My mother, my grandmothers, and most of my ancestresses worked their backsides off at home, whether living in the suburbs or in the countryside. Though the children were on deck every waking moment and needed supervision, teaching, etc., no one was “bored” and thinking of things to do; like them, when I was able to stay home my days were productive and full of constant work: the shopping, cleaning, cooking, errand-running, and sewing a family requires, as well as taking care of animals, painting the house, volunteering at church or charities, maintaining a vegetable garden, homeschooling the kids, etc. All of these things of course not only improve the minds of the children—homeschooled children are famous for lapping public school kids on exams, college admissions, academic prizes, and other scholastic honors—but free the husband to devote a lot of time to his career.
To bring us back to the subject of this thread, women who choose to be housewives: there is no way that a woman who works full time outside of the home has the time or energy to give as much and do as much after work as the woman who is at home from the time she gets up in the morning. If you don’t get home until 5:30 or 6, you can’t possibly be there to help your kids with a difficult math assignment when they get off the schoolbus at 3. You still have hours of chores and errands to do, cooking and perhaps laundry and other responsibilities, and there are only 24 hours in a day, possibly four hours between the time you get home and the time the kids have to be fed, bathed, and in bed. Call the involved mothers piddlers if you like (not clear on precisely what sort of insult this is intended to be, are you perhaps suggesting that we suffer from urinary incontinence?) but there are only so many hours in a day no matter how smart you are.
Now that I’m compelled to work at a full-time job outside of the home, I certainly don’t have the time or strength to give to my family as I used to, and we all feel the lack very acutely. Though I’m an unusually organized and productive person, there is no way everything that needs to be done can be done in four hours.
I don’t understand what pleasure you get out of denigrating the accomplishments and labor of others who are leading perfectly valid and productive lives as housewives. We appear not to have the same values at all. In any case, I’ll give you the last word so you have ample opportunity to criticize those of us who devote more time to our homes and children than you do. Be my guest . . .
Why thank you there Ma’am, I will take your invitation for the last word. But, somehow I think we may be jumping the gun a bit. I could be wrong, and have been in the past, but I have the feeling that you are not quite done with this topic. (And, people puzzle over why 50% of marriages end in divorce).
I guess you must live in Arthur Illinois or Lancaster County PA, or be a visitor from a third world country because the world you describe exists for about one percent of all “housewives” today. Did you notice those little green stores popping up all over the place? You can get a cup of coffee there for about $4, or a glorified donut for about $5, and at 10AM they are busy as can be - with house moms among others. Kids are still out in the car or in tow, but these places are busy. And, there are 15,000 of these little stores. And they alone serve about 8 times as many customers every day as there are home schooled children in the US. And, they have competitors, lots of competitors.
Today, in my house, two ladies come in once a week and for $75 clean every one of the four and one-half baths, the kitchen, floors, linens, vacuum, dust, and trash removal. Everything else arguably “housewifing” is just picking up after myself. A task that does not require any additional time if done when it should be. Your list of tasks: Shopping (prophetically first on the list), cleaning, cooking, errand running, and sewing (I think I had the buttons on my cashmere topcoat sewed back on at the dry cleaners in 2006), make for a busy day if you are of diminished capacity. But they add less than an hour a day to the two hours of child care for a normal person. Home schooling, while laudable, is too rare to consider.
My thesis is and has been that the work expands to fit the time for it for those claiming title to the turf of “housewife.” I’m not against women or men not working outside of the home, I did it for 10 years. It’s the self-righteous indignation women who are lucky enough to have won this lottery have in criticizing the stupid oaf who doesn’t want to take out her garbage after spending 10 hours on his back under a truck all day that has brought me to this thread. And, if you go back and read some of the posts here you will either see what I mean or continue to miss my point.