In the cult of domesticity: When even our hobbies center around caretaking
Unpaid domestic labor frees up time for other people to find satisfaction and meaning outside the home
The last text I sent my grandmother before she died read:
“Hey, D. I just wanted to tell you that as I go through flight school I keep wondering how Granddad ever did this in just three months. It’s taking me forever!
But I know how he did it … he had you at home doing everything so he had time to go practice takeoffs and landings before work. I just wanna tell you I realize that. Love you.”
She replied demurely about how she supported my grandfather in his hobbies and found purpose in “staying home” with her children. That much was true; at her memorial service multiple people eulogized her by mentioning how much she loved being a mother.
She was also part of a generation of middle-class white women of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, who “chose not to work” outside the home (which is a fallacy; nearly all women work, but not all are paid), and instead devote themselves to what we now call the cult of domesticity, a philosophy in which femininity and womanhood are aligned with caretaking, purity, and comfort.
The cult of domesticity
My grandmother, Diana, graduated from Auburn University with a degree in domestic arts. My grandfather studied chemistry and went on to work for Monsanto. His grandchildren knew him to have many hobbies, including watercolor, natural dyes, and genealogy. He earned his private pilot’s license in record time because he was a diligent student … and because his wife took care of their four children and their home.
“D,” as we called her, held down the fort while Granddad traveled the globe as a chemical rep for Monsanto. She cooked and baked from scratch, packed picnics, sent her children to cotillion, and sewed clothes from patterns. She helped manicure their home life into a picket-fenced midwestern American dream and seems to have found great joy and satisfaction in it.
D created hundreds of memories for her children, about which we reminisced around her deathbed, and for her ten grandchildren and even her great-grandchildren, and passed on her knowledge of gardening, sewing, and baking.
Domestic hobbies
As I teach my son, her great-grandson how to garden, bake, and sew — often using the recipes and tools I inherited from my grandmother — I realize the hobbies that I — and many other women I know — enjoy center around domesticity and bringing value to the family.
I love and find great joy in growing food for my family, baking from scratch, and quilting, but it strikes me how the accumulation of the work she did — and I do — makes room for the other people in our life to spend their free time doing hobbies outside the home.
“Viewing housework as one arm of motherhood is a feature of Western culture, as is men’s abdication of responsibility in the domestic sphere, even though, really, cleaning house has little to do with caring for children.
In antiquity, however, a man’s access to the ‘good life’ of the public sphere — and it was only men who had access to the freedom contained in the polis — depended on the degree to which his body was unencumbered by the labor that took place in his home.”
Seriously: How many hobbies do you have? And how many of them do not benefit your home or family and just you?
→ 4 types of invisible labor you might be doing at home
Flying solo
I started flight school in 2020 when my son was a year old, propelled by the intense desire to do something daring and carve out a piece of my new identity as a working mother. I kept losing myself in the sleep deprivation, breastfeeding, and time scarcity of balancing baby and a business, and when my pilot grandfather’s health declined I felt the need to achieve my lifelong dream of following in his footsteps.
The guilt I felt as I left the house in the cold mornings of my husband’s days off, listening to weather reports on the way to the flight school, nearly made me turn around and quit. It usually subsided by the time I pulled into the parking lot, but I was often plagued by the outrageous indulgence of paying for hours in a plane with a flight instructor in the precious hours I had with childcare.
Because I could only fly for two hours every other week — four hours a month — I fell dramatically behind every other student in the program. Almost every other one — if not every one — was a man, mostly older and retired with ostensibly less obligation to be at home than me, with a husband who worked 90+ hours/week and a baby who was still nursing.
I marveled at how Granddad could possibly have done it all — studying and passing exams and flying solo — until I realized that — duh — he wasn’t flying “solo” at all. D made it possible for him to achieve his dreams because she was pulling all the weight at home. His paycheck and hobbies were the mark of his success, and the cheer and cleanliness of their home were hers.
The problem
Our success as women and mothers is equated with the cleanliness and aesthetics of our home.
Women have been relegated to housework since the Middle Ages, during which time people believed that we didn’t have the intellectual capability to do anything more than domestic chores.
In 2024, as a mother and a wife, your home is seen an extension of yourself. It is your domain and, though millennial dads are more involved with childrearing than any generation before them, the labor associated with the home still “belongs” largely to women.
→ Why I hate the Ballerina farm egg apron
Why this matters
Work outside the home is as rewarded and lauded as it has been since the 19th century (and beyond), while work in the cult of domesticity is easily overlooked by our society. Not only is most of the domestic labor done primarily by women unpaid, but when it is paid it is highly gendered, underpaid, and undervalued.
→ The moms in the school supply aisle
I’ve heard the rationale that we should be happy that we get to do the domestic work because it “glorifies the home” and the family. But — and I don’t know about you — while I do focus on how cooking, cleaning, and gardening brings pleasure and value to my home and family, it has also made me feel depressed because the nature of it is constant, easily overlooked, and so quickly diminished.
And, because our identity as mothers and wives is so wrapped up in our achievements in the home — how it looks and feels — if we don’t “succeed” at it it feels like a moral failing.
I won’t change anything about the way I grow and can vegetable, bake my grandmother’s recipes, or hang laundry on the clothesline. I will even be cheerful about it. But I want to make a point to teach my son that those things should not be gendered.
What we can do about it
Redefine success in the home
Success can be about the quality of relationships, emotional well-being, and personal growth rather than just how the house looks or how well tasks are completed.
Separate our identities
We can separate ourselves from the cleanliness and aesthetics and perfection of our domesticity. Our worth can come from other achievements, like mindfulness, reading, connecting with friends, or professional endeavors.
Stay connected
It is easy to get lost in the pressure to “keep up,” but when we connect with other mothers and wives who may feel similarly and shared experiences in a safe space, it can be incredibly validating and healing.
Join me for an upcoming Women’s Sharing Circle
Women’s Sharing Circles are free online monthly chats about women’s issues like motherhood, marriage, menopause, and mental health. Our next Circle is on Sept 16, 2024, and our topic is “Starting Over.”
I had this moment a few years ago where it dawned on me that everyone else wants to go through life as a white man. The framework of our society has always treated the white male as an individual (at least as much as possible). He is least likely to be assigned some group identity and most likely to be attributed individual characteristics.
Everyone else is more likely to be assigned group characteristics and everyone else is fighting for the right to have, express, and pursue individual characteristics and preferences.
I got philosophical about this and thought, no one else is as free as white men. And this is why white men have such a difficult time imagining or empathizing with the difficulties of those most likely assigned to groups. For the white male, his interests are something he can pursue his entire life with or without children. But for the female, she cannot. Her interests must often be shelved or integrated into domestic life as you notice here.
I could go on and on but I remember that really struck me and I’ve never forgotten it.
I can’t say that it’s ever gone over well when I’ve tried to say something like, “Everyone else wants to be treated like a white male.” What I mean is everyone else just wants the space to be an individual, to not be seen as only having group characteristics. And white men are most likely to have that space. So it was very nice to read this, thank you!
Not a profound comment, but I love how the photos show your grandmother’s love of cats!!