Teaching Our Daughters To Love Motherhood

Precious Moment
by Hulis Mavruk


I have been really blessed by the Raising Homemakers website, and today I want to share about ways to teach our daughters to love motherhood. Because as Titus 2 mothers, that is one of the things we are to teach the younger women (our daughters), to love their children.

How do we do that?

For me, I think about the biggest challenges of being a mother for myself. They are:

1. Patience

2. Desiring too much "me time." A.k.a. Selfishness

3. Selfishness

4. Training/Discipline

The common attitude among many women, and people in general, is that children are a burden. It is implied in the many remarks that people make about having children, like how their children drive them crazy, why would you want more than one or two, how they can't wait for their children to leave the house, etc.

Some people say that raising children is easy, and that it is not rocket science to raise good children. I think that's great for those people, and I wish that I could join their ranks. But, I am not at that station in life yet. For me, right now, I think that motherhood is hard.

There is a great post at Generation Cedar about the blessings of having children here. It was quite thought provoking, and I came away from it thinking, the reason a lot of women do not embrace having a lot of children is because it is HARD! At least for me it is. It is a daily struggle to fight my selfish nature and be the servant that God wants me to be. I want my daughter to enjoy motherhood, but what can I do as she grows up to prepare her for the joys and challenges of motherhood?


Our Little Angel
M.C. Wrey


The main thing that I can think of besides her committing her life to Jesus Christ is learning to

SERVE OTHERS.

Motherhood is about serving others, and I think the more of a servant spirit one has, the easier it is to embrace motherhood. Serving others helps to combat selfishness. The more you do it, the more natural it becomes. Serving the needs of others is key to being a great mother. Especially with mothering young children, you must anticipate and take care of their needs, even when it is inconvenient for you. And, that was a hard pill to swallow, and sometimes still is. I now have a smile on my face when my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night and disturbs my sleep. Thankfully it doesn't happen often, but I've learned to embrace the inconvenience and snuggle with my baby for a few moments and lay her back down.

I think it is important for mothers to help cultivate a servant's spirit and heart in our daughters. Doing so will help mold daughters who anticipate the needs of and delights to serve the needs of her family, whether it's helping her mother around the house, taking over the cooking, caring for her siblings, giving her mother a break, and just finding ways to be an asset to her family.

I think it's important, too, to make sure that our children volunteer outside of the home and serve others. The few times I did so as a teenager made me feel so great inside to know that I was helping others. What a blessing to volunteer on a regular basis so that it is a habit to always think of the need of others, and not just focus on our own wants and needs.

I will end with an excerpt of a great post from another blog, Virtuous Living. A woman with 12 children tells of how she learned to embrace motherhood, and all of the children God wanted her and her husband to have.

She said,

It is true, that when you trust the Lord you are blessed in abundance. Children truly are an heritage of the Lord and happy is the man who's quiver is full of them. I would never change a thing. I have no regrets, nor do I feel I have neglected the ME in myself. Whosoever will find himself will lose it, and whosoever will lose himself shall find it. That's what I did. I put the ME away and tried with all my heart to do as the Lord bid.