Posted on 01/01/2009 1:05:40 PM PST by CE2949BB
She sews, cooks, knits, gardens and raises chooks. The housewife is back – with younger women embracing traditional domestic crafts in droves, new figures show.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Every day growing up, my mom would curl her hair and put on lipstick just before my dad got home. Then when he got home, they would have a cocktail together in the living room and chat.
I’ve never done that for my husband. He’s lucky if there is a cold beer in the refrigerator.
Great if you can find a man who can support your staying home. Money-wise that is.
If not, you both decide you’ll be a stay-at-home mom, have the first baby and then...oops, we don’t have enough money you need to get a job. Happened to a friend of mine. Now she has double jobs. Home and teaching. And she’s worn out all of the time.
I don’t think we will see majority of women return to be “1950s wives.” Yes, there will be many of them who choose to have that life-style (men as breadwinners, wives stay at home to raise children), but there are also many other women who would choose to work outside the house AND at the same time to take care the domestic front with the help of their husbands. I believe what’s happening is the return of 1950s housewife for some, AND practicing a new way of organizing family for others: there will be more guys feel comfortable working at ‘domestic’ work. Palin’s family is an example of the latter.
I ask them who does the laundry, cooking and cleaning. Usually, it is them, when they get home from an 8 hr day and on their weekends.
I took care of the "housework" mostly during the day, spent time with the family after dinner (which hubby and kids cleaned up)and enjoyed many things on the weekends.
Most women today are overworked, overstressed and burned out. They complain that they don't have enough "time for themselves" yet can't imagine not holding a full-time job or worse yet state, "We can't get by on just one income" (as they both drive expensive cars, eat out most of the time, send kids to expensive classes, camps, dance, etc. lessons and take vacations regularly to Disney!
That’s something couples should figure out before they have the first baby. It was an absolute blessing to us that we had already set things up so we were living on one salary when my husband lost his job this summer. (Of course, it was supposed to be his salary that we were living on, but mine worked!)
Now he’s got a new great job and I’m still chipping in until my baby’s born... maybe part time afterwards if my company continues to want my services part time and from home.
I grew up in the 60’s and although my Mom didn’t clean house in heels wearing pearls, she was always dressed up and looked beautiful by the time my Dad walked in the door... it was important to her to look good for him.
You’re right. Without a plan and being sure you can afford to stay home you’re gambling. You can make it, but...being worn out all the time and stressed over money isn’t the best recipe for good mothering.
Last year my 15 yr old niece asked me to teach her to sew..
I gave her basic instruction over a couple of weeks and a very good basic sewing book.
She took off and ran with it.
She has started cooking on her own initiative.
I hope the stay at home thing does not catch on.
Sorry, but I see too many women staying home and not using the talents that they were given. Marriage should be a partnership; women need to pitch in and help with the family finances (and men need to help with housework).
I recently went to a funeral for a 55-year-old woman with a college degree. She stayed at home after marriage. While she had been healthy up until the day she died, they really didn’t have much to talk about her life and I think it was a bit of a waste.
My mom was a stay-at-home mom. When she passes there will more than we can probably remember to say about her and her life and she only made it to the seventh grade. She had siblings to stay at home and take care of before she had kids.
My dad supported us back then. Never took a vacation. Loved his work in the steel mill.
Get out of my head!. >:)
I’d hit that.
You’d hit anything. ;)
“I grew up in the 60’s and although my Mom didn’t clean house in heels wearing pearls, she was always dressed up and looked beautiful by the time my Dad walked in the door... it was important to her to look good for him.”
My wife has been a homemaker for 15 years now. We have no kids. When I get home she’s wearing sweats and watching Judge Judy or that woman whose show always reports on crimes (like the girl who disappeared in Aruba and the new case down in Florida where the little kid went missing and they just found her skeleton and arrested her mother). I pour my own beer. We’ve been married for 25 years.
Look around you. The odds are, whatever it is, I've already hit it.
“Not if you don’t like housework.”
Move to the Rep. of Panama where I live.
It is heaven for us ladies who hate housework.
For not too much money, I have a man and a woman who come through my house twice a week. House is cleaned from top to bottom. There is ironing, laundry, etc., and much, much more like pluming, etc. when necessary.
Some clothing of any kind needs to be repaid or altered to include fitted sheets? Not to worry. I send it to a professional seamstress which is not expensive and one of the best (having tried many).
I do my own cooking. It relaxes me.
Sewing? My mother taught me how to sew when I was tiny.
She also taught me now to cook and iron when I was tiny. I refuse to iron.
Further:
I HATE HOUSEWORK!!!
My best regards to you. We think alike.
Tell me more about Panama.
This response makes me sad on a number of levels.
1) Partnerships do not mean that everyone is contributing in the same way. If, in fact, each member of the team is performing their part rather than trying to do everything, the results are generally better. The statement that men should help with the housework, women should help with the finances is as bad as saying that women should stay home, barefoot and pregnant.
2) You have no idea what role she was playing on “their team”. No matter how close you were to the situation, unless you were one of the participants, you don’t know her contribution.
3) That a bunch of people at a funeral weren’t nominating her for a Nobel Prize doesn’t mean that her life was not the one that she wanted. It was, after all, her life, not the spectators’ life.
4) Her total value (all of our total values) lies in our existence as children of God and not in some subjective measurement of productivity.
5) Neither she, nor you, nor I am responsible to anyone else to serve the whole (college education not withstanding).
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