to say that as a full-time homemaker I am not naive about those possibilities.

My motivation as a full-time homemaker is focused on meeting my family’s daily needs and nurturing my children to be the future leaders of our country. Putting the kids in day care, buying TV dinners and juggling a career and family just in case disaster strikes is a fear I don’t live with.

Truthfully, I am willing to sacrifice material comforts today and live with the risk that disability or death may happen someday to give my family my time and energy. I don’t think you can put a price tag on what I am doing by staying home.

My role is to support my husband in his job as breadwinner and to make my home a pleasant refuge for him from the stress of the world. It could be that by staying home, I am contributing to his longevity. If I take good care of him, he might be around longer and I’ll never have to work outside the home. Time will tell.

In saying that I am “ill-prepared” to go back to work, Ms. Moon misses the point of my letter which was to tell the world that the full-time homemaker is alive and well in Orange County. She says that “at some time most of them will be forced by necessity to contribute to their own support and that of their families,” and that statistics support this claim.

I would like to challenge that claim. One of my concerns with the media today is its lack of verification. The original Times story mentioned the so-called disappearance of the full-time homemaker who “isn’t there anymore.”

Who says the full-time homemaker isn’t there and who says “most women” will have to work someday?

A lot of us who are full-time homemakers have degrees, work out of our homes and sometimes help our husbands in their businesses. We have a lot of experience in home administration.

I believe working wives do cause divorces. Ask the marriage counselors. Competition with husbands, independence, financial security and another man are factors in marriage break-ups.

If we don’t stay home to rock the cradle carrying the next generation, then who will?

WENDY LEECE

Costa Mesa