Just a housewife

Post like this are one of the reasons I keep returning to your blog.

I think this post points to the reason many women cannot get behind the feminist movement as it currently exists. Creating equality means that all people - as well as their careers, social status, ethnicity, gender, religion, and social/economic/cultural/political concerns - should be respected. The women's movement has done a great service to women by creating social and career opportunities that were never available to them before; however, it has demeaned them by not also demanding respect for the careers and concerns that have traditionally been deemed "women's issues." Why do many women still complain that they carry the main burden of household duties or, instead of engaging their husbands and/or children to help out, farm those chores out to hired help? Why is it that we are not encouraging more men to enter career fields typically populated by women, such as nursing and teaching? I work part-time and so have a level of immersion in the business world. I agree that the things I accomplish within my household, extended family, church community or neighborhood are often intrinsically more rewarding than attending another committee meeting in which nothing gets accomplished beyond "intellectuals" and "professionals" pontificating in order to show off their knowledge. Why do we not see equality as promoting not only equal choice but also equal respect for those choices, whether they are considered typically male or female or whether they are made by a male or female? Are stay at home fathers denigrated by our society the way stay at home mothers are? Are male nurses less valuable than female doctors? If this is the case, the feminist movement has sold itself out to consumerist and materialist values versus the inherent value of personhood. To me, the latter is much more important.

Amen. If I had young children and were married to a wonderful husband (as I am now, but a single mom for years while my children were growing), I would certainly homeschool them and tend to all the complexities of running an efficient household. I would probably have had more children two (not a lot more but maybe one or two, but with first pregnancy twins, hmmm). I love running our household - I do most of the cooking and we share household tasks since we both work fulltime...we are a team, my husband and I - and we try to run the household based on being in a covenant marriage - so that we tend our home for God's glory - which we believe makes us good citizens and promotes a healthy home & community...

My mobility issues are seriously affecting my gardening skills - I used to grow a lot more, but I am doing some tomatoes and herbs and I am now an adviser to my daughter who planted a big garden in Tappahannock, VA where she lives...she even planted things she won't eat (variety of eggplants and peas/beans) for me.

And my grandmother had the most beautiful roses on 39th st, NW, DC - every summer she would bring home chicken poop (in the trunk of dad's car-of-the-moment as he worked for a dealership and boy would they argue over the chicken poop - grandma always won that one) for the roses...

Excellent. Wonderful. The first book to really open my eyes to this idea that housekeeping skills are or can be just as challenging as other kinds of work was Cheryl Mendelson's "Home Comforts."
Reading that was sort of a "duh" moment -- why DO we think that pushing papers or writing briefs or designing widgets is inherently and automatically a better use of our energies and abilities than keeping a home well-run and pleasant for the people who live there?

Betty, you struck a chord with me here: "I do value the housewifely stuff less than the intellectual, however, and the main reason is that I STINK at it. Maybe this is why other people look down on domestic chores--not only are they difficult, but doing them well takes a special gift. We don't have it, so we denigrate it."

I hear you. I think of myself as someone whose gifts do tend in other directions than the housewifely, yet I have chosen the full-time homekeeping thing because I believe it's in the best interests of my family, while I still have a houseful. I often feel at a loss around my friends for whom these things seem both easier and more instinctively satisfying. It would be the easy way out to conclude that I don't need to "waste my time" with such trivia, but it seems better to do my best to maximize my abilities in this area, during the phase in my life in which that's what is most needed from me. After all, most people out there doing other more "exciting" kinds of work actually don't get to do what they enjoy most and comes most naturally to them, either.

Th MH above writing about her sister should be MMH.

Part of the issue may be a matter of titles. A successful business person has a title to match, by which you can judge (to a certain degree) how accomplished that person is at their job. It is the difference between Receptionist and CEO. In the realm of homemaking, however, whether a woman is a trophy wife delegating the care of her children to a nanny and spending her time looking beautiful or a soap opera devote or a homeschooling, gardening, budgeting, household manager there is only one title: housewife.

And a future Happy Mother's Day to Mrs. Dreher!

Happy Mother's Day Julie...., a bit early, from a fellow mom.

As far as title's go, my sister, who is a stay-at-home mom, has a voicemail message that says, "You've reached Barb P***, input/output manager for P*** Enterprises, please leave a message." I've always thought that was pretty funny. And accurate.

By the way, the tension between domestic work and intellectual work is caught in the Benedictine motto, "Ora et Labora". In Benedictine life the manual labor that allows the monastery to flourish is valued just as equally as the contemplative prayer, so that manual labor becomes a form of prayer in its own way and the life of prayer becomes a labor of love. I think we make a mistake when we separate the two.

Oops....when I said "Take Your Kids to Work Day," I really meant "Career Day."

Ann Kern,

Yes, yes, yes! I agree with your comment whole heartedly. I could say so much more, but I think I'll just say that I agree cause you really covered it!

In the 18th century there was a term for women who excelled at household management--they were called "notable housewives." Maybe it's time to find a new term for people who excell at running a household! After reading Rod's post, I might reclaim the word "housewife" myself. For years I have been listing myself in the occupation space on forms as "Mom," which I thought was a more accurate representation of my main focus in life. Having been such a person for 31 years now, with the youngest in high school (never tempted to home school, thank you very much!) I came to terms long ago with the low status of being a housewife, which I didn't mind so much once I discovered the unappreciated joys. I like to think I'm a notable housewife too. I take great pleasure in cooking interesting food, growing my garden, folding freshly washed clothes, decorating my house, and most of all being the nerve center of the family. It's great work if you can get it!

"But when our youngest graduated last year and our two oldest drove off to jobs far away, she said to me tearfully "My career is over. And no one cares. No retirement party, no recognition. No pension. Nothing to show on a resume. And outside our family, no respect."

Bill - The superficial judgments of those with no stake or experience in your household or very-near community circle carry no significance. Your wife performed a job of tremendous material, social, psychological, educational, economic, and emotional value for the ones she loves. What she has done - how she has converted her time, energies, and talents - is enough. There is no greater calling.

I'm a wasted education. So far today I've ground the wheat for bread, washed two loads of laundry and hung them on the line, watered the compost pile, pulled weeds from the garden, picked over some beans for planting tomorrow, arranged to go pick strawberries to make jam, taught my daughter how yellow and blue make green and how all the colors make brown, listened to my one year old squeal in joy as he learned to say "turtle" mopped the floor, written a blog post, mailed a letter, and soak almonds for snacks. I also packed a lunch to send with my husband to work (he flies in the Navy) My life is mundane by the standards of many, and is a life of service to my family (though I enjoy it so it doesn't feel like "service")

It is delightful to hear someone affirm my choices and to realize that it DOES take a keen mind to successfully manage a household. This is a message that more women need to hear, and more children need to realize. Homemaker is a viable career option, that uses my intelligence, and delights my soul

As I recall many of the early 1960s feminist were upper-class women who went to college looking for a husband and didn't necessarily have kids right away. Or if they did have kids right away there was some expectation of raising children to some kind of formula.

If you are a well-read woman with the potential to be a doctor, lawyer, etc I can see how the feeling you must instead be a housewife could feel like "a waste." Especially as, I believe, housewives were not necessarily supposed to be intellectually stimulating companions to the hubby or teachers to the kids.

Now if your options are "menial job" or housewife housewife comes out much better. The only slight concern I have is I personally think a housewife should have some marketable skills, or outside activities, in case the husband dies or gets infirmed. At least after the kids are school age. My Mom drove a bus for disabled kids and did volunteer work. One of my Aunt's worked at the school cafeteria.

I hope I'm not coming off anti-housewife, I'm just saying I think the concerns of yore (though exaggerated and maybe counterproductive) did come from somewhere.

Hopefully I made it clear in my post above that I am a stay at home dad. Full time. Whew!

The concerns of yore probably came from lack of choice for women, which is a bad thing, except that now we probably suffer from a confusing variety of choices. I think it's good for society if people assume that they will grow up, get married and have some kids. We can add education in there and should, but it does come somewhat at the cost of the other assumption it seems. I think feminists of the 60's and 70's did themselves a disservice by denigrating housewives. The fact remains that when children are small they need lots of attention and someone there all the time. To pretend otherwise has been bad for the social fabric and has fed the current divisive culture wars. BTW-- mothers absolutely do A LOT of teaching. Constantly. AND I think most housewives are intellectual companions to their husbands as well. Why else would people marry someone much closer to their own IQ than would happen randomly? As a housewife who took classes and read constantly when my children were young, I am now almost finished with a PHD. The truth is, for most of us, life is long enough to raise our children and do lots of other things along the way.

I sometimes think of this as similar to "the Butterfly effect." We tend to think that history is made at the public level, by the famous, but forget the work and actions of ordinary people, like Julie, have more of a cumulative impact on society than the events we learn about in history classes.

Julie is transforming society by her work. Those who think her work is unimportant are missing the point - if she chooses the work, it is important to her and to those (her husband and children) whom her work benefits. It is similar in my mind to the issue of whether Muslim women ought to wear the hijab (I know several who do) - I would never wear it myself even if I were Muslim, but it is absolutely immaterial as long as women are given the same career and life opportunities as men.

I got a good chuckle at church on Sunday when the fellow behind me whispered to my husband, "I found out this week, being a mother of two is a lot harder than being a dentist. My wife gets home in four hours, and I can't wait."

I found out this week, being a mother of two is a lot harder than being a dentist. My wife gets home in four hours, and I can't wait.

Bad, bad argument.

Doing something you haven't done before doesn't mean that it is necessarily more difficult, it often just means you don't have much experience at it. Chances are the dentist dad would be able to pick up the parenting thing in a few weeks or months. The mother of two would have to go through years and years of training to be able to to do what the dentist does.

That doesn't even take into account talent. Imagine Michael Jordan being dropped into a daycare centre. He'd be lost. He might even say, "Wow, being a daycare worker is a lot harder than scoring 30 points a night in the NBA." But that's only true _for him._ Drop a very good daycare worker into the NBA and the argument is mincemeat.

Sure, housewives deserve tremendous respect. Sure, their work is invaluable. Sure, we should make them feel supported... in short, it seems, we should do anything *short of paying them even a fraction of what they are worth* -- anything that will keep them doing it for free.

What will all that respect and flattery do for the woman if her husband dies or leaves her? What will our society do for her in those circumstances? I say we ought to put up or shut up. All the compliments in the world won't make one mortgage payment. So what changes would we make in society if we *really* valued homemakers and wanted them to be safe, secure, and productive?

Modern American society, due to capitalism, values that which is quantifiable and can be reduced to money. If an activity or idea can't be quantified and reduced to monetary value (limbs, lives, activities), the accounting and economic powers that be either come up with an arbitrary value tied to the current "market" value of something or ascribe it a value of zero.

For example, the value of trees in filtering air and water. Value by accountants and financial wizards = zero.

Value of household responsibilities to the market economy = zero to minimum wage.

I'm single and I do all the activities of both husband and wife in my household. I'm exhausted at the end of the day and I don't even have children.

The accounting system is broken and value systems are broken due to the modern American religion known as corporate capitalism.

In real terms, most married men have zero idea how much freedom they have that they could never fathom were they single. As a single executive myself (in the 90s) I alone went to the cleaners to clean the suit I wore on the business trip. I alone was responsible for coffee being bought. (Or made). Who was going to wash the sheets, fold the laundry, arrange the repairman visit, do the recycling, cook the meals, clean the refrigerator. Need I continue?

Doing all of that and still having time to do anything is a dicey compromise. Either the house gets dirty (make that occasionally filthy) or that piece gets written and edited. Yet the men I worked with never really ‘got’ that the entire reason they were capable of single minded pursuit of their career goals or dreams was the partner they married. And occasionally they acted like they knew and recognized all this. But I never really believed they comprehended 1) how enabled they were 2) how incapable they were likely to be to take care of themselves since they had largely gone from mother to college to marriage.

I’ve always been a pro-woman guy as the son of a feminist activist mom who had been raised by a suffragette mother. What chance did I have to be raised a clueless male? So to me, there was nothing so unmanly as not being able to take care of one’s self. Meaning that having anyone saying ‘Here, Honey, I’ll do it’ is a gift-from-God bonus. Still, by and large, mothers still raise their sons with a different set of presumptions than their daughters. How many girls leave for college knowing how to do their laundry and how many boys arrive on campus having no clue?

As my oft quoted very heterosexual feminist activist mother who died in 1973 told me repeatedly as I grew up: “All women need wives”. We all do. Viva La Julie! Happy Mother's day.

Now that's a "Happy Mother's Day"! Frame it.

“But I suspect that too often all the "Mom has the most important job in the world" talk and the odes to the domestic arts serve to put pressure on women to stay in their place.”

Jennifer, I suspect you’re right in some cases. I hope this is becoming more rare. What I wish everyone could focus on are the flourishing of families and the well being of children. I suspect that if we all did that, then the crucial importance of mothers and fathers would be more clear. And maybe, just maybe things could become better for them both.

“What will all that respect and flattery do for the woman if her husband dies or leaves her? What will our society do for her in those circumstances? I say we ought to put up or shut up. All the compliments in the world won't make one mortgage payment.”

I agree. Though I am not sure what exactly should be done. I liked some of the premises laid out in a current First Things essay by David Goldman. Essentially, he argues that families create tremendous wealth and provide most of the social safety net for society. With that in mind, it makes sense to provide lot’s of assistance to families, since their contribution to the rest of society is so great. I’d argue that widows ought to qualify, too.

“Moral of the story: you can't have it all, despite what girls of my generation have been told since we were wee lasses. “

Cindy, you’re right. “Having it all” is propaganda.

Julie is blessed to have such a respectful husband.

Feminism came from somewhere, and it was not from the respect women experienced as housewives or anything else. A serious lack of respect for "woman's work" preceded feminism, and was a cause of it. It was unfortunate that some snippy gals took on the attitudes of the predominant culture back in the 70s, but you know, there were not many alternatives yet available. I don't think that is the case now.

My father let my mother know that he could have just paid someone to do what she did-not that he ever calculated what her work would really have cost him. That attitude was common in my parents' generation.

My husband has been our homemaker for the past couple of years. I am grateful for his work every day.

What a beautiful post! I was glad I checked your blog today, just for this. It made me feel good about what I do...and there are days I need that boost. That the life I live & what I do is small, but meaningful. That matters. I aspire to the title "Domestic Goddess", but some days feel I fall way short. This reminded me that it is all OK. My husband is grateful and thanks me constantly...but it is nice to see that there are others out there that can see the value.

My husband and I traveled to Scotland last fall for a couple of weeks. At the car rental place, when asked my occupation I replied with "I'm a homemaker" to which the agent started to snicker and even thought it so uproarious that he had to share it with his co-worker next to him. He explained that there they call it a "housewife" - but that didn't satisfy me. The bottom line is, I could clearly see that to them and perhaps the Scottish culture of big cities (we were in Glasgow) that a housewife is "just a housewife", and with a sneer at that.

I worry my post came out dismissive.

What I meant is that I understand why a highly educated woman might want to use their education in the public sphere rather than the more private sphere. I didn't mean they had to do so or are "wasting" their education.

Besides I don't even know if it's always bad to "waste" your education. Maybe you got educated in something you really don't care for or may you just can't be a part of it anymore. Lots of people walk away from science or academia or journalism or whatever.

I must admit though I don't entirely understand why you'd be a housewife if you have no kids and are able to have a rewarding career. (As opposed to just some kind of job to make money) Unless it's the type of childless housewife that has some kind of "at home" business. From what I gather back then childless women were also discouraged from working.

Going from being a full-time stay-at-home mom to a single parent was devastating. I am grateful for my formal education which allows me to make ends meet, but I wouldn't trade one moment of being a MOM first for six years for anything. I was never ashamed of it, and I hope to do it again some day.

Hi "Bill May 7, 2009 10:29 AM"

I respect and admire your wife's career - and it is not over - the rewards will be reaped in coming generations...grandparenthood can be fabulous as well as time for you two to connect and bloom in a different manner than when you were hands-on parents.

You can be anywhere on the spectrum from the notable housewife/valued beyond rubies to the laziest, sloppiest homemaker in the world. The pay is the same.

"Feminism came from somewhere, and it was not from the respect women experienced as housewives or anything else. A serious lack of respect for "woman's work" preceded feminism, and was a cause of it."

This is a little hard to follow. Mind you, I don't deny that many foolish men liked to denigrate the work their wives and mothers did. What's harder to grasp is how a movement that spent lots of time denigrating that very work was supposed to be a reaction and correction to the denigration of that work. Even if it was "just some snippy gals in the 70's," it's hard to fathom the connection between wanting more respect for what women did, and writing books and articles based on the premise that no one could possibly be expected to want to do what women did.

There's no doubt that some corrective was needed for the denigration of women's work, but feminism doesn't seem to have been that, or even to have wanted to be that, in its late 20th century form.

Pentamom,

I think you and Elizabeth are both right. One of the blind spots of the second wave feminists (1970's) was the extent to which they bought into male-defined values where work was concerned. They put their own spin on it, yes, but they left unquestioned the premise that traditional women's work was unworthy of recognition. However, this becomes less surprising when you consider that the 1970's feminists grew up in the post-war hyper-housekeeping era, where women's magazines and other media gave their mothers the overt message that their worth was 100% tied up in their ability to keep their houses spotless, serve elaborate home-made meals, have clean, well-mannered children, please their husbands, and do it all in high-heels and pearls. (Seriously, you should read some of the 1950's and 60's Ladies Home Journal articles; they are jaw-dropping!) No wonder they rebelled -- I would too! So even though the feminists did indeed denigrate housekeeping, their movement was a reaction to the faux-valuing of traditional womanhood, which was really a very condescending caricature of the real, *important* work that women had always done. They failed to see this underlying value.

I think when most of us think back to "the good old days" of traditional work, we think back farther -- to a time when both spouses were more engaged in the household, and rather than focusing on shiny waxed floors, the emphasis was on utility, thrift, and other "things money can't buy". I know I look much more to my great-grandmothers, who were my age in the 1930's, rather than my grandmothers, who were captive to the 1950's ideals and were happy to leave them behind where housekeeping standards were concerned.

"it's hard to fathom the connection between wanting more respect for what women did, and writing books and articles based on the premise that no one could possibly be expected to want to do what women did." pentamom

TR: I think it might have been more "I'm not getting respect for X then I might as well do Y" or "If I'm not getting respect for X maybe it's because X is not really worth doing."

By the late 1960s you started having more blacks who'd made good money, got college degrees, and sometimes even moved to white neighbors yet were still treated like bilge. So some said "forget that, I'm not playing 'their' game anymore." The "Black Power" movement largely came from "SNCC" and other college kids. Amiri Baraka (spelling?) had an integrationist period and was married to a white woman. The similarity being "If I'm not going to get respect the conventional way, I'm not going to go the conventional way anymore."

Granted there was another thread of feminism that seemed to be quite pro-motherhood, but in some cases that end was actually more Radical. Some of them wanted all of society to change because the Capitalist system was based in "Patriarchy" that devalued the feminine spirit or some such. Which is maybe more similar to Crunchiness. (Crunchiness at times seems to be an essentially Christocentric variant on Hippies. "I'll be your women, you'll be my mine, live on the land, sha na na na" and so forth)

Housewifery as a career made a lot more sense to everyone when there were six, seven, eight or more children. If there are one or two, there isn't nearly as much work to be done.

If there were seven kids at home, no one got obsessive about waxing floors (you were lucky if the floor got swept) and no one sat around and wondered if the woman whose work made all this possible was wasting her time or not. I came from a small family, but most of my childhood friends were from families with at least six, usually more, and I spent a lot of happy time in those homes. Everyone worked hard, but a lot of fun was had too.

The mothers who survived this experience were very serene in old age, after the kids were gone. Seen it all, I guess.

"I must admit though I don't entirely understand why you'd be a housewife if you have no kids and are able to have a rewarding career."

Uh... there is plenty to do around the home whether a woman has children or not. Gardening, cooking, cleaning, renovations, etc. take up a majority of my day, even though I suposedly have a "career" and my daughter is still in India. (We're adopting.) I am an artist, which is way cooler socially than being a housewife, but garners about the same amount of respect and pay.

Being a homemaker may be the most important job in the universe, but I find it to be very isolating. I'll be looking for a part-time job when my daughter is ready for pre-school just to be around other people. I moved to a new town and found that if you don't have a job, it is really, really, really hard to make friends.

BTW, the public assistance authorities in Alaska are apparently willing to grant that a "traditional subsistence hunter" is "working," but will not allow the same latitude to a woman (or for that matter a man) who is a "traditional subsistence homemaker."