Giving Motherhood the Respect It Deserves

Motherhood doesn't get the respect it deserves. And Michele from The Professional Family Manager is on a mission to inspire and encourage moms to respect themselves and the very valuable work they do by treating motherhood like a profession and their household like a business.

As she says on her blog, this isn't to turn motherhood into a "cold, methodical practice." Instead, "Treating family management as a business is a tool to get things done to allow you to love freely and live without stress. Doesn’t every woman on the planet deserve that?"

That's why she's my Guest Columnist today and Good Clean Fun Blog of the Week!

I don't know how I stumbled across Michele's blog, but I'm so glad I did! Whether you're a SAHM, WAHM or a mom who works outside of the home, you'll be inspired by her and the encouragement and practical advice she gives to mothers.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so. The Professional Family Manager is one of a handful of blogs that was recently chosen by the editors of Nickelodeon's Parent Connect to be a potential nominee for Best Parenting Blog! To nominate/vote for her, click here. It will take only one visit to her blog to know why she was selected!

When I started The Professional Family Manager, I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going with it. I had never read any other blogs before and knew nothing about what it meant to be a blogger. I knew nothing about social media, SEO, “following,” or advertising, and, quite frankly, I wasn’t even interested in it. All I knew is I had these thoughts floating around in my head and no one with whom to discuss them.

A friend mentioned that she used a blog to journal and share her thoughts with her family; another friend, with whom I shared one thing I had written, suggested that other people might be interested in what I was thinking. So I started a blog really just to get my thoughts in order, look for themes and patterns, and see if I could make any sense of them.

Things have changed a lot for both me and my blog in the past year.

I am a full-time family and household manager, raising three daughters while renovating and running a 145-year-old hobby farm. I also work part-time as a freelance copywriter and editor after resigning from teaching rhetoric and composition at a small private college. My husband works out-of-state and is home for only some weekends, and I do not have any extended family upon whom to lean when times get tough; as such, I’ve had to learn how to be self-reliant, creative, and efficient taking care of everything that goes on in life.

While I am certainly not perfect, nor have I achieved the elusive (and non-existent) balance and harmony in my life, my family’s life, or my household, I am actually enjoying the process of finding new, effective way to make my life, my family’s life, and my household better.

For years I’ve thought about why being a mother is so looked down-upon in our current society. Why do so many think that being “at home” means a woman is lazy and unintelligent with plenty of time on her hands? Why are the financial and managerial skills mothers employ to manage their lives and the lives of others dismissed as not being “real” skills? And what is the point of “mommy wars,” when, the bottom line is, every mother, regardless of her lifestyle choice, works very, very hard?

We can continue to gripe and complain about not getting the respect which we deserve…but, so far, that approach hasn’t done anything to change the situation. Fair or not, what must happen is we need to change the situation ourselves.

We need to respect ourselves. We need to have the self-respect and self-esteem to know our value, to recognize that which we do as being important and essential, and to treat ourselves well.

If we don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to?

I write The The Professional Family Manager, to encourage all mothers to take control of their own lives, to give yourself the respect you deserve, and to take pride in the professional work that you do. The purpose of the blog is not to focus on household tips or child rearing advice (although I’ve mentioned some of those from time-to-time); there are plenty of other resources for that. Instead, I explore the things women do to sabotage themselves; the ways in which we can promote ourselves as intelligent, professional women; and how we can make our lives better. I try to do so in a positive way, as negativity is not productive and is destructive to our souls. I do not want to dwell on the wrongs done to women, but the incredible, wonderful things which are in our lives and how we can celebrate and promote those things.

I also write about looking at motherhood as being a small business in and of itself, and how, by treating your household as its own business, you can develop your professional skills while improving the efficiency and productivity of the household.

I’ve recently embarked on what I call The Professional Family Manager Project, where I’m employing corporate practices to my household to test how management practices work in a home setting and discover if I can actually earn money just by being a mom alone.

Motherhood is a career. It’s time we treat it like one, and give ourselves the respect we deserve.