The Wifely Duties

[jamespowers]

Unbelievable.... except that I've been there I would never do that to them, so I don't get it.

Putting the shoe on the other foot might get them to think a bit though. I might put my foot somewhere else but....

 

[jamespowers]

Scanners lol

Funny you said that.... I had to put another coat of paint on the kitchen cabinets

Make it nice and even---long even brush strokes. Don't let the brush get dry.

 

[jamespowers]

Just ask yourself how many of those families have weekly house cleaners! All the moms I know who work pay for house cleaners to come in at least once a month. Take one chore, saying cleaning bathrooms. I takes me 4-5 hours to clean 3 full baths. By the time I'm done, the kids come home and it's time to supervise homework.

Once a Week!? You know very well that children make more of a mess to keep up with than that. lol lol lol
Supervising homework is the school teacher function I mentioned previously.

 

[sheeplady]

You might have a point there. In which case, that means that women themselves have to come to terms with these occupations and just leave each other alone when one of them chooses to be a stay at home mother, nurse, school teacher etc. All of those are equals to me. I might value my wife being at home more personally as she does things I cannot do whether I was at work or otherwise. She actually becomes the school teacher, nurse, accountant, and many other occupations just being home with the children. Anyone who thinks that is easy needs an attitude adjustment.

Exactly! Most of this does not come from men. Some, sure. But most of the time it is women judging other women.

is staying home and being a mother really being looked down upon or is it just people "thinking" it's being looked down upon? I don't see anyone here saying how terrible it is?

I spent a few years working in a library years ago working on a project trying to identify the most important home economics works written in the US. Part of my job involved going over the American Home Economics Association journals. In the 1970s, they handled a lot of backlash because *obviously* they were just trying to convince women to stay at home and "not develop themselves to their full potential."

Nevermind that the field of Home Economics was one of the first fields in which women could easily obtain higher education, positions of power in universities, helped to secure women the vote, and generally helped to make families lives' easier and better through knowledge about child care, nutrition, food safety, etc.

 

[rue]

Just ask yourself how many of those families have weekly house cleaners! All the moms I know who work pay for house cleaners to come in at least once a month. Take one chore, saying cleaning bathrooms. I takes me 4-5 hours to clean 3 full baths. By the time I'm done, the kids come home and it's time to supervise homework.

Oh I know Even better though is my sister-in-laws best friend that has three kids..... she doesn't work, doesn't cook and has a full time housekeeper/nanny. What in the world does she do all day??

 

[jamespowers]

Exactly! Most of this does not come from men. Some, sure. But most of the time it is women judging other women.



I spent a few years working in a library years ago working on a project trying to identify the most important home economics works written in the US. Part of my job involved going over the American Home Economics Association journals. In the 1970s, they handled a lot of backlash because *obviously* they were just trying to convince women to stay at home and "not develop themselves to their full potential."

Nevermind that the field of Home Economics was one of the first fields in which women could easily obtain higher education, positions of power in universities, helped to secure women the vote, and generally helped to make families lives' easier and better through knowledge about child care, nutrition, food safety, etc.

Sounds exactly like NOW propaganda from the same period.

 

[rue]

Putting the shoe on the other foot might get them to think a bit though. I might put my foot somewhere else but....

I know you would

Make it nice and even---long even brush strokes. Don't let the brush get dry.

This isn't my first rodeo James

 

[jamespowers]

Oh I know Even better though is my sister-in-laws best friend that has three kids..... she doesn't work, doesn't cook and has a full time housekeeper/nanny. What in the world does she do all day??

Now THAT is going waaaayyy out on a limb. I hope they are rich and not just stupid.

 

[rue]

Now THAT is going waaaayyy out on a limb. I hope they are rich and not just stupid.

Nope, not rich at all.

 

[jamespowers]

This isn't my first rodeo James

I know! I was just being facetious about women not knowing how to do these things. That's a man's job you know. :rofl:

 

[jamespowers]

Nope, not rich at all.

Now SHE needs to take some home economics classes.

 

[jamespowers]

Exactly! Most of this does not come from men. Some, sure. But most of the time it is women judging other women.

I find that as well. Women judge other women's choices much more harshly than men. I don't understand it.

 

[sheeplady]

Sounds exactly like NOW propaganda from the same period.

It might have been NOW that was attacking them. I don't remember, but all of a sudden the entire association was on the defensive. Since I had started in 1850 and worked my way up to the 1970s historically through the home ec literature, I understood how home economics was intimately tied to the women's movement for equality and to feminism. Not just because a bunch of historians said so, but because it was evident through the literature itself.

I just kept smacking my head and swearing about how a bunch of people with no knowledge of history were making an enemy of their biggest supporter. And this twisted perspective is what most people still think about home economics: that it is just trying to keep women in the kitchen and barefoot. I could write a whole paper on how this is stupid on so many levels, but I won't.

 

[jamespowers]

It might have been NOW that was attacking them. I don't remember, but all of a sudden the entire association was on the defensive. Since I had started in 1850 and worked my way up to the 1970s historically through the home ec literature, I understood how home economics was intimately tied to the women's movement for equality and to feminism. Not just because a bunch of historians said so, but because it was evident through the literature itself.

I just kept smacking my head and swearing about how a bunch of people with no knowledge of history were making an enemy of their biggest supporter. And this twisted perspective is what most people still think about home economics: that it is just trying to keep women in the kitchen and barefoot. I could write a whole paper on how this is stupid on so many levels, but I won't.

I have been through the same channels that you have been I see. Any argument that I could make or made was likely going to get thrown in the trash heap as I am the enemy---a man.
I would figure that educating women not only in general but specifically in all of those things that Home Economics does would be considered a help and not a hinderance. I think keeping them barefoot and in the kitchen would require much more ignorance than education but then I am a man.......

 

[LizzieMaine]

I just kept smacking my head and swearing about how a bunch of people with no knowledge of history were making an enemy of their biggest supporter. And this twisted perspective is what most people still think about home economics: that it is just trying to keep women in the kitchen and barefoot. I could write a whole paper on how this is stupid on so many levels, but I won't.

Sitting down and thoroughly reading any five years' worth of the Ladies Home Journal between 1935 and 1950 would be an absolutely brain-scrambling experience for anyone who holds to the barefoot-and-pregnant image of the Golden Era woman. But no, they know better. "Oh look, a goofy ad we can ironically mock!"

 

[jamespowers]

Sitting down and thoroughly reading any five years' worth of the Ladies Home Journal between 1935 and 1950 would be an absolutely brain-scrambling experience for anyone who holds to the barefoot-and-pregnant image of the Golden Era woman. But no, they know better. "Oh look, a goofy ad we can ironically mock!"

Anyone who can think back seriously and remember their grandmothers knows well that that stuff was passe by then. The helpless woman on a pedestal was a Victorian thing not a golden era thing.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Just ask yourself how many of those families have weekly house cleaners! All the moms I know who work pay for house cleaners to come in at least once a month. Take one chore, saying cleaning bathrooms. I takes me 4-5 hours to clean 3 full baths. By the time I'm done, the kids come home and it's time to supervise homework.

In my home growing up, each "child" had a list of chores. Cleaning, sweeping, mopping, mowing, laundry, taking the trash out, and anything else either my Mother or Father may assign to us. I think it was a good thing for us to have chores, it was not anything we complained about, and gave me and my siblings some basic knowledge on how to do things.

At one point in time, I asked my Mother to show me how to use the iron for clothing. Since that date, I really prefer to do the ironing, and excel at it, and have a talent for being able to get stains out of anything. Perhaps some folks may think all that is not what a "man" should do, but I don't care what anyone else would think about it. I am pleased to be able to know how to do things and happy with my results.

I have to wonder why anyone that has a child, would not elect to have them do things around the house? Further, it baffles me that anyone in a relationship today, cannot sit down and manage things between themselves and their spouse and have it all "work" for them to ease the burdens of life? Team work is a daily thought in my home. We actually enjoy the end results and have some conversation as to other married couples that continue to struggle with things and have flare ups all due to some very simple things not taking place.

If a Gal can stay home, a Guy can still get off his rear end and do things around the home. To me, it is a form of showing with actions where his heart is really at.

A good added note: Behind every great man, is a greater woman. Yeah I know it is what someone else stated many years ago, but it still applies today!

 

[LoveMyHats2]

A girl who wants to engage in domestic activities because they're what she wants to do will be discouraged in every way from following that course, by the basic thrust of modern culture. Think of all the dismissive "hmph, whatta you wanna do, stay home and bake cooooooookies" gibes, all the "real girls play rough" propaganda, all the rest of it which convinces girls and young women that housework = unimportant silly feminine stereotypes. Think of all the guff the "Time Warp Wives" got, think of every stay-at-home mother who's ever been accused of being a sellout. And then wonder why the typical 21-year-old woman has no idea whatever of how to sew on a button or boil an egg.

As long as modern culture turns basic, necessary human tasks into punching bags for their particular sociopolitical agendas, we're just going to see more of this sort of thing. And that's not "progressive," it's just bone dumb stupid. And it's anything but free choice.

You are so right in all that you state. Life and it's needs are not perfectly attached to any one gender. In my opinion, anything a man can do, really, a woman could do it, and the same in return.

If a Gal decided to be a stay at home, it should be a mutual agreed thing, and actually, she should have 75 percent of the vote on that. Her Husband should do what he has to do, to honor her choices. I find it no different then when some Guy tell's his wife he wants to go fishing with his buddies. When he goes, and comes back, he can take the same amount of time and effort to see what he can do to help around the home, dishes, laundry, watch the kids to give his wife some breathing room, help kids do their school work, what ever it is that needs to be done. It is really common sense.

If my Wife was ever to be "kidded" by anyone of her friends for her choices, she would tell them, "hey, you put your shoes on how you want to, and let me wear what I want to wear, and if you don't like it, tuff"!

 

[Miss Golightly]

I've had other women tell me that I'm wasting my talents by staying home. I've also had women, at cocktail parties and husband's company functions, ask me what I do, then just sneer, turn around and walk away when I say that I'm a stay-at-home mom.

I gave up a very good job when I had my daughter and don't regret it for one second. I have yet to encounter someone looking down their nose at me for giving up work - for me this is my choice after all for me this is what feminism is all about - choice - a shame that a lot of women do not support other women in their choices but as it has been pointed out women are way more harsh on each other than men are on women or men on men.

 

[ButteMT61]

My mom had to quit as a Stewardess for Western Airlines ~1959 when she married my dad. They didn't allow it - they wanted single gals...