« These days, the word hospitality is a subterfuge – a ruse for the industrious. Its meaning has been so distorted that we can’t tell if it’s something we offer or something we buy. Hospitality seems to be devalued as a family’s vocation while being respected as a profession. The feminists want to make it an outdated strategy of patriarchal control. They want to outsource it… and outsourced it has been! Capitalism has capitalized on the family’s inadequacy in this area. You can obtain a very respectable university degree in hospitality. In a Google search of the word hospitality, most sites one finds are about the hotel, casino, restaurant, and catering industries. This is a big-bucks production!

Many of my generation were raised by full-time working mothers. These moms were told that their work at home (laundry, cooking, cleaning, raising kids) was meaningless. To be respected as contributing citizens, they needed to work outside the home. So why would they hand down to their daughters the skills necessary for keeping a home? No, no, they wanted to teach their daughters something much more valuable for living in the « real world. » Besides, there was just no time to hand down such trivial, archaic traditions. The irony of it all is that these days it has become much more respectable to watch someone else’s kids, make someone else’s dinner, and clean someone else’s  house that it is to care for one’s own. »

Wow… This is great stuff Aimee! I am seriously considering translating this part as to place in my book that I am currently writing these days. I find it to be so well articulated and true. I couldn’t agree more. Loving everything that I have read so far… book review soon. Grounded Theology, Amen!

You can read more from Aimee at her blog here.

Ann L Beaulieu

*Housewife Theologian, Aimee Byrd, P&R Publishing, 2013, p. 113-114