Housewife is a Dirty Word -part 1

I think I prefer the term “stay at home mom or SAHM” over housewife. Why? I was the first person in and so far the only person in my family to get a college degree and now I am at home raising children. Don’t get me wrong, I love being at home most days and getting to see the kids grow and I am free of the rat race of corporate life. I never imagined the term would go with me. Housewife seems so derogatory to me. Why I wonder?

I am currently reading a book called To Hell With All That- Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife by Caitlin Flanagan. That fact that I am “reading” a book at all should be noted as my best friend says, “you don’t READ!’ This bright yellow book caught my eye for $3 in a dump bin at Big Lots. I find it comforting that other women have the same modern day questions about the antiquated notions of housewifery that I do. Everything from the idea of the white wedding, having children, dinner woes, the right amount of sex in a marriage etc. are covered. It is rather liberating to read that most women in modern society feel the need to be superwoman just like me.

To coin a phrase made popular by today’s epic TV shows like Lost or Grey’s Anatomy “what’s the back story?” I grew up in a super small town in Eastern PA and it was a great bubble to grow up in but ironically I didn’t ever really know too many housewives growing up. My Nana worked in a factory, my mom worked as a nurse and helped run the family business and my friends moms all seemed to work too. There was a housewife or two on our street and the whole concept seemed very June Cleaver to me. The women I knew were all hard working especially those that worked outside the home yet they managed to always have dinner ready, get me to where I needed to go and keep up with the house. It was still customary by the way to change drapes with the seasons and do spring cleaning with a seasonal furniture arrangement; who had time for that?

So, why is housewife a dirty word to me? In my time now as an adult I just don’t feel I have the right to call myself one. I don’t have a four course meal in the oven, I have resorted to naming the dust bunnies and our fridge is housing some kind of science experiment in the back corner of a slide out shelf I NEVER slide out! I realize my choices and lifestyle are different than those of the women I watched in the 70s and my days are filled with homeschooling, running around to get the best deal on bananas (5lbs for $2) and whatnot but geez can’t I do my “job”?

Let’s be real for a minute. I love to iron but don’t. I love to cook from scratch but don’t nearly enough. I love the smell of a clean room and vacuum marks in the carpet but rarely make the time. So what is my “job”? A very smart mom once told me that her “house was LIVED IN”. I have gone with that ever since to describe my own home. Does it really matter if I haven’t dusted this week or this month when I know my kids are getting to play outside or we all sit down to eat together because we don’t believe in overscheduling our kids? How many jobs do I really have and how many can I do well? In twenty years I want my family to know I was here in the dust for them not the other way around.

Granted I could get to a lot more tasks but don’t EVER look for me to change the curtains seasonally. In fall I will get to more like it or not as our homeschooling will end as our youngest attends a local charter school. I don’t mind the duties of a housewife and maybe I expect too much of myself; secretly I want to be June Cleaver. Times have changed and will continue to change and one day I will work outside the home, go back to college or both but I know one thing. I am too much of a hot mess to be a housewife and I’m ok with that.