I meant to say something else about the feminist angle in my post above. So much of the stuff out there about the philosophy of the modern homemaker seems targeted at women who identify with the religion-based "help meet" idea (or sometimes even blatant domination with no veneer of partnership) where the husband is the only one with the power to make major decisions and the woman's role is only to raise the children and do the type of household chores that have been considered the sphere of women in the recent past. You know, the man as head of the household, wage-earner, "boss", and the woman as baby-maker, cook and maid, submissive. That's my perception of it, anyway, which I realize may be a gross over-simplification. On the other hand, there's also a lot of stuff targeted at the affluent suburban or urban housewife whose main role in society is expected to be that of directing the family's consumption.
Both of those scenarios are so not how I want to live, or how I want my society structured. My household is egalitarian, my husband and I share the power to make decisions and share the responsibility of keeping things going, and we both strive to tip the balance of our lives farther towards production of our needs and wants and away from purchasing it all from the extractive economy (a work in progress, we are far from that ideal). There is division of labor, and it largely lines up with the "man provides money, woman tends home" scenario, but it's a truly equal partnership, there is no sense of submission or superiority and there is a great deal of flexibility. I do virtually all of the housecleaning and cooking, he's the only one earning cash income right now. Parenting is pretty equally divided, except that I usually spend more hours per day with the kids because he works in the business most weekdays. Most HSing happens during the middle of the day when he's working, but he does participate some in that as well. We share farm chores, with sometimes one of us doing more than the other to take up slack depending on what else is going on. It usually all shakes out to feel equitable to us, and if something feels out of balance we make adjustments based on our family's needs, not on any particular cultural expectations.
In general, I've felt our worldview didn't fit the outline of most of the stuff I've seen designed to inspire or define homemakers, but when I read Shannon's description of her perception of her family's differences from that "help meet" model, I thought, "Yes! That's us, too!" She says:
I actually know quite a few families who also fall into neither category, I think I'm lucky to have a number of friends who are in some sense Radical Homemakers, and lucky to live in an area where it's perhaps not so unusual. But I also find that society in general tends to fall more squarely into the categories she describes. Those of us who don't, tend to get a lot of blank looks and uncomfortable silences if our lifestyle comes up in conversation.
I don't appreciate the attitudes and assertions of some parts of the feminist cause that think I'm betraying the efforts of the women who came before me who fought for equality, by staying home to raise our children and tend our home rather than being employed by the currency economy, because it seems they want to remove choice from me just as much as those who believe I should seek only to cater to my husband, raise children and be a household servant (which is thankfully becoming a more archaic view) and good little consumer (which is unfortunately not archaic). Both of those images fall within the Empire model, and I think to a large extent that's at the root of what's wrong with human society now - it's based on domination rather than cooperation. The feminist view that women should choose only to work in the currency economy in order to express freedom is not more liberating than the prior alternative, IMO. Moving towards a cooperative model would give women and men more freedom for fulfillment.
I also have some thoughts about how same-sex couples seem to be excluded from more conventional homemaking support.
I don't really have time for this much typing, but these concepts weigh heavily on my mind.
Both of those scenarios are so not how I want to live, or how I want my society structured. My household is egalitarian, my husband and I share the power to make decisions and share the responsibility of keeping things going, and we both strive to tip the balance of our lives farther towards production of our needs and wants and away from purchasing it all from the extractive economy (a work in progress, we are far from that ideal). There is division of labor, and it largely lines up with the "man provides money, woman tends home" scenario, but it's a truly equal partnership, there is no sense of submission or superiority and there is a great deal of flexibility. I do virtually all of the housecleaning and cooking, he's the only one earning cash income right now. Parenting is pretty equally divided, except that I usually spend more hours per day with the kids because he works in the business most weekdays. Most HSing happens during the middle of the day when he's working, but he does participate some in that as well. We share farm chores, with sometimes one of us doing more than the other to take up slack depending on what else is going on. It usually all shakes out to feel equitable to us, and if something feels out of balance we make adjustments based on our family's needs, not on any particular cultural expectations.
In general, I've felt our worldview didn't fit the outline of most of the stuff I've seen designed to inspire or define homemakers, but when I read Shannon's description of her perception of her family's differences from that "help meet" model, I thought, "Yes! That's us, too!" She says:
Quote:
| Homemaking, like eating organic foods, seemed a luxury to be enjoyed only by those wives whose husbands garnered substantial earnings...At the other extreme, homemaking was seen as a realm of the ultra-religious, where women accepted their role of Biblical "help meets" to their husbands. They cooked, cleaned, toiled, served and remained silent and powerless. Bob and I fell into neither category. And I suspected there were more like us. |
I don't appreciate the attitudes and assertions of some parts of the feminist cause that think I'm betraying the efforts of the women who came before me who fought for equality, by staying home to raise our children and tend our home rather than being employed by the currency economy, because it seems they want to remove choice from me just as much as those who believe I should seek only to cater to my husband, raise children and be a household servant (which is thankfully becoming a more archaic view) and good little consumer (which is unfortunately not archaic). Both of those images fall within the Empire model, and I think to a large extent that's at the root of what's wrong with human society now - it's based on domination rather than cooperation. The feminist view that women should choose only to work in the currency economy in order to express freedom is not more liberating than the prior alternative, IMO. Moving towards a cooperative model would give women and men more freedom for fulfillment.
I also have some thoughts about how same-sex couples seem to be excluded from more conventional homemaking support.
I don't really have time for this much typing, but these concepts weigh heavily on my mind.
) and to be honest, I haven't finished reading it yet. I feel like it really isn't anything new, I've read all this stuff online. I did like the part about feminism etc, that was interesting. The second part of the book I found a little confusing. I could never keep the people straight and they way she'd bounce around between them left me confused. I almost would have preferred each persons story being it's own chapter.
