TelegramSam wrote:
As for "househusband" not having bad connotations, I'm not sure of that. I've heard it get more than a few snickers from working men. "Kept man" tends to be used in conjuction with it, and it tends to have the same sort of do-nothing "pet" feeling stuck to it.
I bet you're right about that. I don't hear the term that often and I'm not around other people when I do. I was thinking of my own reaction and generalized to the whole world!
Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium. ~ Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence.----Seneca
I keep stumbling over the term "domestic engineer". I have worked with engineers for years but not seen them actually do any work, yet I how much work is involved in making a household operate.
djm
I'd rather be atop the foothills than beneath them.
It depends a great deal on the tone of voice and the context of conversation it is used in. I know that the usual definition doesn't fit me (I'm much closer to your expanded description), but then, I tend to defy definition at every opportunity.
anniemcu
--- "You are what you do, not what you claim to believe." -Gene A. Statler
--- "Olé to you, none-the-less!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
--- http://www.sassafrassgrove.com
I’m among the cringers. “Househusband” makes me cringe too.
“Homemaker” doesn’t seem so bad to me, though; maybe because “home” conveys a more positive meaning, somehow, than “house”; and “maker,” likewise, is active and conveys a meaning -- an improvement on the passive, descriptive “wife/husband”.
In the same way, the term “working mother” has always bugged me: it is, if you apply the same logic, a subtle (though unintentional) insult to those whose job descriptions include being parents...of both genders.
I'm not absolutely opposed to the word, but I do agree that it brings a certain amount of baggage with it when used. It does seem to conjure the image of the 1950's / June Cleaver-esque type woman....the one who has perfect hair, the perfect house, the perfect kids, and the perfect marriage, etc. etc. etc. And yes, she does seem to get her hair "done" once a week, and wears an apron when in the house, and gloves while out doing errands. I can pretty much guarantee that I don't fit that description. I also tend to think that it kind of demeans the role of a woman, because I think that quite a few people feel that housewives do nothing all day except eat bon-bons and watch the soaps (in between getting our hair done, and putting on our gloves). Lastly, it does sound suspiciously too much like HOUSE ELF, which of course I would be opposed to.
But despite my semi-diatribe on the word, I'm not opposed to being referred to as one. I love being at home with my kids, cooking, and other things (cleaning doesn't really make that list), and I wouldn't give it up for the world. If someone wants to consider me a housewife because of that, then so be it. Just remember that we housewives are very proficient in the art of using a rolling pin.
My relationship with the word homemaker was possibly ruined, early on, by the Suzy Homemaker line of toys which were marketed heavily during the 60's to girls of my demographic niche.
Even then, I remember feeling an inner conflict between being intrigued and repulsed by these toys. I grew into adolescence quite certain that I would neither marry nor have children (but sometimes that biological nesting instinct kicks in and there's no saying no--what else can I say?)
Like Izz, I loved taking care of my kids...but I knew, when the 4th came along, that I'd reached and possibly exceeded my saturation point.
Maybe it's true that as women enter middle age they return, in some way, to the dreams of their younger selves. I will not, however, become a globe-hopping photojournalist for National Geo, or a forest ranger.
Good thread Emm, I have thought about this one often. I voted "stuipid word". It's an unfortunate stereotype that once was part of the "populate or perrish" maxim that gave literal birth to the "baby boom", upon which wave's crest many of us are now carried along. I grew up hating the word - I was appalled at how my mother was constrained by its use into an exclusively servile role while my father blythly payed lip-service to women's rights.
Thus determined to set-out with a goal of not ever putting a woman into that pigeon-hole I subsequently married one who imediately went and hid in it! This lead to me falling into my father's disrespectful habits - I knew it and knowing it made me ashamed. The models of our parents are exceedingly strong. I came to recognise that many many people are very happy to acquiesce. To me it felt like marriage was some kind of formalised prostitution with the woman trading her individuality for a safe harbour as server to the male client. It didn't feel like a proper foundation for spiritual love. Needless to say, that one did not last.
I can certainly see where roles must be taken within partnerships, but I seriously doubt that there can be any reliable formula beyond child-bearing itself. For example, my one child was born by caesarian under a general aneasthetic that made the instant bonding process impossible for the child and my wife - I had to fight with the hospital dudes to get the child to the mother not withstanding that she was doped off the planet. This process took long enough that the boy bonded with me instead. This now continues to be a factor in role alocation in my little family. It would have been a lot more comfortable under the old stereotype. But hey, are we in this life to live it or merely to replay it?
I supose it all depends on your approach to life - a thing is only valid by your own values. Who was it said "know thyself"? Ha! all wisdom in retrospect
Last edited by Mitch on Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My gender is irrelevant and so is that anachronistic term
I find the use of gender to mean sex offensive.
Many in this situation refer to themselves as "stay-at-home moms." I think it's one of those hyphenated things that seem to have been the rage for the last 20 years or so.
I don't find any of the terms offensive -- I've stayed at home with our daughter at times, and I have the utmost respect for anyone with the patience required to take care of a kid on a full-time basis.
Charlie Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
Ah, but that implies something else entirely, Chas. . .we seem to be equating the 'housewife' to being a 'mother'. There is nothing in the term that should lead to bearing or raising children.
Tyg
Remember, you didn't get the tiger so it would do what you wanted. You got the tiger to see what it wanted to do. -- Colin McEnroe
Tyghress wrote:Ah, but that implies something else entirely, Chas. . .we seem to be equating the 'housewife' to being a 'mother'. There is nothing in the term that should lead to bearing or raising children.
Tyg
Whether or not it "should" is irrelevant because it almost always does and that's what we have to deal with (for better or worse).
dwinterfield wrote:I generally refer to my wife by her name. Seems to work just fine. I think she also responds to it at her job.
Your wife has a job?!?! You mean a job outside the home? Oh, the horrors!
Sad but true. A few years ago she was unemployed for months after leaving a job she'd had for 25 yrs. While she did discover that she was much too busy to let a job interfere with her life, she eventually went back to work.
I think that women tend (note 'tend') to be better at taking
care of people, including children, and managing homes,
and so on. Work is something productive you have a good
reason to do when you don't feel like doing it. Well,
a lot of women find that work satisfying. As Margeret
Mead once said to a feminist interviewing her:
"They're not all going to be nuclear physicists;
They're not all going to be ballerinas!'
I think contemporary feminism, in its eagerness to make
women competitive with men in the marketplace, tended
to demean 'women's work,' and in that way also
demeaned women. Traditional roles for women,
while plainly they shouldn't be a straight jacket,
have actually been satisfying to women, and
often empowered them.
It's the work that matters chiefly, IMO, not the
words for it.
Another difficulty for 'housewives' was that in the
fifties lots of American families were able to move
into the new suburbs, and women found themselves
raising kids quite isolated from the old communities
that supported them. No other society on earth
expected women to cope with so much alone,
and also expected them to be content with it.
The fifties housewife stereotype isn't just 'perfect,'
in her home in the burbs; she's doing it alone,
with only the nuclear family. In Asia
groups of women raise children,
whole extended families of men and women
do this.
In Sri Lanka and India I knew women who had careers
outside the home, but put definite limits on them,
so that their role as housewife and mother came first.
Where family comes first, women tend to be empowered,
because they are central to family.
The Asian women I knew universally thought American
women foolish, for giving up so much of what
made women happy and powerful (in the Asian
women's eyes, anyhow) so as to compete with
men. They thought they had it all, and that
they had struck the right balance.
Another feature of Asian society (India/Sri Lanka)
was that women were far more integrated into
government, more likely to be ministers, Deans,
professors, Prime Ministers. But the women in these
positions were very traditional, and in some way
they were still homemakers--only the family
was now the government or the University.
So the Dean of Humanities, a woman, would serve
me tea, really serve me, make sure I had enough
bisquits, pour the tea carefully into my cup,
until finally I protested: "Let me do this!'
And then she would chuckle happily
and say: 'Men are so foolish!'
