You are correct, I would only differ in one respect, and that is that, while proverbs extols the virtues of the industrious wife, it is in the overall context of the woman being the primary caregiver to the children until they were old enough to begin becoming industrious themselves, a trait learned in the laps of their mothers.
I would suspect that most housewives of the fifties and prior were not so conspicuously idle as you seem to suggest. Being a wealthy, or even of moderate means, in prior gererations meant employing a number of people to “run your household”. The wives and mothers who had the ability in this country to stay home often did the work that would have been required of several others only 100 years earlier.
I dare anyone to suggest to my mother that she didn’t work as hard as anyone in the workforce (as good a Christian woman as ever walked this earth) ‘cause she’d show you what a switch was for!
I think it’s fairly obvious I meant idleness as in idle in the job market, not idle as in sitting around.
It is interesting, though, that in UK, till fairly recently the social ideal was the landed gentleman, who was essentially idle, not having a “job” of any type. Either because he inherited the position (preferable) or because he made a pile in business, and then retired and tried to become respectable by investing in land and not working.
Think Bertie Wooster and the rest of the boys from the Drones Club.
Very odd notion, and I don’t think it ever took real hold here for men, but I wonder if there wasn’t for a period an analogous POV towards middle and upper class women in this country. That “working” caused a drop in status.
BTW, this attitude is really quite recent in history. During the Middle Ages wives, even nobility, managed their households. With large households this was a true executive position and a great deal of work.
I don’t think it was till the 18th and 19th centuries that butlers took over much of this management in upper class households, leaving the women with little real function.