Young People Ask . . .

Why Isn’t Mom Here When I Get Home?

AT ABOUT 3:30 p.m. every school day, young Bruce arrives home. His mother, though, is not there to greet him. She holds down a job in New York City’s financial district; nor is his father there to inquire about the day’s events. He has a full-time job on a newspaper. “I have my own key,” Bruce explains, “and I let myself in and start on my homework.”

Bruce is a “latchkey child,” a term used in the United States to describe a child left to fend for himself until his parents get home. Fortunately for Bruce, his period of solitude is a short one. Soon his grandmother arrives with his younger sister. And a friendly next-door neighbor is always there should an emergency arise.

Once upon a time, latchkey children were the product of poverty. Nowadays they are found, keys dangling around their necks, both in crime-filled ghettos and in affluent suburbs. Some estimate that there are from two to four million latchkey children, ages 7 to 13, in the United States alone! The reason? More and more women have secular jobs. Often they are simply unable to find adequate or affordable child care.

Children Alone

Says Bruce: “Sometimes I like being alone. It’s a lot quieter in the house then.” However, not all youngsters are happy with their empty home. The Denver Post reported on the findings of psychologist Lynette Long. After interviewing 38 young latchkey children, Dr. Long called her findings “depressing, grim and, in some cases, shocking.” The reason? The children suffered extreme loneliness. “They are under strict orders not to go outside and not to have anybody in,” explained Long. In addition, “about one-third have very high fears . . . associated with people breaking in.”

Twelve-year-old Gerald reveals another common fear. Asked what he thinks about coming home to an empty house, he said: “Oh, it’s not so bad, I guess. It’s quiet. I turn on the TV. That keeps me company.” But when asked if he misses his mother or his father, he replied: “I guess. Yeah, I do miss them. . . . Well, you feel sorta funny when you go to another guy’s house and his mom’s there. You maybe sorta wonder if your own mom cares about you. But I’m sure she does.”

A teenager named Tonya expressed similar anxieties: “Mom was always there for me when I was younger. I’d come home from school and we’d have cookies and milk and talk about our day. Since she started working, I come home to cookies and milk and an empty house. By the time Mom gets in from work, she’s too busy to spend time with me. And after dinner, she’s too tired.”

If you are an older, perhaps more responsible teenager, you may dislike your mother’s working for quite a different reason: the additional responsibilities placed upon you. You may resent having to care for younger brothers or sisters when you want to be with your friends, or having to cook instead of playing ball.

‘Why can’t Mom just be home when I get back from school?’ you might wonder.

Why She Works

Diane is a single parent who has held secular employment since her son was two months old. Pursuing a career or becoming a “liberated” woman was hardly her motive for entering the job market, nor did she do it because she didn’t love her son. Her reason? “To make ends meet,” explains Diane. Yes, in order to care for her young son, Diane says she has often had to accept low-paying jobs that she really hated.

By and large, mothers who take on secular work have done so for economic reasons. After all, parents have a God-given obligation to provide for their children. (1 Timothy 5:8) And even in Bible times, “a capable wife” would engage in such activities as manufacturing and trade to bring in needed income. (Proverbs 31:10, 24) True, back then, work centered around the home, and it was thus easier for parents to work and care for their children at the same time.

Nevertheless, young people do not always understand the tremendous economic pressures parents today feel. In the affluent United States, for example, youngsters routinely demand expensive running shoes, personal computers, and stereo equipment as if these were their birthright, as if parents were bank owners. But because we live in “critical times hard to deal with,” providing just the necessities of life often is an enormous struggle for parents.​—2 Timothy 3:1.

In the United States, between the years 1970 and 1983 the cost of clothing nearly doubled. The cost of food, housing, and transportation virtually tripled! (Statistical Abstract of the United States 1984) Many fathers simply do not earn enough money to keep up with rising costs. The result? Record numbers of women have taken on secular work. A report by a research organization called Worldwatch Institute says that, worldwide, the number of women involved in secular work “rose from 344 million to 576 million between 1950 and 1975”!

So if your mother is out working at a job, the odds are she feels she has no choice. There is no reason to conclude that her love for you has cooled. Indeed, the fact that she leaves you alone​—or entrusts you with the care of your younger siblings—​may indicate how much your parents trust you.

Being Supportive

Of course, understanding why mom works doesn’t mean you necessarily like it. No doubt her having a job causes you any number of problems: late meals, occasional bouts of loneliness, anxiety. You could easily make yourself miserable by dwelling on such difficulties. On the other hand, the Bible says: “There is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving.” (Acts 20:35) Yes, a surefire way to get over self-pity is to concern yourself with giving support to your parents and helping them.

For example, consider what a Nigerian newspaper called the Sunday Sketch said: “UN statistics reveal that women do two-thirds of the world’s work whilst men do one-third. . . . It has also been concluded . . . that women are in a permanent state of fatigue and exhaustion largely caused by overwork which affects their health.” While this may especially be true in Third World countries, women in the affluent West often are similarly exhausted by trying to fill the role of both family provider and mother.

Are you sensitive to this fact? Do you offer a word of encouragement and appreciation when you observe that your mother is tired from a long day’s work? (Proverbs 25:11) Have you tried offering to help out around the house? Or do you perform chores grudgingly? (Compare 2 Corinthians 9:7.) Said one working mother: “When my son doesn’t cooperate, this leaves me frustrated. And when I come home and things are not done, I get very despondent. It takes away the joy from the things I want to do, like making a nice meal for him.”

The book Working Couples further observed: “Most working parents are greeted, as soon as they open the front door, with a barrage of questions, requests, and calls for attention by their children. . . . That golden hour at day’s end is often a time of fatigue, hurry, and frayed dispositions.” How about holding off your questions and demands long enough to let your mom or dad have a few well-deserved minutes to unwind?

Granted, coming home to an empty house may not be ideal. But if you ‘keep an eye, not in personal interest upon just your own matters, but also in personal interest upon those of your parents,’ you can make the most of the situation. A future article will show how some youths have done this.​—Philippians 2:4.

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If your mother is out working at a job, the odds are she feels she has no choice