Ma Ingalls Was a Working Mother

I’m going to delve into a potentially touchy topic here. Homemaking. I realize that my occupation is not a common one these days. If you haven’t guessed by reading my blog, I am a stay at home mother. Why, you might ask, do I do this? What it really comes down to is that I am a do-it-yourself-er to the bone. I get much more satisfaction gleaning apples off of an abandoned alley tree than working for someone else however many hours it takes to buy that box of apples at the store with whatever is left over after taxes are taken out. I am fortunate, and grateful to have a husband who works to support our family financially, and is willing to join me in living a more frugal lifestyle to make that income stretch. I feel especially fortunate in this, because I know well that it is not the situation every mother has. I’m not saying that this is what everyone else should do, or that you’re somehow no-good if you don’t live this way. All I’m saying is that it is possible, and it works for us.

What I have learned over the last eight years is just how touchy a topic homemaking can be. What once was the norm in our culture, gathered a fair amount of stigmatization after the Women’s Rights Movement. Please don’t get me wrong here, I am grateful for the women’s rights movement, and the rights and choices that were gained as a result. Women don’t have to stay at home raising children anymore. We have choices. We can go out and have any career we choose. The sky is the limit. We can be doctors, lawyers, astronauts, farmers and just about anything imaginable. But, what if a woman chooses to be a homemaker?

In a book I read recently, Homemaking as a Social Art, Veronika Van Duin writes: 
“More recently, especially in our western society, the place of the woman began to feel more restricted within society’s narrow perception. It no longer seemed to suit the developing consciousness and was becoming a role without a future. There were designated things she was permitted to do but so many more were denied to her. There was no equality, and freedom had to be sought within a given framework. Men, too, suffered from taboos and restrictions, but they were able to circumvent them because they held the power of decision politically, culturally, and identifiably within society. With the work of the suffragettes, the scales were tipped. We all know of the long hard haul womanhood has suffered to create a freer and more balanced role within society. Unfortunately, this did not happen without casualties, the main ones being motherhood and homemaking. Because creating the home was seen as an essentially feminine task, with the rise of women’s rights, feminism, and equality for all regardless of sex, the first place to take a beating was the home. All of a sudden (and certainly within the stream of history it occurred suddenly) it appeared that women refused to stay at home. Home lost its appeal as a place of refuge, as a nest, as a nurturing haven, and turned overnight into a trap, a pit, a prison where all hopes for fulfillment could never be realized. Now that women are free to decide their role in life, as also are men, everyone wants to get out there, into the real world, and get on in life. One must suppose that home is not, then, a part of the real world at all! And yet, there is a universal longing for a home, a safe place to be, where comfort, warmth and peace can be found.”

When I was a young woman out on my own, I went through a lot of thinking about life, what it all meant, and what I roughly wanted mine to look like. I finally concluded that I wanted to have children one day, and that I felt it was of the utmost importance to raise them myself, at home. I didn’t want to pay someone else to take care of them for me any more than I wanted to pay someone else to raise my chickens, harvest my fruit, cut my hair, or prepare and preserve my food. I wanted to do it myself. So, after getting a college education, I chose to stay at home to raise my twin children. This has elicited all kinds of responses. From other mothers choosing the same occupation, there is a feeling of camaraderie and support. From mothers choosing to work outside the home, I have heard a whole array of responses, like:  ” I admire what you do, but I prefer to work and have my own life outside the home”, “Why aren’t you working yet?”, “It would be really nice if I could just stay at home like that, but I can’t afford to”, “My husband would never let me stay at home,” and “I can’t believe those women who just stay at home and don’t want to work”. I even had one person tell me staying at home raising children wasn’t good for mental health, and mothers should keep their jobs. I do not like this perception that homemakers don’t work or are somehow lazy and avoiding employment. I work, dammit. I work hard.

I would really like to examine and dismiss the stereotype of the bored housewife. I can say that in eight years, I have never been bored. I do not have time to be bored. I do not eat bon-bons and I do not watch soap operas all day. In fact, we don’t even have television and bon-bons are way outside the budget. I get up early, I cook, I make food from scratch, I do dishes, I conquer mountains of laundry, I grow food, I water, I pull weeds, I cook some more, I work a volunteer shift at the local food co-op to decrease the cost of groceries, I drive kids to and from school, I volunteer at their school, I glean and wildharvest food, I preserve food, I clean (sometimes), I take care of chickens, I make sure the kids get to play with their friends from time to time, I make things for my home crafting business, and sometimes at the end of the day, I write and work on this blog because I’m inspired by this life and I want to share ideas with other folks. I can’t begin to imagine being bored.

When you look at the title, “Homemaker”, notice that it describes the action of making a home. What does it mean to make a home? I like Veronica Van Duin’s concept of homemaking as a Social Art, and I think that it’s important to think of this occupation as just that, a social art. I’m sorry to say I can’t give the book a good review, as it had some great concepts to offer but also some very out-there ones, but what did resonate with me is the general concept that creating a home is a valuable and important occupation in our society, and it is sorely lacking. It is a full-time job, worthy of being treated as such. I try to think of what I’m doing as just that. A full-time job. When I think of the full-time jobs I’ve had in the past, however, they included sick days, vacation days, and lunch breaks. This one doesn’t stop for anything, but I’m okay with that.

Another thing I have to say for homemaking, is that it can be a very environmentally friendly and low-impact way to live on the earth. One day this fall, my friend and I were blackberry picking while our kids were in school, and we had a discussion about the greater impacts of ecology and sustainability on the occupation of being a homemaker. The way I see it, this is an occupation characterized by doing things yourself, from scratch, rather than paying someone else to do it for you. You’re taking that whole part out of the picture. As we picked blackberries to fill our freezers, we mused about all that is behind a bag of frozen blackberries one goes out and buys at the grocery store. First of all, someone had to grow those blackberries on a farm, with all of the work and inputs involved in that. Then someone had to pick those blackberries. I wonder what the farmer and the farm worker made per hour for their work. Then, the blackberries would be hauled in a large truck, by someone paid to drive it, consuming gasoline, to a food processing factory where they would be washed and bagged up in plastic (from another factory) by workers being payed a wage that is likely challenging to live on. Then the bags of berries are put into frozen storage, which uses a frozen storage unit manufactured somewhere by someone, and using massive amounts of energy to keep it cold. Then a freezer truck hauls the berries all over the country to grocery stores, using more gasoline, where they are stocked in the grocery store’s freezer aisle, which uses large amounts of electricity to run and is put there by another person making around minimum wage. Then one goes and buys this bag of berries with the money they worked so hard earning at their job. It was mind boggling to think about all the energy, and resources, and hours of manpower, and low wages that went into that bag of blackberries. All the while, there I was, using my time to pick them myself and stick them in my freezer. I cut out all those other steps in those two hours of picking that morning. It felt good.

When I think of Ma Ingalls in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, it seems absurd to juxtapose ideas like luxury, laziness, or bored housewife on her. Granted, we have significantly greater convenience available to us nowadays which does shave off some of the time it takes to do things, but there’s no way around it being a lot of work to run a household. Perhaps if someone were very wealthy, and a housewife, they might pay people to do everything else for them, and might become bored as a result, turning to bon-bons and soap operas. Looking at the current statistics for poverty and unemployment in our nation, however, I doubt this is a picture of the typical housewife. We’re hard workers, do-it-your-self-ers, creative problem-solvers, self-directed women and visionaries. It is something one can choose to be when they grow up, just like a nurse or an attorney. It is a job, one for which we don’t even ask or receive a wage, and it’s an honest day’s work. I wouldn’t have it any other way.