She does a nice job of a form of analysis I sometimes use "turn it on its head".

So, turn it on its head again - what if what is described as "just a housewife" was correct?

Here's my theory, and it is going to merit me a beating, but please try to think about it.

"Housewifery" is not exceptional. It is not notable. It is the sort of basic work and effort that any home requires, and which everyone should do, and has to do. Talents that are rarer, and remunerative, are exceptional and compensated. That which we all do, is not. So: exceptional cooking merits title of chef, exceptional decorations "interior decorator", and so forth.

What is WRONG about the situation, is NOT that the job is unmerited, nor that the job is unpaid or unremarkable. What is remarkable is that, for whatever reason, husbands/fathers/men are largely exempted from it.

Any fool can clean a toilet, or pick up a kids room. Any fool should. Why are (largely) half the fools exempted?

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I agree with this on one front. But I'll go you one further.

JUST an actuary.
JUST a scientist.
JUST a teacher.

It's all JUST work. There's nothing holy about any of it, not even being a priest. It's all cogs in the machinery of our society and our economy and our existence. When one comes down to it, it is all equally meaningless and meaningful. It is expenditure of energy and time, it is acquisition of knowledge and application of learning. It is all JUST work.

However, to pursue one's ambition and passion (and housewifery is rarely that, except through the mythologizing of it and the cult of wifedom/mommyhood) is a privilege. That is why those jobs are held in higher regard. Not because they are more necessary -- in fact, they are rarely more necessary than a clean shelter, basic hygiene, good food, and well-raised offspring to ensure one's future good fortune -- but because they are a choice, and choice implies privilege.

Society holds those things higher because they are not the province of second-class citizens, not because they come with rewards (like a pension or disability insurance as well as public acclaim for success), not because they are more notable than housework or motherhood. There is nothing common about being a good wife or mother. People would be good at it without thought if there were. They are skills, and some people are gifted and others must learn, skills that are no longer passed on because of the denigration of those roles.

Any fool can perform the basic tasks. To fit them all together, to do them well and in a timely manner and with self-motivation, is another thing entirely. Parenting is an exponentially more complex task than housework. These things are denigrated not because they are simple or common, but because they, again, are the province of women, who have had no choice. There is no implied privilege, in fact, there is a distinct lack of privilege.

To take on these tasks is to ally oneself with the disempowered, and to give up one's privilege. Of course those with choice, those with privilege, claim exemption. What master willingly enters indentured servitude? To do so might allow the servant time to become the master. Why walk into the cage from which you refuse to release another, when you are all but handing them the keys on their way out? Why should you trust them not to lock the door on you in turn?

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Your reply started out strongly, and I agreed with it. By the end, I found myself no longer in accord. When I forced myself to try and determine exactly where it was that our points of view diverged, I found myself back nearly at the top. :-)

While I am not a sociologist or anything (just a software engineer), I find that you can analyze the value of "women's work" on a number of levels. Effort, of course is one. Level of training and skill is another. Monetary value is common, and then there is the important idea of respect or appreciation.

I think the original words that Cindy quoted were more about the last part and the linguistic implications. I couched my answer to suggest that a term of specialization does not necessarily exist for a role of ubiquity (with a wry comment that for something uniquitous, why does half the population duck out?)

Your answer, though, mixes all four points, wherever convenient to treat work outside the home as privilege.

I don't think it is. Going back to the main linguistic argument, we are "wage-slaves", or "working poor" or "work in the salt mines". I know people who have jobs that are high in "prestige" or "money", for which they have worked hard (and suffered) to get the skills they need. I have one of those jobs - it takes skill, has low physical effort, has modest "prestige" and earns a lot of money. If I won the lottery, I'd quit in a heartbeat. :-)

I was trying to focus not on imprisonment (what?) but on which features of a job outside the home make such a thing rise to the level of linguistic distinction, and what doesn't. Somehow you went into patrimony and power-theory and somewhat, but I think that's something that works on another level.

I say that because even if men in our culture did as much housework as women do, we'd still find the job being lower status, lower paying, lower skilled, higher effort and lower status. My theory on that is: ubiquity.

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Specialized language was introduced, via the discipline of "Domestic Science", also known as "Home Economics". It started in the the suffragette era with the likes of Catherine Beecher and proceeds well into the early 1960's.

This was the discipline that insisted that recipes be notated in scientific measurements. Up till then recipe amounts were given in amounts like "a ball of butter about as big as a walnut" and "two teacups full of sugar". It was also the start of revolutionary concepts like providing ventilation in a kitchen and dressmaking done with a pattern. By the 1950's it was something that you could actually get a graduate degree in.

It was then splintered by the second wave of the women's movement, starting with The Feminine Mystique and satirized by Erma Bombeck (imprisonment is definitely a theme in those books). The parts of Domestic Science that survive became new specializations, like nutritionists, dieticians, consumer advocates, human development and parenting experts, interior designers, etc.

I was raised by an old-fashioned Domestic Scientist. I have the baby book that my mother kept when I was born. It reads like a a textbook example of a chemistry lab noteboook. Absolutely everything was measured and recorded on a daily basis, including formula mixtures, weight (yes, she actually owned a baby scale for home use), and dental charts.

I remember when it started to disappear, about 1968. It was around the same time that I was no longer required to wear a dress, a hat, and white gloves to church on Sundays.

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And here I am responding to this: It is the sort of basic work and effort that any home requires, and which everyone should do, and has to do.

Increasingly, the has to do portion of this sentence is not true. Many of the skills involved in keeping a home, so easy to dismiss, are not being taught to children. People don't know how to cook for themselves. They don't know how to clean. They don't know how to maintain, preserve, or make the best use of what they've accumulated. Why? Because the skills needed are not exceptional, not notable, not 'needed', and hence, not taught.

You can see the results of this in the grocery. As a percentage, how many of the offerings in any store are 'easy to cook' kit meals, pseudo-food -- Lunchables and Banquet dump-it-in-a-crockpot so you're cooking? Industry research (all those grocery marketing books I write are good for something!) place the category "Convenience" at roughly 45% of average inventory. Ready-to-eat (Deli, bakery, cooked seafood, etc.) average between 10-25%, the higher percentages in metropolitian areas. We're looking at roughly half the offerings in a grocery (average inventory size is between 45,000 - 50,000 different items) being created for and marketed to a public that has neither the time or ability to cook.

Instructions in cook books and on convenience food packaging has been consistently dumbed down over the past two generations.

The same is true in cleaning. Look at the progression in vaccum cleaners. It's not all progress and innovation. Some developments, notably toward bagless vacuums, came about because consumers consistently reported they didn't understand how to change the bags.

One of the primary functions of social service units across the nation who respond to child protection reports is to connect offending parents with resources who can teach basic skills: how to cook dinner. How to wash clothes. How to put your kid to bed.

There is no reason that people haven't learned these things by adulthood except that they have not been taught. Schools try, but I think they largely fail.

Everything that we as a society don't learn to do creates an opportunity for someone else to make money doing it for us, in whatever fashion makes them the most money. I think one of the single most under-reported economic stories going is the impact the shift away from stay at home Moms has. There are all these products/services created solely because no one wants to do them anymore -- or because people can't do them.

Consider the rise of work voyeurism shows: things like AxMen and Ice Road Truckers are lending a mythical aspect to the fact that there are people who actually get out in the world and do physical labor everyday. We're so seperated from this as a culture that the difference between the average American's existence of cube farms and computers and blue collar labor has created a media niche. Food Network is the same sort of thing, with a culinary feel.

I would also argue that there are a vast many jobs out there that are compensated that require no more exceptional skill than keeping a house. Working in a call center, for example, earned my friend $14/hour. She answered phones, took orders, and entered them in a computer. This is not rocket science -- but it's a 'real' job, where housework is not. When you hit the professional tier, sure, there's a vast difference in skill levels. But not everyone is a professional.

The problem is not, in my opinion, that men are exempt from housework. It is that women have stopped doing it as well. We (as a nation, not you and I specifically) have dropped the ball. This in the long run is a bad thing.

I do think language has a vital role in how things are perceived, and I think Suzette nailed it nicely.

I also realize (belatedly!) that this is clearly a pet hobby horse of mine, and I shouldn't climb on it during my 'real work' portion of the day. *grin*

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Working in a call center, for example, earned my friend $14/hour. She answered phones, took orders, and entered them in a computer. This is not rocket science -- but it's a 'real' job, where housework is not. When you hit the professional tier, sure, there's a vast difference in skill levels. But not everyone is a professional.

Definitely. And it's a 'real' job because men still do it. Because it's NOT housework/motherhood. Because it is not in the home.

The problem is not, in my opinion, that men are exempt from housework. It is that women have stopped doing it as well. We (as a nation, not you and I specifically) have dropped the ball. This in the long run is a bad thing.

This is where I stand. And we as a society have dropped the ball in a desperate attempt to disassociate ourselves from the second-class citizen role. We're willing to malnourish our kids, to abandon our homes (what is it, 75% of American meals are consumed outside the home now?), all to escape association with the oppression enacted on women by our social system.

We, socially, didn't change anything. We didn't 'elevate the role of women'. We trashed the mythology and ran like hell. It's about time EVERYONE turned around and started picking up the pieces. But few people dare because to do so is STILL to step back down the ladder.

The myth is still being sold, and many people buy into it still, but they're still not actually changing anything. They're just voluntarily stepping back down and pretending they're not. They're taking the minor privileges that the patriarchy offers obedient women instead of deconstructing the entire concept of any such privilege. It's a handful of rare women and men who are neither apologists nor collaborators who do the work as it should be done and demand the accord that other roles receive.

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The role of "homemaker" (let me move this gender neutral), keeps changing. It no longer involves compounding medicines, animal raising, butchery, laundry done in tubs, etcetera. Many of the home-making skills of the last half of the 20th century are also becoming less used or necessary.

It's true that cooking at home is diminishing in necessity. Especially in urban areas, pre-packaged meals are not much more costly than ingredients - and there is that elusive lack of time factor. Nowadays, home-making includes knowing how to set up a home computer, manage bills electronically, getting kids to soccer practice. The whole "home economics" thing is here to stay.

Home-making is still necessary. Still not highly valued. And there is no language that values it, because it is not highly valued. I suggest that the arrow of causality is that it is not valued, so it has no distinctive language.

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Somewhat tangential, sorry - [also, I know the gender/role situation isn't the same in my home as it is in 90% of others, but I can at least comment on what I see. ^_-]

Why is it that the word 'housewife' does nothing for the status of a mother, yet 'househusband/stay at home dad' has all the trappings of a 'gifted status'?

With all due respect, fathers are parents by default. As the male parent, why should doing what's expected of you as a parent, get you more status [and a special moniker that's worth something] than what the female does--also as a parent? [the moniker females get, is considered demeaning?] I've always been curious about this standard.

Let's talk in the hypothetical for a bit. You're writing a news story about investment bankers that work from home. Why do they work from home? Gas prices-commuting; wanting to be at home with the children. If the focus of your story is a female, why is she not called a housewife? Sure, she brokered a 2.5 million dollar meeting today from home--she then turned off the computer, picked the kids up from school, helped prep dinner, got kids in the tub and put the kids to bed. She's a parent--that's her job--no mention of the kids in the article because...well, being a mom and doing these chores is all ready a default status for a woman--and so...why label her a housewife! There's nothing empowering about it, correct? The article would focus on the fact that she's not an 'at home investment banker/housewife' but instead, she's just an at home investment banker, with kids. Still with me, good--because here comes the punchline/point: Complete opposite semantics apply for an at-home male investment banker--the whole angle of the story wouldn't be about investment banking from home--it would be about...MR. MOM BROKERS DEALS FROM HOME. 0_o. If he's home, it's his job to do the same amount of chores/kid-care, as the other career parent in the home...correct?

Why are men getting honored props [special words] for something that's all ready expected of them? Why is it that they only way the word 'housewife' is empowering or honorably-mentioned, only when a men does it?

Just wondering.

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As an aside: (and this is a great comment, BTW) is always in the "Mr. Mom story" is an explanation of why the Mom isn't there -- he's generally widowed or single or his wife is so selfish that she demands a career of her own, and Mr. Mom is a hero.

When it's a single mom or SAHM in these stories, there's no mention of what hubby's doing: or it's all a game she's playing while he 'really' pays the bills. Or hubby was driven away by the overdemanding, bitchy harpy a woman who achieves obviously must be.

/rant

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Interesting.

For a while, post-divorce, I called myself a single Dad. Since I had shared custody, I was a half-time single Dad, but still.... And I worked full time, as most single-Mom's do these days.

I found that while many people found what I did personally admirable, in the general case being a Mr Mom (full-time, stay-at-home father) was considered to be low status. If there was a Mrs, Mr Mom was "the poor schmuck who had to stay at home".

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I agree both with you and with goldsquare.

When I was a child, I was baffled by the fact that jobs that were high status and highly compensated seemed to involve so little useful *work* and, in fact, to contribute little of value to the community or the culture (investment broker, banker, architect [this was the 70s], advertising executive, plastic surgeon), whereas things that were, to my mind, obviously of higher value-- child care, cooking, nursing, teaching, farming, house-building, etc.-- were of lower value.

I continue to believe that the first-wave women's movement did not raise the status of so-called women's work, but merely strove to do 'men's work' and get men's pay, and as a result drove women's work further down.

I have very strong feelings about this, stronger than ever since I am the only one in our house trained to do housecleaning, housekeeping, and basic home repair, and I either have to do it myself or resort to endless requests to get it done, and I resent being made responsible for supervising this, even though they kindly point out that I'm more bothered by it (i.e., being unable to walk through rooms without stepping on things, having unsteady piles of objects everywhere, filthy floors, disgusting toilets) than they are.

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I stopped cooking regularly years ago. I clean the house about once a month. I will do the wash but my husband does the dishes and trash and my son has now been taught to clean bathrooms. His room is atrocious by my standards but I don't venture in there.

I still pick up a lot of the odd jobs and yes, I resent it. But I didn't stop doing housework to escape oppression. I simply don't have the time. I teach full time tenure track which means I not only work at school, but also at home. There literally are no hours to do a lot of housework.

So, a lot of it I leave to the other two humans who live in this house. And what doesn't bother any of us doesn't get done.

Parenting, to my mind, is quite another matter, but both my husband and I share a lot of that.

Edited at 2008-03-28 05:17 pm (UTC)

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I love your icon!

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