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The nuclear family is a modern invention, not a historical reality. As such, those who pine for the time typified by Leave it to Beaver where the mother wore pearls and heels at home while the father worked and disciplined the children from the den are looking back to a time of transition that has brought us to where we are today.
If we go back to before the Industrial Revolution, family was the key to survival. Family helped to work your fields, plant your crops, or work in your business. The more children you had, the larger your team. Contrary to the programming that we see on television where true freedom and self-discovery are found outside the family home or business, many children went into business with their parents, creating multi-generational legacies. This was the norm.
Inside the home the father, mother, and children worked together in many instances. They each used their gifts and talents to complete the family business, and men and women recognized their differences as strengths.
Boys and girls are different. Men and women are different. The differences are not superficial or accidental, but rather are profound, extending from the tops of their heads down to the soles of their boots, or flats, as the case may be. The differences between them affect everything, and are found in virtually every aspect of their lives. Men and women both have ten toes, and men and women both have two kidneys, but that is about it.
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But as time changed, and the Industrial Revolution took men out of the home and into the factory, that work outside the home began to be seen as the “true work” and thing of true value– and the women that were left at home no longer were a part. Rather than being the helpmeet that she was designed to be, the bifurcation of duties meant that some items began to be labeled as men’s work and others as women’s work.
While it’s true that, generally, women are better at nurturing children, men were always to be a part of raising them. This happens on the farm and in the family business but does not happen if Dad is in the factory all day. And just like everything else dealing with people, the women want to be part of that which has value, and not feel like they are doing second-class duties, so we start to define work outside the home as something everyone should do, and children as a burden.
This is how we get entire articles that never suggest that a spouse shouldn’t work because family is more important, or that do not suggest family businesses, but suggest that women (as well as men) should abandon their children (or put off having them), for their own sake.
Entering the workforce was an important tool of empowerment to women, giving them access to independence and wealth, but the rising cost of childcare has undermined this progress. Some businesses have recognized this problem, and tried to address the lack of affordable childcare with their own solutions. Many also see this as a way to retain female employees and cut down on the cost of onboarding new employees.
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Nowhere does this article suggest anything that looks normal, but tries to say that the only way to have a family is to have someone else raise them so that you can be free to be you. It makes obvious the problem– family is where you are supposed to find meaning, love, and self-sacrifice, but that flies right in the face of a me-first, self-seeking attitude. They cannot abide together, and the author argues that living life for self is more important.
While some women enjoy the “trad wife” lifestyle and enjoy making a home or home-schooling children, no amount of labor-saving devices will replace the fact that the family operates separately, and this wasn’t the design.
The trouble with kitchen cabinets — as with so many other “labor-saving” tools — is that they did not get to the nub of what makes cooking so arduous. It is often not the doing itself that is or was so hard but the life circumstances of the responsible party. By the 1920s, an American housewife on a modest income might have access to a gas oven, a technology that is surely one of the greatest advances in the history of cooking. After centuries of building a life around the smoke and inconvenience of a fire, cooks could now switch the flame on or off at will. Yet, as Cowan observes, the truly labor-saving technology would have been effective birth control. “When there are eight or nine mouths to feed (or even five or six), cooking is a difficult enterprise, even if it can be done at a gas range.”
You can tell that the “labor-saving” kitchen of the 1950s was a lie from the fact that so many women chose — if they could afford it — to have human servants as well as appliances. From 1940 to 1950 the number of domestic workers in the United States dropped from 2.5 million to 2 million. But then — in one of the great mysteries of American social history — the number of people working in service rose again, back up to 2.5 million by 1957, a growth of 31 percent over five years. As a journalist for Time magazine wrote, “Despite all the labor-saving new gadgets, the U.S. woman wants and needs a maid to help out.” A maid might work a 60- to 100-hour week for low pay and be required to do shopping as well as cooking and cleaning for the household. She would have to have been prepared to cook three times a day, but not make a sound while doing it. In July 1943 House Beautiful magazine noted that “noises of pots, pans, and dish scraping can ruin an excellent meal.”
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The path forwar is a restoration of family back to its purposes. Much has been lost, but family is worth it.
