Long before we could pronounce Betty Friedan’s last name, Americans from my generation felt her impact. Many of us born in the mid-seventies learned from our parents and our teachers that women no longer needed to stay home; that there were professional opportunities awaiting us. In my own school experience, homemaking, like farming, gained a reputation as a vocation for the scholastically impaired. Those of us with academic promise learned that we could do whatever we put our minds to, whether it was conquering the world or saving the world. I was personally interested in saving the world. That path eventually led me to conclude that homemaking would play a major role toward achieving that goal.
My own farming background led me to pursue advanced degrees in the field of sustainable agriculture, with a powerful interest in the local food movement. By the time my Ph.D. was conferred, I was married, and I was in a state of confusion. The more I understood about the importance of small farms and the nutritional, ecological and social value of local food, the more I questioned the value of a 9 to 5 job. If my husband and I both worked and had children, it appeared that our family’s ecological impact would be considerable. We’d require two cars, professional wardrobes, convenience foods to make up for lost time in the kitchen…and we’d have to buy, rather than produce, harvest and store our own food. The economics didn’t work out, either. When we crunched the numbers, our gross incomes from two careers would have been high, but the cost of living was also considerable, especially when daycare was figured into the calculation. Abandoning the job market, we re-joined my parents on our small grassfed livestock farm, and became homemakers. For almost ten years now, we’ve been able to eat locally and organically, support local businesses, avoid big box stores, save money, and support a family of four on less than $45,000 per year.
Wondering if my family was a freaky aberration to the conventional American culture, I decided to post a notice on my webpage, looking to connect with other ecologically-minded homemakers. My fingers trembled on the keyboard as I typed the notice. What, exactly, would be the repercussions for taking a pro-homemaker stand and seeking out others? Was encouraging a Radical Homemaking movement going to unravel all the social advancements that have been made in the last forty-plus years? Women, after all, have been the homemakers since the beginning of time. Or so I thought.
The Origins of Homemaking: A vocation for both sexes
Upon further investigation, I learned that the household did not become the “woman’s sphere” until the Industrial Revolution. A search for the origin of the word housewife traces it back to the thirteenth century as the feudal period was coming to an end in Europe, and the first signs of a middle class were popping up. Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan explains that Housewives were wedded to husbands, whose name came from hus, an old spelling of house, and bonded. Husbands were bonded to houses, rather than to lords. Housewives and husbands were free people, who owned their own homes and lived off their land. While there was a division of labor among the sexes in these early households, there was also an equal distribution of domestic work. Once the Industrial Revolution happened, however, things changed. Men left the household to work for wages, which were then used to purchase goods and services that they no longer were home to provide. Indeed, the men were the first to lose their domestic skills as their successive generations forgot how to butcher the family hog, how to sew leather, how to chop firewood.
From Units of Production to Units of Consumption
As the Industrial Revolution forged on and crossed the ocean to America, men and women eventually stopped working together to provide for their household sustenance. They developed their separate spheres – man in the factory, woman in the home. The more a man worked outside the home, the more the household would have to buy in order to have the needs met. Soon the factories were able to fabricate products to supplant the housewives’ duties as well. The housewife’s primary function ultimately became chauffeur and consumer. The household was no longer a unit of production. It was a unit of consumption.
Housewife’s Syndrome
The effect on the American housewife was devastating. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, documenting for the first time “the problem that has no name,” Housewife’s Syndrome, where American girls grew up fantasizing about finding their husbands, buying their dream homes and appliances, popping out babies, and living happily ever after. In truth, pointed out Friedan, happily-ever-after never came. Countless women suffered from depression and nervous breakdowns as they faced the endless meaningless tasks of shopping and driving children hither and yon. They never had opportunities to fulfill their highest potential, to challenge themselves, to feel as though they were truly contributing to society beyond wielding the credit card to keep the consumer culture humming. Friedan’s book sent women to work in droves. And corporate America seized upon a golden opportunity to secure a cheaper workforce and offer countless products to use up their paychecks.
Before long, the second family income was no longer an option. In the minds of many, it was a necessity. Homemaking, like eating organic foods, seemed a luxury to be enjoyed only by those wives whose husbands garnered substantial earnings, enabling them to drive their children to school rather than put them on a bus, enroll them in endless enrichment activities, oversee their educational careers, and prepare them for entry into elite colleges in order to win a leg-up in a competitive workforce. At the other extreme, homemaking was seen as the realm of the ultra-religious, where women accepted the role of Biblical “Help Meets” to their husbands. They cooked, cleaned, toiled, served and remained silent and powerless. My husband and I fell into neither category, and I suspected there were more like us.
Meet the Radical Homemakers
I was right. I received hundreds of letters from rural, suburban and city folks alike. Some ascribed to specific religious faiths, others did not. As long as the home showed no signs of domination or oppression, I was interested in learning more about them. I selected twenty households from my pile, plotted them on a map across the United States, and set about visiting each of them to see what homemaking could look like when men and women shared both power and responsibility. Curious to see if Radical Homemaking was a venture suited to more than just women in married couples, I visited with single parents, stay-at-home dads, widows and divorcées. I spent time in families with and without children.
A glance into America’s past suggests that homemaking could play a big part in addressing the ecological, economic and social crises of our present time. Homemakers have played a powerful role during several critical periods in our nation’s history. By making use of locally available resources, they made the boycotts leading up to the American Revolution possible. They played a critical role in the foundational civic education required to launch a young democratic nation. They were driving forces behind both the abolition and suffrage movements.
Homemakers today could have a similar influence. The Radical Homemakers I interviewed had chosen to make family, community, social justice and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives. They rejected any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that did not honor these tenets. For about five thousand years, our culture has been hostage to a form of organization by domination that fails to honor our living systems, where “he who holds the gold makes the rules.” By contrast, the Radical Homemakers are using life skills and relationships as replacements for gold, on the premise that he or she who doesn’t need the gold can change the rules. The greater one’s domestic skills, be they to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide one’s own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest, or care for children and loved ones, the less dependent one is on the gold.
By virtue of these skills, the Radical Homemakers I interviewed were building a great bridge from our existing extractive economy, where corporate wealth has been regarded as the foundation of economic health, where mining our earth’s resources and exploiting our international neighbors has been an acceptable cost of doing business; to a life serving economy, where the goal is, in the word’s of David Korten, to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few; where our resources are sustained, our waters are kept clean, our air pure, and families and can lead meaningful lives. In situations where one person was still required to work out of the home in the conventional extractive economy, homemakers were able to redirect the family’s financial, social and temporal resources toward building the life serving economy. In most cases, however, the homemakers’ skills were so considerable that, while members of the household might hold jobs (more often than not they ran their own businesses), the financial needs of the family were so small that no one in the family was forced to accept any employment that did not honor the four tenets of family, community, social justice and ecological sustainability.
While all the families had some form of income that entered their lives, they were not the privileged set by any means. Most of the families I interviewed were living with a sense of abundance at about 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. That’s a little over $40,000 for a family of four, about 37% below the national median family income, and 45% below the median income for married couple families. Some lived on considerably less, few had appreciably more. Not surprisingly, those with the lowest incomes had mastered the most domestic skills, and had developed the most innovative approaches to living.
Rethinking the Impossible
The Radical Homemakers were fluent at the mental exercise of rethinking the “givens” of our society and coming to the following conclusions: nobody (who matters) cares what (or if) you drive; housing does not have to cost more than a single moderate income can afford (and can even cost less); it is okay to accept help from family and friends, to let go of the perceived ideal of independence and strive instead for interdependence; health can be achieved without making monthly payments to an insurance company; child care is not a fixed cost; education can be acquired for free — it does not have to be bought; and retirement is possible, regardless of income.
As for domestic skills, the range of talents held by these households was as varied as the day is long. Many kept gardens, but not all. Some gardened on city rooftops, some on country acres, some in suburban yards. Some were wizards at car and appliance repairs. Others could sew. Some could build and fix houses; some kept livestock. Others crafted furniture, played music or wrote. All could cook. (Really well, as my waistline will attest.) None of them could do everything. No one was completely self-sufficient, an independent island separate from the rest of the world. Thus the universal skills that they all possessed were far more complex than simply knowing how to can green beans or build a root cellar. In order to make it as homemakers, these people had to be wizards at nurturing relationships and working with family and community. They needed an intimate understanding of the life-serving economy, where a paycheck is not always exchanged for all services rendered. They needed to be their own teachers — to pursue their educations throughout life, forever learning new ways to do more, create more, give more.
In addition, the happiest among them were successful at setting realistic expectations for themselves. They did not live in impeccably clean houses on manicured estates. They saw their homes as living systems and accepted the flux, flow, dirt and chaos that are a natural part of that. They were masters at redefining pleasure not as something that should be bought in the consumer marketplace, but as something that could be created, no matter how much or how little money they had in their pockets. And above all, they were fearless. They did not let themselves be bullied by the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions. These families did not see their homes as a refuge from the world. Rather, each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone.
Home is where the great change will begin. It is not where it ends. Once we feel sufficiently proficient with our domestic skills, few of us will be content to simply practice them to the end of our days. Many of us will strive for more, to bring more beauty to the world, to bring about greater social change, to make life better for our neighbors, to contribute our creative powers to the building of a new, brighter, sustainable and happier future. That is precisely the great work we should all be tackling. If we start by focusing our energies on our domestic lives, we will do more than reduce our ecological impact and help create a living for all. We will craft a safe, nurturing place from which this great creative work can happen.
Portions of this story are excerpted from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture, Left to Write Press, 2010. To learn more, visit radicalhomemakers.com.
Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers, The Farmer and the Grill, and The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York and hosts two websites, grassfedcooking.com and radicalhomemakers.com. Copies of her books are available through those websites.
Comments
This is a quite outstanding straight-to-the-point article and of great credit to Shannon Hayes. More power to her elbow.
However, by having solved (?) one problem, familial subsistence/common sense equality, she has inadvertently highlighted another.
That is, with this problem eliminated what is the point of formal or religion-based marriage at all?
The divorce rate across the West shows a rapidly increasing number of people consider it to be impractical and of minimal duration. It is possible to argue the marriage rate is sustained by an outdated notion of sentimental "love" as originally suggested by Jane Austen's novels and other similar cultural developments. Interestingly, this notion coincided with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps it was a necessity to defend sensitivities against the appalling assault on normal human perceptions and feelings.
Maybe Shannon should now turn her attention to the concept of "love" and the likelihood (or otherwise) of lifelong deep affection.
Obviously you either don't have a spouse and children or you let everything fly free. Even with husbands doing some house work and wives doing work for a paycheck, organization and timing are necessary if there are children that must get their homework finished before 11pm and up for school on time with breakfast on hand then and lunch by money or brownbag. Continual switching and floating around will get the "family" nowhere but in conflict. One spouse must know what the other is/can do. If my husband had not been able to cook, clean, do laundry, and help me raise a child he would never have been in the house. I had decided years before that I would not be mother, spouse, babysitter and lover to a husband. He would have to know how to do anything I could do. Mine did!! Rules and consistency are necessities for raising children!! Two to twenty husbands or wives with 2 or 20 children and no rules don't work well-esp. for the children.
The United States stole its land from the original owners and gave it to settlers, which was a huge injection of capital into ordinary lives. The United states, as a result of that theft, and the theft of black people's lives and labour, is very rich, and conceivably can provide a living for people living in the way described. In most places that is not possible. At one time I had two allotments and a fair-sized garden, which meant my wife and I - plus the children - could grow most of our own vegetables. That was back in the pre-Thatcherite days when my particular neck of the academic woods was not desperately overworked - but we were still pretty poor. As far as I can see - though I approve of all that's said in the article - we are in the Dreamtime here, like the Chartists or Lloyd George looking for three acres and a cow for the workers. People left the land with cries of joy, to get into warm houses where their masters and parsons couldn't so easily patrol their lives and minds, and I don't think going back will do anything for men or women. Pity: nice dream!
I am fascinated by this article. I shall comment from a few different perspectives, but point out that I'm never "the only one".
On the last day of this month, I shall be 7 0, or 17 1/2 leap year birthdays, since there is no leap year day this year. I read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan when it was published. I graduated from a state teachers college, altho I'd wanted to be an artist (at 16, I didn't have a lot of power in re choice of where to go:choices were - live at home and go to Brooklyn College (a NYC school) or go to state college far away, on the GI Bill, from my dead WWII enlistee dad, who died when I was ten). I picked far away choice, as we only had a one bedroom apartment = crowded. I left teaching for art after 5 years as a public school teacher, with the support of my first husband, who I helped thru grad school for over a year. We went south for his first job, a community organizing job in the antipoverty program in 1965, for 2 years. I began my art career, working pt time as a volunteer in a civil rights law office.
When back in NYC (after a detour to Denver for spouse's job), I decided to have a child and do art and stay at home. I was a fulltime mother and homemaker for 3 years, only doing art part time. I had thought I was "liberated" until I met some of the radical feminists while I was pregnant, at this time of year, in 1969. After I gave birth, I realized that the feminists were right, Liberated means having choices. There were no supports (and not many now all these years later) for new mothers, families. When single again, after getting an illness, I went to work again, as an artist-in-residence for an art foundation in a public school. I was a single working mother, working school hours, until I became too disabled with CFS/ME to do the outside jobs that supported my art career. So, I became all the time at home again, with my small studio in my apartment. I am remarried, with spouse being my caregiver ("carer" in England), still doing art as can. Feminism has given us real choices. Women are wonderful. The last photo I saw of Betty Friedan was as visitor to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Wash. DC, as a wheelchair user. I am a wheelchair user due to CFS/ME and I was pleased to see her proud to have her photo taken under Alice Neel, the painter's, self-portrait.
(I thought I'd posted my comment ...sigh). I like the article, but come at it from a different point of view. On the last day of the month, I shall be 7 0. (No leap year this, which is my birthday.) I read The Feminine Mystique when it was published. I was a young teacher, feeling one had to be married, and I did in the following year. I was able to leave teaching (I'm from a working class background, Brooklyn, NYC) when spouse went south for his first job after graduate school: community organizer in the antipoverty program. I worked pt time, as volunteer, in civil rights law office and began my art career, 1965-67. When finally back in NYC, after detour to Denver for one year for spouse's next job, I worked pt time and did my art in small studio in my apartment.
We decided to have a child. I met two radical feminists at another organizer's home, while I was pregnant and while I thought I was liberated, it was 1969, they said I wasn't. When I gave birth, right about this time all those decades ago, I discovered they'd been right. One is not liberated when there are no family supports for new mothers, as was in the US at that time (and not much improved now).
Feminism has given women real choices. Susan Falludi has a good book, Backlash about how the media worked hard at propaganda against feminism. I am certain it was possible for me to be an artist, from a working class Jewish background (am an atheist), due to feminism. When I became ill, I became single again. A single working mother, working as an artist-in-residence for a foundation in a public school during school hours. (Travel on the "tube", subway, took 1 plus hour each way, and I hired a sitter for the gap; she and I remained friends until her death at 97; she was from central America.)
When I became ill with CFS/ME, I was no longer able to work the jobs that had always helped support my art career. I was with a partner and decided to marry him after nearly 14 years as a couple. He is my caregiver, "carer" is the word in England. He can't afford to stop working, as his PhD school loans rerquire monthly payments, seemingly forever. He got his PhD pt time during our relationship.
I am 98 or 99% homeboun due to CFS/ME, so homebound has another meaning for me than the author's. But I always had my small studio in my living space and do art as can. Feminism has given women real choices. Betty Friedan was photographed in a visit to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, DC, sitting in a wheelchair (she had heart condition in last years) under a self-portrait of Alice Neel, published in the musuem's newsletter. I'm also a wheelchair user due to CFS/ME in my infrequent trips out. Betty Friedan provided a gateway moment for women and I'm glad she got her kudos in her lifetime. Women are wonderful.
NYCArtist, thank you for your contribution to the discussion. I was wondering how the concept of radical homemaking would square with the reality that life has a way of throwing a wrench in the systems we set up for ourselves. Maybe you're widowed, maybe you get sick, maybe you want a divorce. I'm closing in on 28, and thinking about how to start a family, well aware of the vulnerabilities everyone faces. I need prescription drugs, so I need gold, and self-sufficiency isn't in the cards for me. The radical homemaking lifestyle sounds incredibly isolating, not to mention boring. Step 1: quit your job and start your own farm Step 2: grow your own food and hang out with your family. Hayes begins to address the isolation and boredom by saying that no one will be satisfied, so they'll come up with ways to make it all more communal. Unfortunately, that sounds like it's a few generations away, which isn't good enough for me, or a lot of people out there. If ecologic and economic circumstances necessitate such a lifestyle, well, you do what is necessary.
I understand that this kind of change can only happen incrementally, but I think that some consideration should be given to the fact that some supports need to be built into the system before everyone can adopt it.
We have the same initials. You are welcome. But, your last paragraph gives me pause. I am coming around to NOT accepting the mantras that moderates keep pushing on us, "this kind of change can only happen incrementally". Maybe not. Some big changes have come about by gov't actions: if my memory is correct, the English gov't made the NHS after WWII. I appreciate your experience and your age. I can remember being 28. In some ways, it's easier to be an older woman, even with ill health. Although, women today are far ahead of women of my generation in terms of seeing posibilities: what to do for work, career, whether or not to marry, whether or not to have a child/children - married or single, where to live... I do urge any kind of involvement and activism that suits your passions and politics, as can. Survival (as you indicate) intrudes, but often there's a bit left over for "the good fight". I suggest reading Howard Zinn's You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, his autobiography. It is my favorite book. It is a handbook for social change, starting with the marvelous introduction to the 2nd edition, which was around 2003. Good luck. You're doing fine.
I have always been mildly suspicious of the feminist movement. Not because of its perfectly justifiable push for female independence and equality, but because of some of its more extreme views on males. By that I mean an occasional tendency to treat men as "the enemy." Quite often these extremist views have driven away more sensitive male souls from supporting a righteous cause, which is a great pity.
Early radicalism was entirely understandable. Much of it was (and is) frustration at the slow rate of progress. But now we are through the first wave of development it is surely time to think in terms of the different types of male-female relationships in heterosexual marriage. Not every woman wants to follow a business or working life; for them, a "home making" role is rightly considered to be a full time working life. We should surely respect this choice as much as we should respect any woman who chooses not to have children while pursuing her own career.
Where a woman prefers to be a "home maker" her financial security should be provided for without recourse to adversarial law. If our society places a premium on this then we should be prepared to pay for it either through tax breaks or direct payment. In fact the latter has often been mooted in the past as (crude phrase) "housewives' wages."
I don't think there are many absolutes in this. Human behaviour is predictable only in its unpredictability. So long as people do no harm I cannot see why we each of us cannot live the way we choose without interference from others. For instance, I admire Shannon Hayes' approach but it definitely isn't for me. My life has taken a different path and I am at reasonable ease with it, as I presume she is with hers.
Live and let live.
Feminists do not/have not said that men are the enemy. That's propaganda...see Susan Faludi's book, Backlash. Male domination, power to exclude, keep women back has been the enemy. Men are great. Individual men have to be reminded that women are equals, but that is part of relationships, no doubt.
A good article, and chimes in well with other reading I've done over the years of people like Wendell Berry, the "New Agronomists", and some of the saner peak oil crew.
I would just like to make a similar point to Sara Anderson's above from a still young-ish (29) person's perspective, who given my family still owns 4 acres of good land in rural Australia and nowt in the city has considered the type of life change Hayes and these others has advocated.
Unlike Sara, I wouldn't say the idea seems 'boring' as I find ideas like permaculture and regenerating land appealing (at least as an armchair idea) - but the isolation potential is a big part.
It seems to me that the people extolling the virtues of Radical Homemaking / New Agronomy online are stable, happily married couples with children - in their middle years, after already making their way in the world developing the kind of skills (ie writing) suitable for an introverted lifestlye.
And more power to them! Especially if their life really does reduce the need to consume and promote social justice etc.
But it's not going to work for everyone - cities and the public, urban life still have a place, especially for the young and young-at-heart.
Hayes writes: "My fingers trembled on the keyboard as I typed the notice. What, exactly, would be the repercussions for taking a pro-homemaker stand and seeking out others?”
Hopefully a lot of good repurcussions. But perhaps she could think of the consequences for her own children if everyone adopted this approach, and the messy, creative, exciting opportunities that cities represent melted away. And look at the work of great urbanists like Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford and Jan Gehl for ideas on how to make our cities (and the single more inter-dependent life that goes with living in them) better, more just and sustainable places also. The Danish idea of urban co-housing for example, which has been experimented with here in Australia in places like Christie's Walk: http://www.urbanecology.org.au/christiewalk/
Have I got a website for you! www.hoydenabouttown.org (either org or com) Feminists in Australia. Enjoy.
It should be www.hoydenabouttown.com feminists in Australia with links to sites all over.
A very interesting part of historical writing is "The Russian Peasant" by Sidney Webb the Fabian Socialist and friend of Bertrand Russell. But accompanying this by looking for "The Conquest of Bread" by the philosophical Anarchist, Peter Kropotkin.
which was probably the most popular book in Russia thwoughout the modern time of the Twentieth Ceentury. The book was still popular during the Stalin era because that was the way the leadership was promising life would be once the State was "no longer necessary" That is why so many put up with being sent to labor camps, to make the "State no longer necessary"
But "The Russian Peasant" written just around the time of the Soviet revolution showed how practical the life of husbandry could be, even with
the periodic drought and frost kill on the Steppe.
I see comments shifting from ecofarming and natural living to family problems, and I know why. What the author did, I did, too, in Germany, and my love went to dust - because I am a devote woman (psychosexually - not in politics + profession!) but was courted by devote men only (man socialized by strong mother, man wishing me to become the child-educater instead of the material, productive worker). It was in the socio-economic air around us, whether green or red or Christian did not change it, and I could not cope with it. I saw: If both partners work (not far from home) and children are in day-care, and I don't see that anxious man during daylight - then, only then, it does not matter. We don't need to earn well, we might even do volutary work and be poor - but not see each other for every meal. My second husband knew what it was all about, so we could cope.... By the way, Friedan's book is called "Der Weiblichkeitswahn", if you try to pronounce that in German.
Great article, but followed by incredibly liberal biased comments! Perhaps you should NOT try to reinvent the wheel with these folks. Turn to conservatives who already know and understand the value of home, family, independence, and ability to stand on one's own feet without expecting the government to provide some financial safety net for homemakers, feminism=liberation, etc. That kind of mentality won't work when it comes to living off the land, finding true independence and creating nurturing families. God bless rural America!!
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