The stigma of being a housewife. How one woman ‘came out’.

To me, feminism has always meant the right to choose what you want to do with your life. I know that many women who choose to stay at home with their children or (even without children) often speak of being considered second class citizens and feel like they have to justify their choice not to work.

The last week  has seen some diametrically opposed views on motherhood provoked by Jacinta Tynan’s article and my interview with her and it’s also true that every time we speak about stay at home mums or mums that work out of the home, we literally open a lively can of worms.

So what about housewives?  Is there respect? Even from husbands and children? What about friends? Society? What does the modern housewife look like? And is there a term we can use that’s less…..condescending?

I read this article  by New York journalist, essayist and blogger, Elissa Strauss (first published on the Sisterhood website) about how her friend recently ‘came out’ as a housewife and what it meant. Elissa writes…..

Housework has always been a sticky spot for feminists, an elusive thorn in our forward-moving sides. To some, it is a prison from which women have to free themselves. For others, including countless stay-at-home moms and professional domestic workers, it is work that has never earned adequate respect.

This confusion over housework was present in feminism’s second wave. Betty Friedan sought to liberate housewives from their domestic duties, while Selma James fought for wages for housework. And the ambivalence is an issue to this day. The opt-out revolution, in which women were choosing to exit the professional world and become full-time mothers and wives — whether real or a hyped trend — created a heated debate about whether leaving the workplace is a backwards move. All the while, there has been a rise of groups working on behalf of domestic workers who are demanding that housework be considered real work, and are pushing for fair legislation that offers protections to these workers. Add to this the fact that women who don’t opt-out and try to “have it all” have been shown to be unhappy, and that basically the only women who currently label themselves housewives are tawdry TV characters, and the room really starts to spin.

Do we value housework? Do we respect women who do it? I have no idea.

According to a recent piece in the New York Times, in Sweden — a country that is pretty much the world’s progressive lodestar — “housewives are a near-extinct species.”

And the few housewives who are left there apparently consider it a shonde to say so in public. The article, while scant on hard evidence on whether housewives are really in decline, does a good job at documenting the growing stigma surrounding the word, and job, in northern Europe.

This post has been republished with full permission. To read the original click here

Do we value housewives? Is there a better word we could use?  Have you ever felt embarrassed to admit you are a housewife or do you think we’ve passed the point where women have to justify their choices?

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