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I always roll my eyes when I see someone object to the argument I’ve never seen anyone make when someone says “women haven’t worked,” as if it’s a stand in statement to claim the prevailing paradigm isn’t radically different from the way of the past.
No. Women haven’t always worked. Women have always labored, in some capacity. Women haven’t always had a traditional, 9am-5pm professional vocation, post May Day Demonstrations and Henry Ford. And it’s why the arguments that denigrate the value and labor of the housewife and SAHM never made sense. Oh and by the way, when you come home after a hard day’s work, dinner still has to get made and laundry still has to get done; so get on it.
I think work is a correct term for this, we literally call it "housework" after all. But ok even if we draw a distinction in the terms, so what? Replace instance of "work" with "labored productively" and nothing changes.
But those things are far far easier now, because of technology! Fridges means you don't have to go to the market every single day and the things you buy are way fresher in general. Microwaves and ovens and stoves avoids the hassle of handling and maintaining and cleaning up after the fire. Laundry machines went from spending the whole day tending to clothes, to a few minutes hassle of putting clothes in, switching them over, and pushing a few buttons. Folding is really the only time intensive part of laundry left, and technology is looking to simplify even that.
It's not denigrating housewives to point out simple fact, housework is leagues easier today than the past. That's why people spend tons of money on all those aforementioned machines. Some are so insanely and undeniably useful that even the Amish use them like washing machines
That’s exactly the point I was speaking to. There is a value in discouraging women from participating in the “professional workforce,” that’s wholly distinct from the concept of laboring in general. That’s why I said (incidentally it’s also why Elizabeth Warren wrote the book The Middle Income Trap) once you’re done for the day at work and you come home, dinner still has to be made and the laundry still has to get done anyway. And that’s true whether you stay at home and raise the children or choose to go to work.
Exactly. So it should be even easier for them to stay home.
That is not necessarily true. "Easier" can mean different things. Idle hands are the devil's workshop and whatnot. Suppose you've got a mother of three children, they are a baby, a three year old, and a five year old. In a traditional household, there would be washing day, when she and her neighbors go down to the stream to wash, you all bring your children, and the children splash around in the stream. You would have pastry making day, when your sister brings her kids over, they kick a ball around the street, and you make pastry together. You spend a lot of time making clothes, and your older daughter is gradually also learning to sew, and the younger kids are out watching some other kids kick a ball around.
(This was not true of the American West, but the Dustbowl West sounded like a uniquely nightmarish place to raise children)
Now, you can still invite your friend and her children to the stream, but you're just sitting around watching the children. You can still make pastry together, but you realize this is a bit futile, because the pastry at the store is both better and cheaper, and the children cannot kick the ball around the street, there are cars, and no other kids their age. You can sew with your daughter, but it's just a hobby, and mostly for cosplay. And so on. Armenians have Rug Beating Week, when they air out and beat their rugs, all at the same time. You're replacing a communal activity with having to make up activities to avoid boredom, which feels quite different.
The thing is, when a preschool organizes activities to enrich children, give them opportunities to play with nature, etc. it's a worthy job, economically beneficial, adds to GDP. When their own mothers do this it's unproductive.
I posit that even with modern appliances, there is enough work to be done in the hearth that would make up a full productive life for a stay at home mother. And in fact, we are seeing a lot of ills caused by a dearth of stay at home mothers. Maintaining the house, creating and implementing a safe environment for young children that still encourages them to stretch their capabilities, teaching children to read before 1st grade and tutoring them in their school work, reading to children good books that grow their soul, chauffeuring children to activities, planning and executing parties and social events, grocery inventory management and procurement, preparing healthy food, these are things that can fill in a calendar.
How much of the demise of socialization can be attributed to losing the free project management that unpaid homemakers provided to their communities?
Sure, their lives would be less busy than women's lives a century ago. A lot of the work has gotten less labor intensive. But this is also true of the jobs outside the home. Men used to work 12 hour days with physical labor, now they work 8 hours with largely mental labor.
It is also more possible for homemakers to check out, do the bare minimum, and watch soap operas. But I posit that this is also possible for lots of people with 40 hour normal jobs. Else why do Motte posts become more frequent during normal American business hours?
I would like for every household to own productive property, such that the household can be a productive unit again. Lots of people go in that direction with the Internet, 3D printers, drop shipping, etc. But it seems to me that there is enough for the average mother to do now at home that their lives aren't completely boring and pointless.
Makework is always possible, but I'm skeptical that it's worthwhile on current margins.
For example:
There isn't really a point in teaching kids that young. For example, dropping arithmetic entirely until 6th grade resulted in zero learning loss by the end of sixth grade.
More broadly, you can only tutor kids or shuttle them around when they aren't in school, and mostly that is compatible with work outside the home. And if you live in a place with functional public transit it isn't necessary to shuttle them and it's probably good for their independence to let them figure it out themselves.
There is a point in teaching children to read before they go into a school that teaches them the wrong way. After schools dropped phonics and switched to whole language approaches to reading, it became harder to correct a kid's bad habits. If a kid learns the right way to read is to look at pictures and guess, then a couple years down the line a struggling reader will be a nightmare to teach. Instead of sounding out words, which takes work and is hard, the kid will keep drifting to old bad habits.
I highly recommend teaching a kid to read phonetically at least up to The Cat in the Hat (so largely simple consonants, consonant blends, and consonant digraphs) before they go into kindergarten if you can. Some kids really can't because they lack the phonemic awareness necessary, like my daughter, but I wish I had held her back a year in the end because it was an expensive and time consuming mistake to fix.
When kids are in school, a homemakers primary job is to socialize. That's actually important! Volunteer, talk with people, find out special programs that other parents are sending their children to so that your kids get the advantages as well. Organize parties, picnics. Create a community. Organize a meal train when someone is sick. The social fabric is falling apart and no one thinks it has anything to do with the decline of people who went out to coffee every Monday after dropping off the kids and made strong and weak social ties across the local area?
Sure, I concede that if you live in whole language country you have to take things into your own hands. This is fairly time limited to the first few years of a kid's life though.
For me, it's simply that:
My own mother (a SAHM) did none of these things, so I'm not sure how common this was to begin with
Men's social fabric has also fallen apart (Bowling Alone) and I think it's difficult to blame this on women
So I find it difficult to feel strongly about the social contributions of SAHMs.
My SAHM mother did to the socializing legwork, which is why I recognize this as part of the job. Everyone knows someone in their job who doesn't seem to do anything and skates by, homemaking is no different. But judging a job by people who don't do it well isn't the best way to assess its usefulness.
Men's social fabric will fall apart when women's stop socializing. Who do you think gets to meet up at these parties and picnics the women organized?
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