Am I really that domestic?

[breakinglight11]

I just hung my spare tension bar in the side of my closet and slung all my scarves over it. They are now elegantly displayed and eassily accessible. I am absurdly pleased with myself, as I tend to be when I accomplish little feats of domestic genius.

Speaking of my domesticity, I had a little dinner at Elsinore the other night. Bernie and I made my mother's meatloaf, which came out beautifully, with baked potatoes, peas, carrots, and asparagus. I came to a strange realization during the course of making that dinner. I was joking with morethings5about my domestic inclinations, calling myself a fifties housewife at heart. I make that joke fairly frequently lately, given how much I care about keeping the house clean, how I wish I had more time to perfect my cooking skills, how I have caught myself literally vaccuuming in pearls. Christ, I was in WIlliams-Sonoma the other day gushing over glassware, declaring that I must immediately get married so I can register for lovely things from there. I would be good, I declared to Kindness, at doing the housewife thing.

I joke about it, but I never actually think about it-- about what that would be, what that would be like, actually doing the housewife thing. I thought about it, thought about it seriously for probably the first time in my life. And I found something kind of surprising. I... think I might actually be able to do it.

I don't mind cleaning, and I never seem to have the time to keep things as clean as I'd like them to be. I feel really comfortable and satisfied when everything is neat and scrubbed and made t look nice. I love cooking, another thing I never seem to have enough time for, and would love to be able to seriously improve my skills in the kitchen. I enjoy running errands because I like having the time for solitary contemplation while wandering around town. I'd also always have time to do the personal stuff that gets pushed aside by my other responsibilities-- I could get on schedules for all the things that get away from me, like working out. And the kind of work I want to do, writing, isn't easy to get a day job for. I could focus on my writing without worrying about relying on it. And if I were to have children, I don't really like the idea of them never seeing me and being raised by strangers.

This realization shocked me. I'd never considered not working before; I'd always assumed I'd do the career woman thing and try to balance domestic life with that. I was actually kind of disturbed. Would I actually be content with my biggest responsibility being housework? Don't I want more than that? What kind of feminist are you?

But then I stopped again. Isn't feminism about choice? Isn't it about women doing what they want to do, whatever that is, and nobody gets to tell them what that should be? If that would actually make me happy, because it would let me focus on the stuff I really want to do, is there anything wrong with that? It's not like I couldn't write and would have to give up the work that means the most to me. Why should intellectual pursuits only be valid if you're getting money for them?

In my family, women working or not working was never a big deal either way. The men have always been the primary breadwinners, . My grandmothers worked a little, not much. My mother is an art teacher who worked off and on for most of my life. When my brother and I were small, she quit work to stay home with us to raise us herself, and returned to work once we were school-aged. Her career was thrown off track when her mother developed Alzheimer's and required constant attention. Again, she wanted to take care of her family herself, and that took her out of the workforce for about five years. Since then it was difficult to get back in, so at the moment, she isn't working. But she still does her art, and probably more than she was able to when she was teaching.

It kind of bothered me that I was thinking that way. And yet, at the same time, I wasn't really bothered, and it bothered me that I felt like I should be bothered. It doesn't really come to anything, this is just thinking out loud, but it's strange to me.

Comments

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's all about making conscious decisions.

An example: women wearing make-up and shaving their legs bugs me. It's not something I'm expected to do to look good and the painted face and hairless legs seem like such weird, arbitrary standards of attractiveness that I could never get over the absurdity of people feeling like they have to do all that before feeling presentable or, worse, normal.

The fact that Sequoia didn't do any of these things was one of the things that attracted me to her. But over the course of our relationship she decided that she actually liked to do these things because they... well, I never quite got that part; maybe it put her in touch with some cultural thing I'll never grok, or maybe it just made her happy for some other reason. Regardless, at first I gave her crap over it, but in time I realized that since she wasn't just unthinkingly going with the societal norm, but was making a thoughtful decision about what she wanted, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to argue against it with a line about how she should be being herself.

In other words, were you ever with a man who expected you to do the housewife thing, I'd suggest you worry. But if it's something that makes you thoughtfully happy, then forgoing it in the name of thoughtlessly following yet another school of "how women should be" isn't so different from Donna Reed as I see it. And that's not to mention that the lack of a stay-at-home parent is as much due to economics as social changes, I think. If the couple can afford it, it makes a lot of sense and is a role I've considered for myself in the past.

[laurion]

It's a real shame we live in a world now where women are almost required to work a job (as well as the man, if there is one) so the family has enough income to make it. Rare is it the household that can survive one one income.

[youareverysmall.livejournal.com]

Ya know, my mom stayed home to take care of my sister and myself until I was in the 5th or 6th grade, but she was never a "housewife..." She just worked from home, as a freelance translator. There are probably a lot of freelance writing jobs out there that would allow you to work from home. Certainly my favorite blog writer does that (you can check her out at www.finslippy.com ...I guarantee you'll get quite a laugh at her amazingness. Yes. Guarantee.) But I think you need to be pretty lucky today to have a family where one member can stay home all day with the kids. Pretty lucky or pretty frugal, anyway. I've actually discussed the opposite situation with Dan...one where he would take care of "the kids" at home and write and I would work...the only problem is I'll be on a social worker's pay. Blah. Hopefully I'll get into Columbia and then magically end up with an amazing job in social work which pays 200,000 a year. Yup. Or Dan will publish something brilliant which will take care of all of our financial woes.