A Mother's Degree is Not Wasted in the Home

I have a lot of opinions on different parenting styles that do not wish to discuss, but there is one parenting style that really clicked for me personally when we talked about it in my class a couple weeks ago. The question that was asked was "If a stay at home mother has a degree, is it wasted?". The reason why this interested me so much was because of the fact that my mother was a stay-at-home mother while also getting her degree. She had gone to college for I believe it was somewhere around a year before she pregnant with me. She went to live with my grandmother and aunt at that point. While she was pregnant with me, she met who was later going to be my stepfather. During their time together they had my brother and sister and my stepfather made it clear that my mother needed to stay at home. I am not sure if it was before or after they divorced that my mother received her degree from the University of Redlands. I remember being very young and watching my mother from the crowd of thousands receiving the degree she had been working on for years. After my stepfather left, my mother had very little to work with and it was very hard for us for a very long time. My siblings and I grew up knowing that we were expected to go to college, my mother ingrained it in us since birth. Not only did we see the struggle, but we saw how a degree could contribute to a household. My mother is extremely intelligent. When she was a stay-at-home mother, she handled all of the finances. She learn much of that from what schooling she had at the time. On top of that, my mother's love and pursuit in science facilitated my interest in science to go way beyond what it would have if she hadn't had that schooling. When I was in elementary school I participated in every science fair and I got first place in all, but one of them. This influence that my mother had on me was because she had a degree and she knew how important it is to have one; both to be able teach your children and in case something happens to your husband. Many people believe that when a woman with a degree decides to stay at home with her children that all of those years and that money spent on a degree are going to go to waste. This is completely wrong. There are so many things that can benefit a household if that mother has a degree of any kind. Mothers and fathers are there to teach their children, and a stay-at-home mother who has a degree is such a wonderful example to her children. I grew up with a mother that had a degree and used it to her advantage while raising her children. Both of my siblings and I are very successful. My brother got accepted into multiple universities and now goes to MIT. My sister is a straight A AP student in high school headed towards college. And I got into 9 schools and decided to come to BYU-Idaho. I have such a strong testimony that a mother having a degree is a blessing not only to her, but her family and I am striving to finish my degree before I have children so that I can have that same influence on them.