Staying home with impunity

impunity. If doing something usually results in punishment, but you do it with impunity, you will not be punished for the deed. ... The noun, impunity, comes from the Latin roots im- ("not") plus poena ("punishment"), a root which has also produced the word pain. Impunity, then, is the freedom from punishment or pain.

So, most of us have had to stay home because of the Corona Virus. Homemaking, home cooked meals, bread making and other homemaking skills have come to the fore and we have been forced to reconnect with our family. Depending on the state of the marriage, most marriages have been reenergised as well. 

Homeschooling here in Australia has seen a lot of mothers scratching their heads as they tried to come to terms with new teaching methods since they were at school. Homeschooling and running a home plus often tending to younger children is looked at with new respect for not only teachers, but homeschooling mothers. It is good, but often difficult.

Mothers who work outside the home are encouraged to work from home if at all possible, and this has presented them with more problems. Childcare, domestic duties and so on cannot be compartmentalised: the poor working mother has suddenly got to juggle it all..

It is quite ironic that once we stay at home wives and mothers were looked down upon, but now are held in esteem because we do stay home.  Not for the first time, too, mothers who work outside the home are remembering how much work they did actually do at home before they worked in outside employment. And according to statistics, they are often quite prepared to stay home if it were possible...

Staying home at the moment with quarantine in place is wearing a bit thin- especially for those folks whose job has ceased due to infection worries, or whose business has failed for the same reason. It is increasingly harder to find money to keep bread and butter on the table.

In an effort to stop the spread of Rona, the powers that be have decided that staying at home is the new vogue and that those who don't face fines and/or prison..

This new development has seen women encouraged to stay home instead of being looked down upon as a non productive member of society. Suddenly we are hailed as heroes...

Perhaps when Rona has run its' course and workplaces open again, we will look back and fondly remember the time when housewives were appreciated and we were staying at home with impunity.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Come, my people, enter your chambers, And shut your doors behind you; Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment, Until the indignation is past. Isaiah 26:20