Just a housewife

This week a male colleague used the phrase, "Is she just a housewife?"  and I bristled.  It just sounded like such a sexist thing to say.  Normally, this particular colleague is shot down in flames, gets paper thrown at him and called a 'Mysoginistic B-something' but not this time.  The women were equally scathing about being 'just a housewife'  and told tales of parents that they'd seen with sunburn who needed (in their opinion) to get a life, mothers who had nothing better to do than work on their children's homework projects and others who spend so much time at the gym, they actually look fit.  Since women joined the workforce they chose to look down on those that hadn't.  Women I worked with at a bank (who hadn't yet had children) laughed about their friends with babies who drank tea all day.  I've always been fascinated by this and my final year degree project (A Fishbein Attitude Survey) looked at women's attitudes to having children.  My survey sample was female degree sudents and less than 1% of the women interviewed said that they wanted children.  They couldn't possibly admit to wanting children because that would have been seen as a waste of their degree (they didn't say that but that's how I felt that at the time).  Only one of that 1% said that she would give up her job to look after her children.  Now, I know that of the 1000 women I interviewed, I can't have been the only one to have children and probably not the only one to stay at home and look after them.

I have always objected to the idea that we are defined by our jobs.  I hate it when people say, "what are you?" when they want to know how you make your living and when people ask about my job I always say, "I work as a music teacher."  The stupidity of defining ourselves solely by the job we do was brought home to me when my son's school produced a video interview of all the children in the reception class (the idea was that they were going to repeat the questions in year 6 so that we had a 'before and after' look at our children through the school but it never happened).  When he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up he looked puzzled for a second and then said his own name.  We all laughed but secretly I admired his certainty.  He liked who he was and thought he'd just carry on being himself, if it was the same to anyone else.

Today, we had a non-pupil day for report writing but as I've finished mine (yes I'm gloating) I was just a housewife.  I spent the day shopping, cleaning, ironing and walking the dog (and then obviously bathing the dog)  I didn't have time to clean any cupboards (as I'd planned) or shred the old bank statements or remove cobwebs, or clean the windows, or cut the grass, or change the bedding but I did make a cake. When my son came home from school I was here to listen to his day and check the homework he had for the week.  I did go for a swim and play the piano for a bit and it was fantastic.  Is it jealousy that makes people use the phrase just a housewife and place such heavy judgements on women who choose to stay at home and look after their children and keep their homes looking nice, rather than cramming those important things into too short a space of time?

The whole issue of definining ourselves by our work can be a very difficult thing for women.  Because being a housewife is unpaid, it is also unvalued, as are many low paid jobs that women traditionally do and creative work that also attracts a female workforce. Women who want children then have to make a choice.  They have to choose to pay someone else (hence giving value to the thing they can't be valued for) to do the job they might want to do; the job they might think they can do better or they have to put up with the comments and snide looks.


The suggestion that all women should freeze their eggs so they could delay motherhood to the right time for their career (probably over 50, when the wrinkles have set in) was in the news this week.  This isn't the solution.  Wouldn't it be far better if society started to value the skills of just a housewife?  Then when women want to re-enter the workplace theywouldn't have to start from the beginning again, having seen their pre-child career flounder on the rocks of housewiffery.