Myth:
Before the 1960s, all women managed their homes alone.
Reality:
The housewife as we think of her today is a relatively new phenomenon. For the vast majority of history, across multiple cultures, it was impossible for a woman to single-handedly do every chore and provide for every need in her household. Women in traditional cultures would (and still do) get together and allocate different tasks to different individuals. For certain jobs, like shucking corn, women would gather together and do all the work at once, chatting and lifting one another’s spirits.
The individual housewife of the 1900s was an image that was pushed upon women by religious leaders and literature starting as early as the 1830s. It was reinforced later by two institutions: the federal government, which during the post-World War I and II propaganda campaigns told women to march back home and get in the kitchen, and women’s magazines, which helped disseminate those messages and were mostly owned and operated by men. The invention of the television solidified the idealized version of the housewife, with 1950s shows like “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best.”
However, even middle-class white women found doing all the housework impossible without turning to things like TV dinners and washing machines. In her book 1950s Housewife: Marriage And Homemaking In The 1950s, Sheila Hardy reveals that most housewives during this period never had a chance to spend time on their personal appearance, much less look as prim and perfect as the women in the ads: “They would have their husband’s evening meal ready, but it was doubtful if they would have had time to run a comb through their hair, let alone wash their face and apply makeup.”
Women of color rarely had the luxury of being able to stay at home, and had to work at least one job to help support the household. The same went for many poor white women. Child care was often performed by grandmas and great-aunts who could no longer work as maids or laundresses.
Though the pressure to conform to the housewife image was strong, the truth is that a large segment of women simply couldn’t afford it. By the 1960s, about 40 percent of them all had jobs.
Myth:
Women didn’t enter the workforce until World War II and Rosie the Riveter.
Reality:
One of the many things I learned while creating the Rosie the Riveter piece is that World War II wasn’t the first time the government recruited millions of women to take over the jobs of men: It happened during World War I, when 1.6 million ladies joined the workforce. Plenty of riveters and other female laborers continued working after the men returned home, which explain why after World War II the federal government was so quick to play the being-a-housewife-is-super-fantastic-please-quit-your-jobs-immediately propaganda card.
There were already 12 million women in the workforce by the time Rosie appeared. Part of this was because, as stated before, many women didn’t have the luxury of staying home. But for women who had felt confined in the home and wanted more economic freedom, World War I gave them an opportunity to taste independence.
Myth:
As more modern conveniences were invented, being a housewife became easier.
Reality:
Paradoxically, women tended to do more work after appliances like the dishwasher and washing machine were invented. In fact, after the electric washing machine was patented around 1910, time spent on laundry per week went up from 5.5 hours to 6.25 hours. It appears as though with every new “convenience,” the expectations for housewives grew.
Today, we have microwaves and instant macaroni and cheese, but serving processed foods to kids is less fashionable than it once was. Diverse, organic, handmade meals are what parents strive for now.
Everything in the modern home needs to not only be spotless, but perfectly sterilized (think the 1990s antibacterial craze). And there’s more home to clean: The size of the average house has increased 1,000 square feet since 1973.
Housewives can’t seem to catch a break. The second something seems like it will become easier, it becomes twice as hard.
Myth:
Homemakers are uneducated and unambitious.
Reality:
Many of today’s stay-at-home moms were professional women before they started having kids. A study by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett found that 31 percent of working mothers eventually leave the workplace, usually because they had a second child. And while it’s true that housewives tend to have less formal education, more than half of them have some college classes under their belts, and that number is rising.
Unfortunately, the reason that many housewives choose to stay home is because they felt they didn’t have a choice to work, not because they didn’t want to.
More than half of “career-oriented” stay-at-home moms say they want to do paying work (on top of their unpaid work) and try their best to do so in some capacity, according to the Working Mother Research Institute. The top reason they don’t is for “the needs of the child,” followed by the high cost of child care. They also cite inflexible policies in the workplace that don’t allow them to meet their children’s needs.
With a child, your job never ends.
Even more disturbing is a survey by sociologist Kathleen Gerson that found that 25 percent of young women felt they were the only parent who was “available” for the job and who would provide “an acceptable level of care.”
Though plenty of homemakers love what they do and wouldn’t choose anything else, a large section of them would pursue more if they felt they had the option.
Let’s rethink our definition of “ambitious.” Are the only ambitious people those who want an advanced college degree and a lot of money? Or is raising a physically and emotionally healthy child in a world full of problems perhaps the most ambitious goal a person could have?
Myth:
Men are now doing almost as much around the house as women.
Reality:
Though things have been slowly improving, women still do more than double the amount of child care and housework than men. According to a 2014 survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 19 percent of men do household chores on any given day, compared to 49 percent of women. Plus, for every hour a woman physically cares for a child of 6 or younger, a man provides an average of 26 minutes.
Data from the same survey found that even unemployed men manage to do less housework than women.