A Candidate for the World’s Most Clueless Husband (and a Rebuttal)

By Jim Faughn     As Mothers Day approaches, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a lady during which she mentioned her late father-in-law. Somehow the subject of retirement came up. During that part of the conversation, she related to me something he had told his wife when he retired. The following may not be a word-for-word quote, but it is pretty close: Now, I’ll get to do what you’ve been doing all these years I’ve been working – absolutely nothing.     My first reaction (which I think I might have actually said aloud) was that surely no man could be that clueless. Actually “clueless” might be the polite version of what I said. The actual word could very well have been “stupid.”     Surely there would only be a very, very small minority of husbands who would think so little of their wives that they would belittle them in the way this man did. At least I sincerely hope that would be the case whether the wife has chosen a career outside the home or has chosen to stay at home.     I thought that, since the “stay-at-home wife” was the subject of the discussion I had, I would offer the following as a rebuttal to this man’s thinking.     I found the following on salary.com. They did a study during the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020, but the figures were not much different from what they had reported prior to the pandemic.      According to that website, they “…surveyed more than 19,000 moms since the start of the pandemic and have estimated the value of a mother’s work by tracking real-time market prices of all the jobs that moms perform.”     What follows is their list of positions/responsibilities that wives/mothers have: Chief Financial Officer Chief Operating Officer Logistics Analyst I Housekeeper Laundry Manager Van Driver Public School Teacher Facilities Manager Meeting/Event Planner I Kitchen Manager Assistant Athletics Director Staff Nurse – RN I Bookkeeper Physical Therapy Supervisor Nutrition Director Consumer Loan Officer I Fast Food Cook Server Conflicts Manager Interior Designer I Fundraising Coordinator The website’s estimate of the grand total of the salary was (without any additional benefits) — $184,820 I’m one of those people who is inclined to think that the truth is often somewhere in the middle of two extremes. I’m aware that this figure could (or could not) be exaggerated somewhat. At the same time, I’m very certain that the value of a wife/mother is nowhere near zero.      You may have read the following about the woman described in Proverbs 31 by terms such as “a virtuous woman/wife,” “a wife of noble character,” “an excellent wife,” and other similar phrases depending on the translation of the Bible you happen to be using. The wise man who was inspired to pen those words “calculated her worth” as being “far above rubies,” “more precious than jewels,” etc.     I think that I will go with that assessment rather than the one of “Mr. Clueless.”

- Jim Faughn serves as and elder for the Central Church of Christ in Paducah KY. Be sure to visit the following for more great articles: Faughn Family blog, A Legacy of Faith