Unraveling the Mystery of Keeper of the Home!

Today we will be be Unraveling the Mystery of Keeper of the Home. Why is being a “Keeper of the Home” important, and while we are at it, what is a keeper of the home?

In the video and this post, we’ll look into the significance of this centuries-old phrase, we will explore the historical responsibilities and characteristics of a Keeper of the Home, and find out if this role can positively impact family dynamics and relationships, as well as work to maintain a harmonious and organized household today. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, a working mom, a homemaker, or simply someone who wants to create a more peaceful living space, this video is for you.

The History of the “Keeper of the Home”

Did you know that the concept of being a ‘Keeper of the Home’ dates back centuries?

The phrase comes from Titus 2:5, where the early Christian, young wives with children were to be encouraged by the older women, “to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”.

When this verse was written over 2,000 years ago, the world was very different then it is today. Here is a quote from the STRONG’S GREEK CONCORDANCE explaining what the Greco-Roman society was like,

In the Greco-Roman world, the household was the basic unit of society, and the role of women as keepers of the home was highly valued. The household was not only a place of residence but also a center of economic activity, education, and religious practice. Women were expected to manage the home efficiently, ensuring the well-being of the family and the proper upbringing of children. This role was seen as complementary to the man’s role as the provider and protector.

But that is not all. In additional concordances, like Strong’s, the keeper of the home also can include being “a guard” of the home.

What adds to the intrigue is looking up what the word “home” meant in ancient times.

According to the Strong’s Lexicon Concordance, the word home comes from “oikos”. Here is what it means;

The Greek word “oikos” primarily refers to a physical structure or dwelling place, such as a house. It can also denote the people who reside within that structure, thus extending its meaning to “household” or “family.”

Throughout history, women have been at the forefront of this role, taking on the responsibility of managing the household, raising children, and supporting their loved ones.

Why is this?

And why in the Bible does it command young women to be keepers at home, and not the men? Is it a case of good old fashioned misogyny like we have been conditioned to believe? Is it the patriarchy?

Or…is it possible there is actually some science behind this centuries old Bible verse? Let’s explore this!

When The Keeper of the Home Quits

Let’s first get an idea of the value of a Keeper of the Home. I think the best way to get an idea of a Keeper of the homes value is by contrasting this position with the absence of a keeper of the home.

In today’s fast-paced world where women have been swept up into proving they can do everything men can do, the value and importance of having a pillar of strength in our households, someone who keeps everything together and ensures that our families are happy and thriving has become a foreign concept.

I knew a woman who grew up during the women’s liberation movement’s in the 60’s. She despised the homemaking skills her mother brought her up with and talked often of how she hated that life. She had decided that in her life she would have none of that. She did not value motherhood, or wifehood. She encourage her granddaughters not to get married and have families.

Her home was always such a mess that visitors would have to clear a place to sit. Her husband was often working, and would have to come home and make dinner. The messes everywhere stressed him tremendously. Their children fought, and grew up with tremendous trauma and dysfunction that they never fully recovered from. She wasn’t into making meals for them very often, so they grew up with eating disorders and health problems from malnutrition. The children grew to have skewed perspectives of the world, and some were incapable of being involved parents in large portions of their own kids lives.

When she was old, her lack of dedication to her family came back around to haunt her. Only one of her many children would come and see her in the nursing home. She died, estranged from the two of her other living children.

This story isn’t uncommon. Kids that grow up in a home where there was no keeper suffer as I’ve pointed out in my article, What Is A Homemaker.

The fact is, anyone that lives in a home needs to know some skills of being a keeper of the home.

Here is an example of why? Have you ever met someone who perhaps is successful in their career or job, but who cannot cook a meal from scratch? Instead they rely on expensive take out or ready made meals they can pull from the freezer and heat in the microwave? Or maybe they can’t do laundry, or can’t clean worth a darn, and expect others to do this for them? You can probably bet that either that person did not have a keeper of the home in their lives, or else the keeper of the home didn’t train them how to care for themselves.

The cold facts of life are the SOMEBODY has to make the food, SOMEBODY has to do the laundry, SOMEBODY has to do the cleaning. It’s a basic principle of life. People need food, and clothing, and housing.

If everybody is “too good” to do any of these things, then who will?

What Does It Mean to be a Keeper of the Home Today?

I think that exploring and understanding this role in terms of today matters because as I pointed out above the difference can make or break our families. I think we can all agree that without someone to manage the family and home, family life can quickly become chaotic and tumultus, and dare I say dysfunctional?

2000 years ago, society was set up quite differently then it is today though. Unfortunately today, women have more to balance in a way.

One example is more than half the people living in the United States don’t even own a home, the bank does.

If you are going to be a keeper of the home, you kinda need a home to keep, that you know you’ll actually be able to actually keep and not lose in a foreclosure. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to have a family on one income and even get a home.

So a lot of the women today are trying to balance being a Keeper of the Home and jobs. And everywhere we look, we see women so stressed, burdened, and crying out over the loads mentally and physically.

You can’t take a trip on social media without seeing women complaining about these loads, and that the family load isn’t equal. “Everything always falls on the woman” we hear.

Why is it that the bulk of home responsibility, the majority of all things related to the kids and home or the mental load, it falls mostly on the woman of the house in most homes?

I think a couple things need to be considered here.

The first one is, is this a new thing?

If we look back at the Bible to around 3,000 years ago (give or take), we have the Proverbs 31 woman as an example. The woman kept her home, took care of her family, and held down a job. It’s amazing to read all she balanced!

So apparently this is nothing new. Women have had to balance multiple plates for centuries.

So what’s changed?

I think that part of the problem is the way we are viewing our jobs as keepers of the home. Society has taught us there is honor and glamor in having a career that we put above all else. In reading about the Proverbs 31 woman, I think a key takeaway is that although she had a job and had many spinning plates, it was not for herself, it was all for her family.

Another point is society has taught us that there is shame and dishonor in being a homemaker, a stay at home mom, or “just a housewife”. There is no honor to being a keeper of the home like there used to be.

Society has also taught us that we need “more”. We need tummy tucks and jug jobs so it isn’t evident we ever gave birth, we need false lashes the latest expensive hair coloring trend, botox and new sofa’s, pinterest homes on Nob Hill, and shiny cars and whatever else the media sells.

I’m not going to tell you that life should be easy, the Bible tells us that we will struggle in this life and world. But the struggle is a whole lot worse when we don’t value the right things, and instead value unnecessary things for vanity purposes.

Once you learn to trim the fat, so to speak, live without the things you don’t actually need, the load becomes a LOT lighter.

Still, not necessarily “light” though. Many of us women have to work along aside our husbands just for the basics.

And so why is it women are the ones getting stuck with as much as they are to run when it comes to kids and home?

I’ve hashed it over a thousand ways in my brain, over approximately 312 weeks (that’s 6 years).

Here’s what I’ve concluded.

It’s science.

There have been study after study done showing differences between most male and most female brains. THIS STUDY at WebMD points out that women’s brains have an advantage of pulling together information from different sources and drawing conclusions, and that their brains go from left to right brain thinking helping them excel in intuition. There have also been studies done showing that women have higher levels of oxytocin, making them better nurturers and empathizers.

So the basic bottom line is, in most cases women are simply better at this home and family stuff. Nobody can fulfill the role of a keeper of the home as beautifully, as efficiently, as warmly, as perfectly, and as splendidly as a woman.

We women have a way of mentally knowing where all the kids are at, the condition of every room of the house, whether or not the dogs have been fed, how many appointments the kids have this week, who needs help with school, and which leftovers need to be eaten next before they rot. And we can file all these thoughts effectively through our brain in a 60 second time period.

Men? They just can’t. Kind of like how they can’t give birth.

The reason the mental load keeps falling on us when it comes to the home life is because our brains are better at it, and the men’s brains can’t do it like we can.

So in a way, it’s kind of abusive for us to keep expecting them to do something they simply can’t do.

There is PLENTY they can do though. And that brings me to my next point.

There Is A Balance!

The phrase is “keeper of the home”, not “slave of the home”, not “maid of the home”, and not “servant of the home”.

Another meaning for “keeper of the home” is “manager of the home”.

This includes managing people, not doing everything for them. Remember, the old verse said we are to be “teaching” our children?

I recently heard of an overwhelmed mom, when she went down the list of all her weekend responsibilities one of them included cleaning her teenage kids rooms.

Mama’s, if we are doing more than our share we are not doing anyone any favors!

Also, if you need your husbands help, which you will if you have children, chances are all you need to do is tell him what needs to be done around the home/with the kids.

But you probably can’t expect him to automatically know all the in’s and out’s of all needs to be done when especially if he’s gone working all week.

If you cannot expect your husband and children that are old enough to help pull the loads around the home that are too heavy, then it’s time to evaluate all you have going on, and have some heart to heart talks with the members of the family.

If you family is unresponsive and or treating you like a maid or a slave then counseling might be in order.

When a family is young, most everything will fall on the woman. I think this is why Titus is specific to YOUNG women, young women don’t have older kids who can clean up after themselves and pull their load.

But as the family grows and the keeper of the home trains her family in good habits, the family does become more self reliant.

A common situation is around the late 30’s, women begin to hit perimenopause. When that happens, changes in her body, brain, and hormones cause her to lose the ability to do all the things she used to. If she’s trained her family in life skills, this isn’t too bad.

If she has not, then it becomes a bad situation for everyone because everyone will be expecting her to manage as usual, and she can’t.

Did you know divorce rates skyrocket through the peri menopause years, and that more often than not are initiated by the woman? I think this is important to take seriously.

It is so important that we “teach our children” and love our family like Titus 2 teaches, and communicate with our family.

If you are in this boat of dealing with too much and a family that is just not responsive though, all is not lost, it will just take a lot of patience and communicating and reminding to get the family to begin pulling their loads and possibly counseling.

Today, a woman has the remarkable ability to be a keeper of the home, and hold a job, just like the Proverbs 31 woman. If she is doing both, it’s especially crucial that families learn teamwork and how to work together.

Conclusion

I believe the The Keeper of the Home role is STILL the glue that holds families together. Nobody has the power like a keeper of the home to do what she does. A keeper has the power to create strong families that make strong communities that hold societies together.

It’s a position that carries little or not recognition and it can be thankless for many years so a keeper of the home has to teach those around her boundaries, and how to treat her.

In time the rewards can bring quite the return, but in the meantime we have to remind ourselves to take authority in this role and realize how important it is. We are the gatekeepers of our homes in a time where homes need gatekeepers maybe more than ever.

The Keeper of the Home is more than just a title; it’s a symbol of love, care, and dedication to our family’s and to God. It’s a role that carries with it sacrifice, unconditional love, some of the hardest work you’ll ever do, as we teach our families the most important road to walk of all, which is the road that lead our families to Christ.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and if you’d like to explore more Keeper of the Home motivation, be sure to check out my other videos.

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