The Return of the Homemaker

In its glory days feminism convinced large numbers of women that homemaking was domestic servitude and that “wife” was a four-letter word.

Many women were even willing to follow Betty Friedan off the intellectual cliff when she famously compared suburban kitchens to Nazi concentration camps.

In Friedan's words: “In a sense that is not as farfetched as it sounds, the women who ‘adjust’ as housewives, who grow UP wanting to be ‘just a housewife,’ are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps — and the millions more who refused to believe that the concentration camps existed.”

Of course, this is deranged. Anyone who thinks that there is no substantive difference between a woman who prepares dinner for her children and a woman who is gassed to death and thrown into a crematory oven, has gone over to the dark side.

Never underestimate human gullibility.

Friedan’s idiotic analogy bespeaks a systematic effort to alienate women from their identity as women and from their roles as wives, mothers, and, yes, homemakers.

Surely, it had some success, though feminist success here should be measured by an epidemic of divorces. Or, as feminists would say, marriages sacrificed to the greater good of the feminist cause.

Only the most dimwitted feminists have failed to see how damaging their ideas were for real women living real lives.

Writing in the Washington Post, Emily Matchar spots a new trend. Among today’s young women, homemaking is making a comeback. Women are proud to be homemakers. They see it as a positive and constructive activity, not as a form of enslavement whose purpose is to keep them out of the board room.

Matchar seems to be of two minds about it. She sees the positive value in the new attitude, but also describes it as her “generation's newfound mania for old-fashioned domestic work.”

She continues: “Around the country, women my age (I'm 29), the daughters and granddaughters of the post-Betty Friedan feminists, are embracing the very homemaking activities our mothers and grandmothers so eagerly shucked off. We're heading back to jam-canning and knitting needles, both for fun and for a greater sense of control over what we eat and wear.”

Matchar makes it sound a bit quaint: “Our tech-saturated generation craves creative hands-on activities, and nostalgic hobbies such as canning, knitting and baking fit the bill.”

Women who were brought up to love the environment have translated their passion into more hands-on efforts in their homes. It's better than trying to shut down energy exploration and production.

Surely, a sluggish economy and difficult job market has nudged young women and caused them to reconsider their priorities. Faced with the choice between a challenging, but demanding career, and a happy home life, more and more women are opting for the latter.

You might think that feminism would applaud women who are exercising their freedom to choose their own path in life. If so, you would be wrong.

Feminism is an ideology. It does not care about real women’s lives. It cares about propagating its own ideas.

Feminism applauds women’s freedom to choose, but only as long as women choose what feminism wants them to choose.

No one should be surprised to hear that some women see this return to the home as a “backlash against the feminist movement.”

Saying it’s a backlash assumes inexorable revolutionary progress. I prefer to see it more as a repudiation of  very destructive ideas.

Either way, a young woman who chooses to take a more active role in homemaking will feel a need to justify herself before the court of feminist opinion.

The trend threatens feminism, so it will try to reverse it by making these women feel guilty for having betrayed the feminist cause and for having sold out the feminist revolution.

When feminism enters the picture, decisions must conform to what is best for feminism, not what is best for you and your family.

So, women are preparing to defend themselves against the brickbats that their feminist mistresses will soon be flinging at them.

Matchar seems almost to offer a feminist sneer at the rationale some women have been proposing: “I've lately been hearing things like ‘There's just something natural about women taking on the nurturing role in the home’ coming out of the mouths of women's studies grads and Ivy League PhDs.”

Then again, Matchar has herself become more of an active homemaker, so perhaps she is offering a sop to the matriarchy.

Later, she adds that women who make the kind choices that she has made will be accused of consorting with the enemy, or even with believing in science. (I have occasionally mentioned that feminists who denounce conservatives for being against Darwin have absolutely no use for Darwin themselves.)

Matchar writes: “What used to be a reactionary right-wing view now passes as almost progressive — stuff like ‘We're biologically hard-wired to do this’ or ‘It makes evolutionary sense.’ When you get too focused on the word ‘natural’ as it applies to food and clothing and shampoo, it seems to become awfully tempting to apply it to people.”

After giving feminist guilt-tripping its due, Matchar concludes that the new breed of homemaker is fulfilling her moral responsibility to care for her family.

She writes: “Natural or not, women are still overwhelmingly viewed as the guardians of family health and safety. And a growing number of women whom I've spoken to genuinely think that ‘do it yourself’ is the best — perhaps the only — way to ensure their families' well-being.”

Just think, there once was a time when large number of women were convinced that there was something objectionable that.

It’s good to see more and more women liberated… from feminism.