little ms. "sweet and innocent."

Friday, August 24, 2001
Domesticity And Me
Warning: If you're a housewife or truly love domesticity and get offended by people who er, don't necessarily feel as you do, please don't read this story. Okay, not that this will probably stop you, but I feel fair warning should be given. This is kinda offensive.

Friday, August 24, 2001
What is the goal of this website?
"To me, post-feminism means that all options are open to us. The career options that Feminism opened are there for us, and with our insistance they will only continue to multiply. However, the domestic model of femininity is acceptable too. We no longer have to make a statement by choosing career over family. Today, to be a feminist housewife is not contradictory. Taking a stand in staying at home is a statement in and of itself, and is a valuable contribution."

Friday, August 24, 2001
Ask a Feminist
"Usually, a feminist is associated with a female who is not married, not religous, etc. My question is though, isn't feminism basically saying: everybody's human, everybody's equal? If so, couldn't, say, a housewife still be a feminist, if that is what she wanted to be? Or a religous person? Or, in fact, just about anything, as long as she controls her own life, and makes her own decisions?
Anya Ubermole responds: Sounds about right to me."

Friday, August 24, 2001
Culture and denial
"Third wave feminism is about embracing our contradictions, rather than trying to eradicate them."

Friday, August 24, 2001

Don't you just love it when you realize something disturbing about yourself that you don't like? On the Bad Hair Days forum and on 3WA chat lately, the question of feminism and housewivery has come up, with people on one side going "Um, I don't know about this", people on another going "Shouldn't anyone get the right to do what they want to do if it makes them happy?" and another going "Well, I'm a housewife, and I'm happy! Why don't you accept that?" Okay, it's not really like that, but it would take forever to summarize all of the points made.
Now normally I am Ms. People Should Do Whatever The Hell They Wanna, No Skin Off My Nose Girl. But going into that discussion I realized that I don't have the right feminist attitude about housewifedom. I'm actually um.bothered by it. Deeply, even. I don't go "Yay housewives!" the way I would if a woman had a job, I'm not particularly thrilled with it as a choice, it rather disturbs me.
I don't think that housewives are totally useless with nothing to say and no mind and all that negative stuff, or hate any of the housewives I know/have met, but I don't support the choice to do it deep down in my heart and think that it's really okay and a good choice to make. Well, it may be great for the kids (even I can't deny that), but it doesn't always seem good for the adults stuck at home all day long to me. And politically, it's worrying. I know I should support whatever makes a person happy, but...well, um...I have issues.
Okay, now that I've pissed a ton of people off by saying thatwe'll get into WHY I'm so disturbed. It's all about my family and childhood, of course.
Mom's side of the family is genteel, prim and proper and ladylike. They excel in handcrafts, collect a lot of stuff, go to bed late and wake up at he crack of dawn to attempt to get everything done. They really care about and enjoy picking out china and bath towels, and insist that all household chores be done their way, period, no negotiation, because That's How Things Should Be Done.
On Dad's side of the family, while technically all the women of the last few generations have worked, the older ones seem to give off an air of "I belong at home"ness. They're Italian Catholic and behave pretty much stereotypically to that (i.e. have babies and eat a lot). The handcrafts thing applies here too. There's the strong belief that ALL women must marry young, have babies and clean house perfectly, or they're defective. It's common knowledge that my aunt will inspect your house and then bitch about how dirty it is on the ride home. She seems to actively think there's something wrong with you if you don't do that, and she did not take my two older cousins marrying in their 30's well (the last child married at 19, which they totally approve of) at all. To be specific, she and her husband nagged and nagged them, and I suspect my male cousin just gave up and gave in and married his on-again-off-again high school girlfriend after awhile rather than wait for an improved romantic situation.

Friday, August 24, 2001
Culture and denial
"It deepened as you watched television and grew through your life never knowing an adult woman without children, never hearing the phrase, "If you decide to have kids..."
Motherhood is not generally something that we question, not something we women of the patriarchy consider an option really. It's just part of life."

Friday, August 24, 2001

What does it mean to be a woman, on both sides of the family? Women cook for their men, and while a man may cook on occasion, it's HER job. Ditto cleaning. Women inevitably have children. If you are me and claim to have no interest in any of the above, you are told that once you find the right man and settle down, you will inevitably want all of those things, as a proper woman should. Dad's side of the family is already worrying that I'll be an old maid, since I managed to make it through college without an engagement ring on my finger, and have been nagging me about finding a boyfriend who's a good provider since I got out of high school.

Friday, August 24, 2001
Culture and denial
"Since I'm about to graduate, some of the attention that has traditionally directed to my education has been redirected towards my dating life. It was most obvious around Chinese New Year, when instead of wishing me well with my studies, family wished for the new year a new job and a boyfriend for me. "Yeah, at this age, you should be on the phone a lot." So questions from relatives have been around finishing up with school, finding a job, and DATING."

Friday, August 24, 2001

Here's how I feel about all of that: I couldn't give less of a damn about cleaning the house, and hate doing things that don't last anyway. Why spend hours mopping the floor when the next time someone comes home it'll be a mess again? Cooking is kinda similar in those respects- it generally bores me to do and takes more time to do than it does to eat, and I hate others eating my cooking. I mentioned before that my mother's side of the family is very "my way" about things- and that's where nearly all my loathing of householdness comes from. When I think of cleaning or cooking, I think of massive screaming fights we had over how to precisely line up the towels and similar pleasant events, and then I end up in a raging bitch mood and don't want to do any of it.
While I sort of want to get married (this is kinda undecided), I really don't think I'd be a good mother and don't want children of my own for a ton of reasons. Major fear of horrendous labor (runs on mom's side), fear of having to take care of something mostly alone when I can't seem to handle watering a plant regularly or taking pills at the same time every day, major fear of screwing up a kid like I got screwed up, and major fear of losing myself entirely to a child. My mother is the queen of self-sacrifice, who does little for herself alone besides shopping these days. It was always "I can't join this club, I have you and your father to take care of," and she feels guilty about doing things by herself.
Given all those issues, housewifedom sounds like a nightmare to me. Having to do all that stuff, all day long? Kill me now. I have such issues I can't imagine why someone would truly enjoy staying home like that. Sure, I love to stay home and veg out and watch TV and surf the web, etc. and if that was all that being a housewife was about I'd relate, but it does get old doing nothing but after awhile. Heck, for part of this summer I could have worked 3 full days and taken 2 off (I was still on part time, but no longer in school), and I was so bored I came in to work for a few hours every day instead. I need some activity, change of scene, stuff to think about. Generally, I'm in about 5 clubs in addition to my day occupation, so you can tell I like high volume of activity. I wonder how do women who stay at home not get bored or stifled. (Try doing a Google search on "unhappy housewife" and see how much stuff you come up with some time. Oy vey.) I don't mind so much when I hear that a woman who stays at home does a lot of other stuff, like volunteering or homeschooling or part time/freelance work, but I find it hard to imagine that they might not feel stifled after awhile without some adult contact/mental stimulation if they don't do anything but care for the baby and the house all day.

Friday, August 24, 2001
Depth
"Certainly this isnt a role I expected to choose, not the job I thought would dominate the resume of my life. Yet on another level, staying home with my children is probably the only major life choice Ive made without any agonizing and second-guessing. It was almost a non-decision: I can't remember even discussing it with my husband. Instead, it was a gut-level certainty, something I felt rather than knew. If I were going to have a child, then I needed to be there to raise that child. Simple.
Making the decision to be home with him was easy, but living with it often wasnt. I wondered if I was cut out for motherhood, a role that seemed to demand so much that was foreign to me. As a writer and editor, I was used to verbalizing everything, assuming anything important could and should be put into words. Yet as the mother of a newborn, I was stuck in a netherworld of nonverbal communication, where everything was tactile rather than verbal, emotional rather than intellectual. A well-crafted paragraph is very little help in calming a crying baby. And I hated trying to figure out what to call myself. That ambitious part of me -- okay, that vain part of me -- couldn't quite pronounce the word housewife without gagging ever so slightly. I felt I had tumbled down the social prestige scale to a place that seemed very unfamiliar.
Growing up, I had never known a housewife I wanted to emulate, never envied a mother at home with her kids."

"Sometimes I wonder if we're back in the fifties, or at best, the early seventies: here we are still having a debate about women working outside of the home. Of course, no one in the supposedly liberated nineties would dare suggest that women in general shouldn't work. But many people, including folks I like and respect and with whom I tend to be ideologically alligned, think perhaps that moms shouldn't.

I grew to hate the drive in to work. I was missing so much, and I could only envision it getting worse. So I switched to a new job that allowed me to work only evenings and weekends. The job offered less professional responsibility, but it paid more, which let me only work part time. I was home with Miles Monday through Friday, and left him in his father's care if I went in to work at night or over the weekend. Only on very rare occasions was he in someone else's care. It was my dream come true. I started going nuts.
At first, it was subtle. We were in the process of buying a house, and I obsessively drove around looking at houses which were for sale. After we picked out the house, I fixated on picking out the right furniture, choosing the perfect interior decoration scheme, making plans to refinish my furniture and recover my chairs so that everything matched just so. At night, I ordered my husband to pour over the upholstery sample books with me: "You like that one? What about this? Some kind of leaf motif? Isn't that too purple-ish?" This was not what he had bargained for when we got married. Nevertheless, he cooperated and sympathized and clucked his tongue over the phone when I called him at his office and agonized over what kind of flooring to put in the basement or described how I had spent hours driving to different lighting shops in order to locate the exactly perfect fifties repro light fixture for the dining room. If you don't know me, this may not sound like your definition of nuts. But trust me, it was like I had gone from being Exene Cervenka to Martha Stewart. I ran into folks I hadn't seen for years and they made shocked comments about how "conventional" I looked. When we moved into the house we'd purchased, it only got worse.
Most of the other women I knew with kids weren't themselves anymore either. I didn't really have any different model for what it meant to be a mother. My mom wasn't exactly a Stepford Wife, but instead she was depressed and distracted and obviously unfulfilled, even to my nine-year-old eyes. I wouldn't have minded being like her in many respects - she was a gifted parent - but I didn't want to be as unhappy. I knew I didn't want to be an eighties-style yuppie mom with her offspring in daycare 50 hours a week. I wanted to spend time with my baby and watch him grow and learn and be happy doing so; it didn't occur to me to worry that I might cease to have a self as a side effect.
What happened to me is certainly not what happens to every woman. And my meltdown was not solely caused by my switch from career gal to at-home mom - there's lots I'm not getting into, probably because that would muddy the water and dilute my grand argument. I do know, however, that I need to work, and to have meaningful work. Being a mom is great, but it is not the be-all and end-all of my existence. So shoot me - I know I'll never make the cover of Mothering, but that's how I am. I want to work, and do work that is important to me.
It's different for everyone, but the longer I've been in the mom business, the more I am convinced that maintaining a separate self is essential to the project of nurturing another self. Some mothers can do that without working outside the home, and others cannot. It is absurd and simple-minded to believe that it is right or best for all families to have mama home with the baby 24/7. And yet, that is what some people would have us believe. I don't like to see babies in daycare fifty hours a week. That breaks my heart, and I question what it does to children developmentally. I also don't like to see babies whose mamas who are suffocating, slowly, out of some sense of duty. Perhaps I am deluded, but I cannot give up my idea that there is a land of wild possibility which lies between these two deserts." Ah yes, that last one describes my own Martha nightmare exactly. Good points.

Friday, August 24, 2001

I bet you're thinking "Fine, if you don't like that stuff, then don't BE at home. Why the hell do you care if other people want to be housewives?"
It's also a feminist thing for me. While admittedly other than in the household arena I'm a total girly girl - I wear skirts and tight tops and tons of jewelry all the time, have waist length hair, won a ton of prizes for handcrafts at the county fair (taught to me by other people, given the Mom-fighting issue), English/design majors, and even being a member of Future Homemakers of America (no, I'm not kidding- it was great for the design career) - given my upbringing I have it internalized that I'm a failure as a woman because I don't care and don't want a clean house and kids. I haven't just learned that from the relatives, either. Nearly all women I know have major guilt complexes if their house isn't clean and sparkling 24-7, even if they've had a lot of work to do at work and someone just died and they're totally distracted (and in other words, have some damn good excuses for not being up to snuff). Nearly all women I know are the ones who do most of the housework and the cooking. It's not just my family- it's society telling me that I should conform to this old vision of womanhood, even if I go to work during the day.

Friday, August 24, 2001
A Life of Conformity
"Now it is acceptable for women to enter the workplace, but remnants of the old gender role remain. Those that attempt to be leaders in business or politics are often ignored or harassed. The vast majority have been so acculturated that they take their role for granted. They don't yell out against the fact that men are paid more for the same work, or that they are expected to cook and clean for their husband after they both come home from work. Few women today push their gender role beyond the one accepted since the feminist movement."

Friday, August 24, 2001

I rebel against it all. I don't clean unless I bloody well feel like it (the sink's too filled with dishes), I don't cook anything that takes longer than a half hour, didn't come out of a box or bag and requires more work than mix and/or heat up for awhile. I remain stubbornly single and adamant on the no-child issue. And you know what? Nobody believes that this is the real me. The family mantra is "Once you fall in love and get married, you'll want to cook and clean for your family and have babies!" The hormones will kick in, and you'll end up just like the rest of us. And boy, does that scare me! I want to curl up in a ball and scream at the idea of wanting-baby hormones kicking in. I worried enough about myself this week when I voluntarily (a) made cookies and (b) made brownies. I was trying to use up eggs before they went bad, and I wanted junk food, but still. As Cynthia Heimel (also someone very girly, but not always quite) said in a similar food situation, "They're teasing me and watching me squirm and deny my incredible chicken soup prowess, they know the last thing I want to do is tip the balance."

Friday, August 24, 2001
Culture and denial
"I'm embarrassed to admit my domestic tendencies, even here. I know I've been unfairly enculturated to believe that wifery and motherhood are necessary components to a happy life."

Friday, August 24, 2001

The thing is, though, it does seem inevitable. I like to tell myself that there's some guy out there who won't care if the house is a mess and likes to eat out a lot like I do and wouldn't expect me to automatically be his mommy because That's What Women Do, and I've heard of a few out there who are like that (my boss's husband sure doesn't seem to mind eating lots of takeout - hey, she's busy!). But in practice, I worry. I thought I'd found one with my last ex, who is also a slob who likes takeout and always says that you just need to love someone in order to be a good partner, but I was relatively uncomfortable when his wanting-to-be-mommiedness came out on occasion. He'd been married before and loved the domestic goddess thing, and he got a lot of joy out of having me cook for him when we couldn't afford takeout. I HATED it, I worried about tipping the balance and that he'd start expecting me to clean his house and do his laundry. That's also why I refused to live with him. The fact that the next woman he dated after me is THE domestic goddess mommy prototype who does every last one of those things did not help my fears any.

Friday, August 24, 2001
The House in Waking Life
"When I was young, I dreamed of sharing a house with all my beloved: husband, children, dogs. We would live together in an atmosphere of equality and grace. With this aim, I chose mates who expressed "feminist" views, who seemed inclined to investigate unjust preconceptions and dispose of them as necessary; I determined to do the same. What I found instead was that no matter how "feminist" the man, certain deeply ingrained expectations always surfaced. The most distressing of these was the "housewife" expectation. Here's how it goes: no matter what else a woman is, no matter how many hours she works in commerce or scholarship or art, if she doesn't take primary responsibility for the housework she is not a "real" woman (I've actually had otherwise "liberated" men say this to me out loud, and personalize it to me). This may sound far-fetched, but I submit that most mated, educated American women are living under this system, and if they are not openly acknowledging as much to themselves it is only because it would be too traumatic to their love relationship to do so.
This wouldn't be such a problem for me personally if it weren't for three factors: (1) I am a really bad housekeeper; (2) I'm obsessive about my work; and (3) I'm terrible at denial. By "really bad" I mean that housework is marginally important to me, compared with spending time with my children, my man, my work, or a good book; and that even when I try hard I just can't get things organized. Also, dust makes me sneeze. When I'm interacting with loved ones or working on something that either has a deadline or is so much fun that I can't make myself stop, I fail to see how getting up and mopping the floor is more important.
I've gotten no sympathy from any quarter on this issue. Men and women both seem to find it impossible to believe that a woman can be utterly talentless in the housework arena, or that pretending that she's not might be damaging to her soul. Why is this? Is there any other "job" about which we have this same attitude? I've come to believe that there's something very essential at the bottom of this prejudice. Even current research shows that neither relative (women : men) income or hours of employment outside the home have an effect on who does the housework. It's not just one of the lingering bastions of patriarchy --- that would be too simple an answer. Women have done a good job fighting their way into and out of too many other forbidden and expected positions, especially in the last five years. I think there is some kind of primal symbolism at work here. Something strong enough even to cause feminist men and women to accept or insist on roles they thought they'd eschewed." I absofuckinglutely love this piece. It says it all perfectly.

Friday, August 24, 2001

I just don't want it to turn out that deep down, that really is all that is there for women. I know realistically that everyone has to learn to keep house and cook, but there isn't an assumption that the man will do it all for the woman once they live together, is there? There's not a lot of househusbands around compared to the number of housewives.
And I guess that's where the housewife weirdness comes in: I feel like it's hard enough battling the cultural forces for women-in-the-home-with-babies as is, even after all this time and all these advances, without seeing women voluntarily choosing to stay home and well, going with the stereotype. At my job I take care of the obituaries, weddings and birth announcements, and it's sad enough to see an obit with nothing but "Mrs. Smith died at the age of 79. She was a homemaker for 59 years" and her surviving relatives on it. It hurts my heart a little (it's like nothing remained of her but her offspring), but there weren't so many options back then. But seeing proud announcements of "She's going to be a stay-at-home-mom from now on" in the births make me feel like people my age are losing ground. I know it's all about choices, but somehow I haven't felt like the choice to be a domestic woman is really a choice in life, but a requirement in order to be a woman. (I asked around here while working on writing this, and there were a lot of "women did the housework"-type answers.) And more people getting into domesticity as a full-time occupation doesn't refute that much.

Friday, August 24, 2001
Reinventing feminism
"While she admits that the women's movement developed a bad reputation early on for not being inclusive enough of women of all diversities, she does not believe it was the intent.From its inception, the movement has had to contend with the idea that feminists were opposed to stay-at-home moms.
"I think that any negativity that happened to the word feminism was brought on, as it happens with most groups, by a fringe of that group, observed Bob Dunning, who currently hosts The Bishop's Radio Hour on AM 1620s KSMH, Sacramento's Catholic radio station. "There's that element about the movement that did appear to be anti-man, anti-family. It seemed as if to make their point, some of them felt like they needed to attack the family."
Seely explained how that perception originated: "Betty Friedan came to feminism from her own point of view, which was about women not being able to pursue higher economic positions, not having their labor recognized. Somehow it got packaged as we don't support women who stay home, which is false. So I do think that's a bit of a legacy we have to overcome today."
The problem with the traditional approach to women staying at home, Seely observes, is the idea that the woman should stay home, should raise the children, should have children. All these shoulds are a problem according to Seely, who believes that there is disrespect within the conservative movement toward women choosing to stay home.
So what if you're a woman who chooses to stay home because you think youre the best one to raise your kid, and you need some economic support? she asked. Well, the same politicians who are telling you that you ought to be home are not supporting you to be able to do that if you werent fiscally independent. Not only that, but what about the question of equal pay? According to information from the U.S. Department of Labor released last year, women still earn only 75 cents for every dollar men earn.
Dunning believes this is a myth: "Those women who choose to be stay-at-home moms, that's their choice. They end up frequently taking part-time work, and part-time work is almost invariably low wage work," he noted. "And more of those jobs are filled by women who have made the choice in their family or situation that they want to take care of their child part-time, and they want to work part-time. Rarely do you see a man making that same choice. So as a result, you will see women making 75 cents on the dollar, but not in the same job."

Friday, August 24, 2001

I know I'm not even factoring the parenting angle into this, which changes everything. Obviously I don't understand the need and want to have a child and be with it all the time now and may not ever, unless the dreaded hormones kick in. I sort of assume that if I did have a kid that would happen to me too, and figure that I'd have to work part time or something to deal with that, though the idea does not fill me with joy.
There is, of course, the guilt factor with regards to children too. Some people (not all) seem to have a certain smugness about them because they stay home and are good parents, unlike those BAD parents who don't. That probably wears on people too. I know my mom has some guilt for not staying home and breastfeeding me, even though it was the 70's and they needed the money. Yes, it may be better for the kid to have Mommy at home (or Daddy, I'm being fair), but that isn't all that has to be taken into account in a given situation. I'm not sure that a unhappy mom at home is better for the baby, unless the baby is old enough to ignore Mom for most of the day and won't notice.

I am, however, totally against people like the jerk who e-mailed this fellow saying that his daughter's hearing problems were all the fault of them not staying home with her. Jesus H. Christ in a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket, that is so wrong to say. (Is it evil of me to be amused by the "here's how I could afford to stay home" list that follows?) I don't think having a child in day care is completely and totally traumatizing to them either. It's just a different experience. I think the most traumatized I got was getting hair pulled out, which wouldn't have happened at home unless Mom decided to do my hair again :P But like I said, it's all about my issues, and I should really shut up about it all. I don't exactly have the personal experience with regards to children, and at any rate I'm in the wrong to not give my unqualified support.

Friday, August 24, 2001
Culture and denial
"I want to be a mother. I want to have a lot of kids. And I probably want to stay home with them. But in class I never feel like that's acceptable. I feel like what is acceptable is collages that say that motherhood is jail, and comments that imply that if I choose to settle down with a man and stay home with our children I am letting down all the other women in the world. I am giving into the patriarchy.
Well, Fuck that. I want to be a mother. And probably I will stay home. And I will do a lot of arts and crafts with my kids. And bake them cookies. And make dinner almost every night. But I am not doing that because a man told me to. Or because my mom stayed home with me. I want to be a mother because I know that will make me happy. I do not really have a clue of what I want to do with my life, what job I want to take, what career I want to pursue; what I know is I want to be a mom. And if that is weak, or giving in, or unacceptable I feel sorry for the generation of children who will grow up playing "day-care" in their kindergarten classes instead of "house". People should value their families and take care of them."

Friday, August 24, 2001
Motherhood is political
"There are many negative attitudes towards mamas who stay home, especially from women. Why is it that raising a child is so important, yet staying home with your children is belittled? Raising our children, the next generation, is very important.
We need to support our stay-at- home mamas and let them know they are important. Not only do I change diapers and do housework, I am politically active and participate in my community. I am more than just a housewife, I don't need to have a career outside of the home to prove that I have something valid to say. I can be a mother and a feminist. Third wave feminists should support stay-at-home mamas because motherhood is an important aspect of both feminism and the feminist movement. Being a mother is part of being a woman, and raising our children is an important job. Women have fought to have equality with men in the workplace. Now we need to fight to have the respect that stay-at-home mothers deserve."