I like how everything a housewife does is cool as long as it's not a housewife doing it. Cooking, gardening, sewing, yarny things, painty things, buildy things, and whatever else are cool and require top-of-the-line equipment and accessories when they are pursued by hobbyists. If I do it, it's boring and vaguely embarrassing, and cheapo brand products are more than sufficient tools for my pathetic twitches in such directions.
Best of all, a dad who stays home with his kids is the hugest hero of all time, whereas I only do it because I don't have any respectable education, skills, earning potential, or ambition.
11 comments:
of course, because the only reason those hobbies are cool is in light of the cool career the person has already attained. But when someone as lazy (snort) as a housewife does nothing but hobbies ALL day (intermixed with sitting on her rear)...well, she is to be loathed. I want to know which hobbyist is interested in taking up cloth diaper washing and middle of the night wet nurse, cause I have the best tools of the trade (dirty diapers and adorable baby) :)
I mean, really, what do you DO all day? It can't be that hard. Quit your whining. (sense my sarcasm!)
Back when I was in college and knew much more about things that I had yet to experience, I remember telling people that I thought I'd get bored as a SAHM. "I don't think I could just sit there all day long and watch a kid." Ha! Oh, to be able to sit all day long...
Have you actually had people say these things to you?Do you really think this stereotype still exists? (I must be blissfully sheltered where I live.)
I just re-read what I wrote and realized how snotty it sounds, but please re-read it, if you would, with a truly sincere tone, and you'll hopefully see how not snotty I meant it to be.
Okay. I just re-read again, and I realize I don't make much sense. We've been up several nights with puking sickness in the two smallest. So. Much. Laundry! Do you think there are puke-cleaning-up hobbysists?
I type one-handed while the other arm supports the suckling lad. That's my hobby. If I weren't a housewife, I'd need regular manicures to accomplish such a feat.
But I really like Mr. Grumpy Cooky.
OK, I'm probably excessively Mr. Grumpy Cookie, Jody. :D I just get mad when someone who cooks once a week "needs" better pots than I do, and when at-home dads get fawned all over (yes, I have heard these sentiments expressed, but it's my fault for taking them personally). Very true that HGTV has failed to make laundry or mopping glamorous for anyone.
What Melrose said. :)
Cooking is cool if you make crazy recipes with wildly expensive organic and rare ingredients - which most housewives probably don't do. Gardening is cool if you have one of those huge flower garden thingies that's a space saver and puts more oxygen back into the air (which none of us has the time, patience, etc. to plan, plant, weed, etc.) Sewing and yarny things and painty things and other crafty hobbies are cool if you make enough of them to have your own website and sell them and give half the profits to a third world country (we tend to be way too practical). Or maybe it's that those things are cool if you get to CHOOSE to do them, instead of them kinda falling into your lap as a part of your calling.
Maybe my "problem" is that I grew up idolizing my grandmother who was a housewife who did everything well. . . and mostly out of necessity. . . but also out of enjoyment. For me, all those things were "cool" because she did them.
I understand what you mean about at-home dads. It's probably related to the looks my husband gets from women when we're walking out in public and he's holding a baby/taking care of a small child--and I'm far enough behind him that they're not sure we're together or not but not so far behind him that I don't see those looks. Grrr. Double grrrr for when they actually speak to him.
According to G.K. Chesterton, this sort of thinking started a long time ago...
"If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge [at his job].
But if [drudgery] means that the work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then I say I give it up...
How can it be a large career to teach other people's children about the Rule of Three (arithmetic), and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe?"
From his book, What's Wrong With the World, the title of which basically sums up your post.
I'm going to blame it on economics, since everything costs less to buy than to make yourself, especially if one considers time only worth $.
And no one accounts for quality (sure, if you buy THAT kind of bread, then it's cheaper to make yourself, but just that you want to eat THAT kind of (better) bread and have the time to make it means it's a hobby--and you're an elitist!)
And then there's the point Leah made a while ago that no one ever considers. It's just better because mom (or sister/grandma/aunt/dad/etc)made it:
http://leahhome.blogspot.com/2010/11/unnecessary-or-not.html
Wow, Katy - I feel special. :)
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