Why the re-normalization of homemaking matters
Don’t ever let anyone dissuade you from defending this sacred institution
For years now, my posts defending the institution of homemaking have ignited indignant offense from modern women.
Interestingly enough, I am frequently told (sometimes even by the same people) that “no one is trying to prevent you from being a homemaker” or that “feminists support homemakers.”
These are both rather misleading responses, however.
First of all, I’ve never once claimed or felt like anyone is actively trying to prevent me personally from becoming a homemaker. I do, however, know many women who have been actively dissuaded from pursuing this path, myself included. So if I wanted to go down that rabbit trail, we would have plenty to discuss, (and we shall in a moment).
Secondly, while many self-identifying feminists do indeed support homemakers and it is quite decent of them to do so, much of the most influential feminist thought has clearly taken aim at the institution of homemaking, and that is precisely the attack I aim to counter.
It’s also rather telling that these are the common, seemingly canned responses.
They are still rooted in the very same premise that has largely undermined the value and importance of homemaking. Women will quite confidently state that they support homemaking “if it’s a woman’s choice.”
They will automatically defend feminism by claiming that feminists “support homemakers” because they so obviously profess to be “pro-woman.”
What’s more, they are normally provided to me as a refutation to my arguments in favor of homemaking — or, much more conspicuously, my content that deliberately highlights the vitriolic attitude modern feminists have often taken towards homemaking.
Read that again: homemaking.
One can easily profess to support homemakers — while maintaining the stance, as these women so clearly do, that to expect that married women and mothers take homemaking seriously is an expectation that ought not to exist.
In other words, the support for the institution of homemaking as a cultural institution is deliberately lacking.
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That is the bottom line.
Meanwhile, there is no denying that, regardless of the wide array of opinions the modern woman may have towards homemaking and moral arguments either for, against, or anywhere in between, the institution of homemaking has drastically altered since the advent of modern feminism.
Yes, there are other factors involved, namely, industrial changes seemingly designed to eliminate the work required to take care of a home. I believe these changes gave the stark impression to millions of modern women that their work at home was no longer so important.
Couple this with the feminist rhetoric of the 1960s and onwards and you have the powerful rise of the very narrative about homemaking that I have dedicated so much of my time to refuting.
Feminism, for whatever components it possesses that one might consider to have been beneficial or even necessary for the modern woman, has undoubtedly de-normalized homemaking…which was precisely the goal.
Why bother denying it?
The feminists don’t. It is hardly hyperbolic to claim that influential feminists scorned the institution of homemaking and clearly thought it ought to be done away with to pave the way for a genderless society in which women would finally achieve “equality.”
You see, the modern feminist version of equality is sameness with men.
And sameness with men is simply not possible if when are expected to hold certain positions in their families on the basis of their sex.
This is no secret.
After all, consider that modern feminism would not be if it were not for the influence of Karl Marx, the author of The Communist Manifesto who wrote, “The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time.”
Germaine Greer, a massively influential feminist of the 20th century, made no secret of sharing this goal with the author of communism.
“Women’s liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state,” she said, “and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let’s get on with it.”
Marxist Betty Friedan, author of the classic feminist manifesto, The Feminine Mystique, famously compared housewives to concentration camp inmates, writing that “women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps...they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.”
Her book has had an unquestionable impact on how our modern culture views housewifery.
While she lamented the state of women who grow up expecting nothing more than keeping house and raising children, I grew up not even expecting to have these things be part of my life at all, unless it just sort of happened.
I assumed, thanks to the influence of the culture I grew up in, that women who wanted to be housewives were simply unintelligent and, I thought, quite pitiable and sad for having such low expectations.
That is…until I moved into my first apartment and realized not only what a great deficit I had in my life when it came to household management and basic self-care, but what a joy, pleasure, privilege, and gift it was to be able to keep a home.
All at once, I realized that the millions of women who had diligently kept their houses and cared for their loved ones throughout history hadn’t been oppressed.
They had played an instrumental, critical role in the building up of households and thus…civilization as a whole.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that:
“[W]hen people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge [at his work]. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean…. I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
The institution of homemaking is what has come under attack by feminists, but it is in this institution that so many women have left an eternal impact on their world.
It is no small task, and it is certainly no oppressive one.
To force the defense of the re-normalization of homemaking into the logically self-defeating box of “free choice” is to force it to remain de-normalized.
Homemaking is important. Homemaking is essential. Homemaking is rewarding. Homemaking is beautiful.
Modern women do indeed have the choice of whether or not they would like to be a homemaker.
I’m here to encourage them to choose it, because it is an institution that is vital for the dignity of all mankind.
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My husband moved heaven and earth and helped me recover from an illness that most agreed had no cure. I had well-meaning friends say things like, "You're going to do great things and help so many people." Guess what I wanted to do with my regained health? Care for my husband and children. It has been such a great blessing to do so!
“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?” ❤️
Last year I was struggling to manage my students’ behaviors in class as a new teacher, while giving most of my profits away for someone else to care for my youngest. My older daughter and son were being taught in a different classroom down the hall in a school culture that promotes the opposite of what my husband and I want our children to value. Their teachers were veteran teachers struggling with the same behavioral issues I was in my first moments as a teacher. When I picked the kids up from class to leave early for an appointment their were children screaming, hands over their ears, rocking back and forth while the students are just trying to carry on. “She’s always like that,” another child said.
Only whole class rewards were aloud. You cannot reward your students who show up, want to learn, try to answer, simply participate-Exclude students from a reward like eating lunch in the class, write up. That is just one example. “But it’s such a noble profession, we need good teachers, not everyone can stay home with their kids, you’ve invested so much time and money into this profession,” After insurance deductions my take home was $325 per week, 6:45- 4:00 M-F.
Top “IB” school.
Childcare $125-$300 per week, quality correlates with price.
I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to next year, teaching my children, caring for my family, growing myself.
My mom believed she had no choice but to work, while proudly identifying as a feminist. I thought teaching would be an awesome job as a 4th grader in ‘91, instead of the tasks my mom would share about her job as a nurses aid, at dinner time. Thank you for writing Isa.