Candace Cameron Bure says stay-at-home mothers are ‘not valued by society’

Many millennial moms grew up watching Candace Cameron Bure on Full House, looking up to her character D.J. Tanner. Now, many women still look up to Bure, who has returned to acting after raising her three children, who are all now 18 and older.

In 2020, Bure is known as much for her faith as her acting, and her latest collection of lifestyle products for Hallmark’s Daybreak brand was inspired by scripture, specifically Colossians 3:14. The line includes everything from T-shirts to Bibles, and carries a message that is needed in 2020: “love over all.”

On the latest episode of The Motherly Podcast, Cameron Bure tells Motherly co-founder Liz Tenety that love, faith and family have guided her journey through motherhood and how she wants people to stop devaluing the experience and importance of motherhood by describing women as “just” stay-at-home moms.

Speaking to Tenety about the time in her life between her early Full House fame and more recent career highlights on The View and in many Hallmark Channel movies, Cameron Burre explains that while she loved being a stay-at-home parent, she always felt that society saw her as someone failing to live up to her potential.

“It was so hard. I felt worthless,” Cameron Bure explains, describing the time in her life when her children were little and her days were spent changing diapers and cooking. She continues: “I felt like I had been gifted all of these things in life, whatever that is, whatever skills God gave me. And I thought, ‘I’m not using them’.”

She wasn’t working as an actress at the time, but that’s what millions of people knew her as. And as a recognizable and friendly face, Cameron Bure often found herself fielding questions from strangers while she was out grocery shopping or pushing a stroller through the mall.

People wanted to know what the girl from Full House was doing these days. Full of dread and forcing as big a smile as she could muster, Cameron Bure would explain that she was a mom, raising her kids.

“And it was like, they were always disappointed and which in turn made me feel even more like, oh my gosh, being a mom is… I’m ‘just’ a mom. Like this is not valued by society.”

The work she was doing every day in her home wasn’t the kind of work she could put on a resume or an IMBD profile. So people didn’t see it as real work or valuable work.

“And that’s, that is really when my faith kicked in,” she explains. “I started reading my Bible and going, I need validation. I mean, that’s the honest truth. I need validation. I don’t feel like I’m getting it. Although I got it from my husband. But I didn’t feel like I was getting it from every other place in life that I’d always gotten validation from.’

According to Cameron Bure, that is when her life changed and when she really got into reading God’s word. And she realized something very important: “I am valued by him, whether I’m a stay-at-home mom, whether I have a successful career or whether I do absolutely nothing all day long, he loves me no matter what, I don’t have to prove anything to him.”

To hear more about Candace Cameron Bure’s experiences in motherhood and her career listen to The Motherly Podcast for the full interview.