As is customary among most American adults, I am often asked what I do for a living. Whereas I used to dazzle my audience with my resume from the past ten years, I now give a different answer. Depending on my syllabic mood, I say that I am either a homemaker or a housewife. In a few short months from now, I’ll have my job title distilled down to one succinct word: MOM.
And then I wait for the inevitable reaction: First, eyebrows raise in surprise. Close on those heels comes the usual, slightly passive-aggressive platitude, “Well, THAT must be nice.” I tell them that no, sitting around eating bon-bons all day must be nice. What I do actually keeps me busy and on my toes.
“So, what DO you do all day?” they ask. What, you mean besides being secretary, accountant, nurse, therapist, housekeeper, laundress, nutritionist, personal shopper, event planner, decorator, executive chef, and, oh yeah, pregnant? Why, I just sit around eating bon-bons all day.
What is odd is that it never occurs to me to ask what other professionals do all day long. It’s a question that makes its way specifically toward housewives and other similar women. Its asking is intended to marginilize us, as if no task we carry out could possibly be as important or necessary as the things that other working people do. For reasons I have yet to understand, divulging this information makes us a fair target for others’ judgements, as if as stay-home women we become property, kept or child-like, and need to justify our actions and motives even to strangers.
Important to note is that not everyone holds judgment or demands explanation. I do encounter people – granted, not often – who don’t bat an eyelash, but rather greet my response with a satisfied nod. It’s no strange coincidence that these are all people who have set their own lives up in such a way as to be doing the things that they love. Some of it might pass as “official business”, but all of it qualifies as passion. I have come to imagine that the people who have conciously created their realities don’t find the concept offensive. It takes a fulfilled person to understand fulfillment. This is because a satisfied person has had to first embrace the possibility of an authentic existence in order to create it. A happy person has the capacity to be happy for others. On the contrary, a dissatisfied person has a compromised ability to imagine satisaction, let alone to be pleased with someone else’s version of it. To them, satisfaction is always somehow partnered with guilt (guilt for seeking satisfaction, guilt for not seeking it), and it’s a happy housewife’s funny fate to often be an object of that projection. In reality, my being a housewife (and soon to be stay at home mom) is not a problem – it’s actually YOUR problem.
Is this all to say that I have no desire or drive to do or be anything else? Of course not. Am I able to hold a provocative, informed conversation on a myriad of current, cultural and/or academic topics? Sure am. Will I continue my education once the babies are a few years old? You bet I will. Will I fufill my other dreams of teaching college, writing books, and contributing positively to my larger environment? There is not a doubt in my mind.
But will I allow my desires for the future to undermine the importance or joy of the commitment I have made to my home and family in the present time? Absofreakinglutely not. And I won’t let you do that, either.
In short, I don’t cluck my tongue at you for chopping your hair off and schlepping for a boss so that you can share bitter cocktails at 5pm and order a pizza for your child after daycare. You’ve made your choice.
This one’s mine.
The Bewildered Housewife 