Measuring Our Worth as Mothers

I do not know if you are a bit like me, but as a full-time working mommy, there are times that I feel a monumental sense of guilt.  Guilt - because I am not home raising my children but rather must entrust them to the care of other women.   Yet, this has always been the case for me.  Living in Southern California lends itself to almost a requirement that both parents work full-time in order to provide for the family.  The cost of living out here is outrageous – if I didn’t work, our family would literally be living in the ghetto or the barrio (you can’t find cheap housing for a family of 9 anywhere).  I don’t think that would be God’s best for our family.  Obviously my husband and I love our children so much that we strive and sacrifice in order to provide them the necessities of life as well as some fun stuff like music lessons, camps, sports, etc.

Although I live in an expensive area of the U.S., I still sometimes feel like I don’t do enough for my kids.  By that statement I don’t mean that I physically do things like cleaning their rooms, making the beds (most of them are old enough to do such things for themselves and it’s their chores!) but the guilt comes in because I am ineffective when it comes to my household chores such as keeping up with laundry, dusting, cleaning those nasty, disgusting bathrooms and other such “motherly” duties. 

Recently I was speaking with a good friend and expressing my feelings of guilt.  She is also a full-time working mommy, with three children, and she said that we mothers tend to measure our worth by what we do or produce.  If the laundry baskets are not completely empty at the end of each day, we failed.  If the dinner we cooked was not a gourmet meal but maybe came from a frozen prepared meal, we failed.  If the kids brought home bad grades on their progress reports, we failed because we did not help them enough with the homework they didn’t understand.  If the house is messy, we failed.  If we didn’t get to spend as much time with the kids that day as we wanted to, we failed.

All of these thoughts weight heavily on my mind weekly because I do measure my worth as a mother in terms of how my kids are doing academically, socially, behaviorally, and spiritually.  My purpose as a mother is to love my children, train them to become effective citizens while at the same time teaching them to love God and those around them.  Oh how I know I fail daily because I don’t meet these expectations I have placed on myself and this is where my guilt comes and presses down on me.  My kids do have their chores but I find that I feel most accomplished when I have helped them in some way or when I have totally emptied out the 9 different laundry baskets that are in my garage.  I feel like “Wonder Woman” mommy when my chores are done and I have helped my kids.  Is that so bad? Shouldn’t I feel more accomplished at home than I do at work?  Isn’t my first job “Mommy” and not “High School Spanish Teacher”?  What do you think?  Should we mommies measure our worth by what do for our kids?  How should we measure our worth/value as mothers?