Let me preface this writing to say that:

Many of my “progressive” ideas, inspirations or philosophies are not necessarily applicable to the now but for supporting and creating a new “now”.

In our culture, a dollar sign proves your value or worth.

Whether its true or not, we are conditioned to believe that how much money you make or your social status/class determines your worth and the amount of respect you are given, and even in some cases, what rules/laws you must follow or which ones do or do not apply to you.

Money equals power, validity, a “say” in something, a choice, or the lack of.

When someone doesn’t get paid in money, their value goes unseen and unrecognized.

Although the traditional family system is changing, (father as monetary provider and mother making/keeping the home/raising children), we can still see how this dynamic has kept women of the home unseen and undervalued.

When a mother’s endless job is not monetarily validated, it isn’t even seen as a job or a workload; or worse, it isn’t even seen.

Despite it being the *most* valuable work on our planet, ahem, raising the next generation to be conscious, capable, compassionate human beings, a mother’s infinite responsibilities are often invisible, because without dollar signs attached to it, it is not validated as worthwhile to our societal construct.

Even in some marriages, women are made to feel useless and worthless because of the lack of cultural acknowledgement, (due to lack of a specified income.)

Interestingly, a woman can do the same job/role at a daycare facility or as a nanny and earn an income but a woman/mother does the same job at home and there is no longer a monetary value attached to the work and no longer a value placed on her contribution.

We may know and feel that it is worthy but it is not physically acknowledged by our culture.

And so, women eventually decided to prove their worth and capability by going out and getting a “real” education, jobs, careers and bringing in the dollar signs they had always earned and deserved.

But theres a catch.

They are also still primarily responsible to keep and make a home too. They are still the primary caretakers of the children and the household AND feel the need to provide for the home in order to see their own value and contribution as REAL and worthwhile to themselves and to the world.

This isn’t likely a concious effort, its likely subconscious, because it’s a part of our upbringing, it’s been ingrained into us that money = value so in order to be valuable, we must make money.

I wonder what it would be like in a culture where a mother made money for the raising of children and maintenance of a household and all endless extensions to this role. Not because I believe that it is money that makes us worthy (we are worthy as we are alive) but because a woman would feel just as supported in her choice of “job” (if she so chose), as a man does, and this would also translate into a contribution that was valued and recognized in society as opposed to almost blatantly ignored.

* This would also likely give more acknowledgement to the family unit and the needs of a family because once money is involved, our society would suddenly notice the validity of the family unit and support of such and the once invisible asset would finally be visibly noticed and prioritized. *

Or we could do away with money altogether and live as it once was with everyone earning their keep according to their natural skill or talent. (Some men go out to hunt, some are the village doctors or wisemen; some women watch the children while others garden or cook or make clothes or baskets).

And in this way everyone is also equal and the contributions of the man, woman or otherwise are all equally valuable and worthwhile to the whole.

When we insist that a woman or mother’s role is honored through validating it’s worth in some physical form/manner, we are validating the importance of a woman to the family dynamic and to the greater good of society.

We are validating the woman as equally important to the man, or the father.

And through culturally reorganizing in this way, we can eventually shift the focus from a patriarchal society to an egalitarian one where everyone feels equally acknowledged and wholly supported as a human being.