Housewife

What's wrong with being a housewife? Patriarchal society seems to have devalued domestic (women's) work so successfully that the very thought of a woman aspiring to be a housewife is...rather weird. The association of non-domestic work with "success" and ambition has led to scorn being reserved for such worthy aspirations as wanting to be a housewife.

If one considers being a mother and a housewife as unremarkable, unambitious work, one has clearly never considered where the population came from. It is the mothers who brought up the children, often in the absence of active involvement by the father. The houses need to be kept relatively neat for a safe environment that is disease-free. There is much that rests on the shoulders of a housewife.

Despite all this, I do not see awards or rewards for being a great housewife. Nothing noteworthy about finding a use for lemon juice on carpet stains. That much should be under the purview of the (likely male) chemists. Are you going to turn lemon juice into carpet cleaning fluid? It is this preoccupation with productive (money-earning) work that problematizes domestic work. After all, was it not patriarchy that decreed that the man support the house and the wife do domestic work without pay? Isn't the definition of slavery forced labour without pay?