With back to school came back to work for a friend of a friend. Her mat leave is over and she has really struggled with her return to work. But struggle or not, she’s doing it, because she “doesn’t want to be a housewife.”
Which caused me to ponder: What does that mean? It’s a kind of Betty Friedan type of thing to say. She (the mom returning to work) loved her time with her baby, I’m told. Which is not, incidentally, “time off.” This would have made her a temporary “housewife,” I guess.
I’ve always thought women should do what they think is best. But when it comes to so many, I see them stamping out their instincts and with it, their desires, in order to pretend they feel AOK when they go back to work fulltime. I wonder why they do it. But it’s not my place to ask or question their personal choice. So I’ll muse about it here, instead, with a kind tone, I hope. I don’t think one decision is more right than the other. This post is about women’s desires, and why they don’t listen to them.
Seems to me that being a strong woman might involve staying home, where the world will tell you that a woman’s strength lies in going back to work. Just one of life’s little contradictions.
FYI: A fun column about a strong woman who never worked outside the home.
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I think society needs a little more evolution in this regard. if you like your job and invested a lot in your education, you are in a tough spot. i know in some places in Europe they hold your position for as long as three years, which I think is something that would be nice to see here. Many times part time work isn’t permitted, where I think it would be totally feasible.
We probably need to do a little more evolving in our thinking as well though. Why housewife? What about nurturer, teacher, muse, arts director, dance instructor, etc? Why take the greatest job in the world and demean it by labelling it merely, “housewife”.
As I often say to colleagues reluctantly returning to work after maternity leave, I would rather we give women who want to stay home with their children (which, by the way, is the most important job in the world) the per-child funds provided to daycare centres. And, tax breaks would be nice too …
I much prefer the term “homemaker” to “housewife”. I am not married to my house. 🙂 My job here is to “make a home” for my husband and children. I have a university education but chose to be home for my family for the past 23 years. Yes, there are times when I wish there was more household income, and when I wish I had the intellectual stimulation of a job outside the home, but those are fleeting thoughts. I chose to stay at home, knowing there would be sacrifices to made for that choice. Too bad the government doesn’t support that choice in a tangible (ie $$) way.
I, too, am struggling with this right now – not just because of the stipulations of being called a housewife, but because our society has made families become dependent on having two incomes. It has also become ‘socially unacceptable’ for a mom to want to be home, and people who work from home so they have the benefits of both income and ‘being a housewife’ have to live with people’s comments about not ‘having a real job’.
A lot of people can be mothers, but I think it takes a pretty strong and capable woman to be able to spend her whole day sitting on the floor with a child, singing silly little songs and reading simple books, getting a flurry of household chores done during nap time, having a hot meal on the table for the family, not having a lot of adult company, all the while maintaining her sanity and her smile.
Just my two cents.