Importance of Fathers and Non-Working Mothers

The past few years I have been seeking to know what I should major in that would be most beneficial to me. I have looked into all of my favorite topics and potential career fields with no impression or real desire to continue down that road.

I have been so confused as to what I should do, because I have assumed that I need to study something that would help me to make money if I was in a place where I needed to do so.

A re-occurring theme that I have observed is how my major choice really won't matter. And why won't it matter? I believe it is because my primary duty is to raise children to the Lord. Now, I do not believe that this is the answer Heavenly Father will give all women, but I do think it is the answer he gives to many women.

Why would Heavenly Father not always encourage women to leave the home and enter the workforce? I know this is controversial, but I believe it is because jobs are not as important or necessary to our salvation as raising children led by righteous parents is. There are only a few things we take with us into the next life. One is memories, the other is our relationships, and the third is our testimony of and conversion to our Savior, Jesus Christ.

In "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", it states, "Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets." I know this might be a little extreme, but I feel that mother's and father's not placing an emphasis on being in the home do a disservice to their children and damage their family's well-being.

We generally look at mothers working as a positive and noble thing. I recently pondered the opposite side: What are the potential costs of having two incomes on a family?

The Cost of Dual Incomes

• Parents become more competitive
• Parents are less available to their children
• Dad gets sense of "failure" for not being able to provide enough for his family
• Couples put off having children, which may lead to having less children and stunting their family's growth in that way
• The couple's standard of living increases, and they do not need to communicate as much about finances
• Many times, after costs of sending a mother to work, couples discover that they are not making very much money, and sometimes they are even making less money than they did before

Father's are so essential, and it is important for a father to perform his duties in a family. What DOES a father do in his parenting? According to the proclamation, a father's duties are to provide for, preside over, and protect his family. He is charged to provide the essentials for living. I have also noticed that fathers introduce boundaries to his children and naturally receive respect from children. This is a God-given attribute that I admire in my husband. 

I'll leave y'all with a question I have been pondering:
When mother's sacrifice time and money away from their family to get an education for the sake of preparing for disaster, are they preparing and enabling that disaster rather than nurturing their family? Take divorce, for example. Would that extra time and money be preparing for divorce, or be preparing for a lifetime with their family? Prophets have counseled us that we need to be prepared, but how much time and effort needs to go into that preparation? How do we know?