The Spiritual Economics Of Staying Home With Kids

Let me begin by saying that, unfortunately, I do love things. For example, while I typically am not one to prioritize name brands or the latest trends, I do enjoy having a lot of clothes to choose from to express how I’m feeling on any given day. In fact, for the last two years of high school, I notoriously wore a different outfit every single day. Although I managed this by paying next-to-nothing for unique and retro pieces at garage sales, estate sales, and thrift shops, as an adult with two young kids I am regularly reminded that not only is stuff like this usually not worth the money, it’s also quite simply not what’s truly important in life. So instead of shopping with the change of seasons like I normally would, this year I’ve decided to “shop my closet,” mostly by getting rid of things I never wear so I can explore and use what I already have in new ways. 

This re-prioritization of soul over stuff has gotten me thinking about what it means to be a capitalist while also being anti-consumerist and anti-materialist. I’ve been noticing the way that our lifestyles can reveal how we orient ourselves first philosophically and then economically. If we follow the way money moves in someone’s life, we can see where they place importance: on people or on things, on generosity or on themselves, on impressing others or living modestly. 

Motherhood underlines the areas of life even the best economic outcomes simply can’t dictate.

Both of my maternal grandparents fled Eastern Europe—where their families had lived for generations—during the aftermath of World War II, when Yugoslavia and Hungary, among other nations, succumbed to communism. Productive mills like ones owned by my great grandparents were seized by the communist government and put to no use whatsoever, and many innocent civilians, including some of my own relatives, died in communist detainment camps. My grandparents both escaped with their lives and the few simple possessions they could carry as they fled their homes. They ended up in the United States where they met and started their lives over from nothing. I am grateful for their bravery in leaving their homelands, coming penniless to a new country where they didn’t know the language, and, through hard, physical work, provided a good life for their children and grandchildren, including me.

With a background like this, you can understand that although I don’t claim to be an economist by any measure of the word, I do have an appreciation for capitalism and an understanding that while the values of socialism, communism, and Marxism can sound good at times, they are fated to fail when anyone actually puts them into practice. But far from idolizing money, as socialists often imagine capitalists do, the focus of my life has actually always been elsewhere. As a singer/songwriter, I’ve long been aware that if my goal is to make money, music really isn’t where I should spend my time and energy. Yet for some reason I’ve put in countless hours practicing, writing, performing, and recording music without seeing any significant financial benefit. When you’re an artist, you know that while money and recognition might be nice, they really aren’t the goal: true artists create whether everyone or just God is watching. Creating itself is what drives artists because art is a spiritual, rather than an economic, matter. 

When I decided to stay home with my first son and cut back from teaching private music lessons full time to just part time, this was also a spiritual choice. To save face with my girl boss friends and acquaintances, I would mention that daycare might have cost more than the pay cut I took by giving up more than half of my students, but really it was a decision I made for entirely spiritual reasons, not financial ones. I wanted to be the one raising my baby and shaping his soul, not a stranger who didn’t love him, who wasn’t even meant to see him as the apple of her eye like I did, and who simply couldn’t offer him the nurturing of a mother, as messy as that can look day-to-day.

There are many who argue that having kids is too expensive of an endeavor to even take on these days, and though I recently explored how it might actually be more expensive in the long run to choose not to have children, expense is ultimately beside the point. Anyone taking stock of their life and rather than counting up the blessings of love, the lessons of trials, and the beauty of simple moments spent in the company of those we most cherish, counts up their pile of gold instead is so far off the path of a deeper experience of humanity that it’s almost impossible to help them see that it’s really not about the money. 

Despite the average girl boss’s stick-it-to-the-man slogans, she is actually capitalism's darling.

Now that I have another son and teach even fewer hours, I feel more like a stay-at-home-mom than ever before. I spend my days singing silly songs, making sure food gets into tiny mouths, and driving around looking for construction sites for my toddler while my baby naps in the other seat. And yes, I look for every small opportunity to save money, like shopping less and fighting my innate consumeristic and materialistic urges to prioritize saving for my growing family’s future.

Meanwhile, the girl bosses around me, while subscribing to a feminist and thereby Marxist worldview, often choose a lifestyle that speaks otherwise: buying luxury items, taking regular vacations just to get away and indulge in restaurants, and all the while seeking the next promotion or the next pay increase. In short, despite the average girl boss’s stick-it-to-the-man slogans, she is actually capitalism's darling. Her goals and her world revolve around money in ways mine simply couldn’t because motherhood has my eyes glued elsewhere. 

When the materialist ideology of Marxism strips everything away that actually matters—family, faith, productivity and meaningful contribution—what remains is a squabble over power and property. Instead, if we allow capitalism to fulfill its economic role while leaving our hearts and minds focused on higher ideals, we can balance our humanity and the good of our souls with a system that allows us all the most freedom to thrive and prosper together. Unlike the choice to put career first, choosing to stay home with my kids has helped me value capitalism for what it does as well as what it does not do. While it may be the best economic system for human flourishing and civilizational advancement, motherhood underlines the areas of life even the best economic outcomes simply can’t dictate: the love we have for our families, the way we choose to spend our time, and the meaning of our lives.