| Mummy, I Want to be a Housewife! |
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Is it what little girls really dream of? Finding an “alpha male and becoming a housewife”? Since December, we have had a wave of provocative articles, starting with Catherine Hakim‘s “Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine”. You can download the pdf here. It has been followed by The Telegraph “Gender Pay Gap’ down to Women’s Lifestyle Choices”, here and also “What Women Really Want: to Marry a Rich Man”, here, to quote only a few… Taking care of one’s home and family can be a true mission, as long as one is really free to choose, decide for how long it would last and accept the consequences of being completely dependant on someone else’s income. I have experienced being a housewife, after each of my children were born, and during at least 3 years. I took care of them, passionately. I also did what I could to make my home comfortable and cosy. I never had any real model of what a housewife looked like, since my mother was a Doctor who spent her spare time studying philosophy rather than cooking or caring for her home. I learned to fix, repair, paint, cook, clean, vacuum and even to stencil little rabbits, reading Beatrix Potter stories and picturing myself in these stories…These years are fond with sweet and tender memories. There were also times of total despair and confusion. When I found myself longing for anyone to knock at the door in order to have an adult conversation. Times when it seemed that I was surrounded by Gremlins playing tricks on me, day after day repeating the same chores, endlessly trapped into a dull routine. What made these years most precious, was that I knew how quickly time would go, so I grasped every moment of joy and playfulness when the children were small. I knew that they would grow up, as I would, continuing my life-long education. I also realized that my role as a loving mother and housewife was one among many. I always knew that I wanted to have the freedom to earn my living, travel, teach and share, not only in the realms of domestic bliss. If I had not had this choice, I think I would have gone crazy. Simply. That’s why when I read that little girls only want to marry and become housewives, it makes me angry and sad. Even more when it comes from other women. Fortunately, other women’s voices are responding and developing what we need to re-discover, a sense of “sisterhood“. I recommend you read their articles. Joanne Cleaver in Business Interactive Network, BNET, writes, January 10th: “The Paygap: Is It Women’s Fault?“. You can read it here. (I made a summary & review of Joanne Cleaver’s article here) Kate Spicer in The Australian: What Women Want, here Jenn Dalitz, author of The Sphynx Blog, known as @TheSheEo on Twitter, again from Australia. She wrote When Women Attack Women, Everybody Loses, here. Hmmm. Maybe I should move to Australia… What does it inspire me? We need to work at different levels, inclusively and radically Individually
And also collectively
Source: by geronimocoaching |
