Homemaker and Proud

Beautifully said.

Well done Tara, I hope you and your family are safe and well .

I enjoyed your essay it was well written, cute and fun. I'm happy to see that you have a writing addiction to go along with all that work.

not facebook smh

They say home is where the heart is, and with no one to create a home, the heart begins to starve- - as well as society's heart.

In my opinion homemakers are generay seen as having no to little value because it's solely/mainly done by women. And anything doneby women tends to be degraded or seen as useless.

Fathers can start greeting their children at the school gate, bus stop or front door with a smile, a snack and a 'what did you learn today, sweetie.'

Husbands can start giving their partners a kiss on the cheek, a warm smile and a 'how was your day, dear.'

Sons can start looking in on their elderly mothers/fathers.

Men can start caring about children growing up to be criminals, neighborhood parks, and schools.

It's always odd to me how women are solely held responsible for society's failings and expected to be service workers for everyone's benefit.

A wonderful commentary of what we have lost in America! My wife was a Homemaker. Our children became well balanced, productive members of society, and I had the benefit of strong and equal partner in life!

TJ needs to spend some time reading a real "fantasy": the Communist Manifesto. If he did, he might run across the fact that Karl Marx said socialism is simply the transitional stage a society goes through on its way to Communism.

Making basic errors in the source material about your chosen topic doesn't inspire confidence.

Exactly where did I say homemakers disappeared, or that they should? Why don't you come out of hiding behind any mouse? Or is it that you don't have the courage of your convictions? I guess it's easier to take what I said and twist it to what you wanted to behind any mouse.

What I believe is that women, and men, should be whatever they want in their relationships, whatever works best for them as individuals and a couple. What I didn't like about the essay is that it blamed women for what's wrong with society, while leaving men out of it, and then making the 50s as a utopia.

Just an FYI. Homemakers didn't vanish after the fifties. My mother is one for my younger sibling. And she also has a masters in psychology. Which she completed whilst raising me. At home and abroad. I could go on, but I would need days to write out fully all the multifarious items that made your comment into a nearly indescribable mishmash of arrogance, misogyny, imbecility, stupidity, simple rudeness, asinine behavior, hypocrisy, and...if there were an adjective encompassing "speaking as only ignorant, brainless, childish assholes are able to speak" I would utilize that as well. And I simply lack the time. So you can go on hating women who aren't like you, who feel differently than you about motherhood and so on, and you can go on blaming men for the fact that those women exist, whether because you blame incompetent male serial killers for not killing them as you'd prefer, or whatever other reason you can concoct. Just know that they are there, you are are known for what you are (a despicable, disgusting, misogynistic, feminine-phobic hypocrite) and no matter how hard you try, they will not vanish into the fifties, or into bdsm. Sorry "ladyver". Not your lucky day. Better luck next time!

This essay is ridiculous. I am tired of women still being blamed for society's problems, but it's nothing new. What really annoys the hell out of me, though, are women who buy into this archaic belief.

There are two people in a marriage. Since when did the husband get a pass from accepting responsibility for a relationship, a divorce, or parenting??? Or crime and other problems with society???

Society is constantly changing. What worked in the 1950s is not working now. The economy is different, women have more opportunities, and corporations are zipping out new technologies faster than we can keep up. Fantasizing about the 1950s is about as realistic as fantasizing about the 1800s or the Dark Ages--both sound intriguing, but who would want to actually live during those time periods?

If you want to use the 1950s for BDSM fantasies, go for it. But the 1950s were 60 years ago. You wouldn't have been able to access porn sites then, and I doubt you would have learned about BDSM or fantasies. Your primary fantasy during the 1950s would have been staying home by yourself, while your husband took the kids off for a one-week vacation. (That was my mother's fantasy during the 1960s. My father fulfilled this fantasy many times :).

For those who stay at home, I applaud. For those who decide to follow their dreams with a career outside the home, I applaud.

Nora Roberts, in her Lt Dallas series (murder detective series set in 2058 onward under the pseudonyn of JD Robb), proposes the idea of a Professional Mother, who receives a stipend from the state to help with the finances while she cares for the children as a homemaker, until the child reaches majority. A worthy idea, but one our current plutocracy will scream is either socialism or communism, or both, sometimes even in the same sentence (ignoring the fact that both political ideas are anethema to each other). I find it a very intriguing idea.

The economics of the current society mean that 9 out of 10 families cannot survive without a second income to cover the bills, and sometimes things like health insurance or retirement are beyond the scope of their budgets. With the cost of living these days, and to have the lifestyle that would be considered comfortable and reduced financial stress, the family has to bring home about $80k a year USD. And if both parents are working, that family connection is likely to be frayed or even absent. Indeed, fifteen years ago, only 1 in 4 of those with a Bachelor's degree were projected to actually become home owners. These days the numbers are much smaller.

Michael Parenti rightly notes that politics is the flip side of economics; they are inextricably tied together, and a look at the ills of our current social structure reveal Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" for the delusional fantasy it is. The marketplace has never operated on its own, as the big players have always gone crying to government whenever revenue streams are threatened.

We need homemakers to help raise our children. To strengthen the homemakers, we need extended families and a community to support them, whether those connections are by blood kin or not. (Most jobs last 2-3 years; job insecurity helps destroy community by forcing people to move to where the work is.)

Being a homemaker does not have to be tied to the BDSM niche. That is a separate choice, and needs to be divorced from being a homemaker as its association fosters gender stereotyping. And while we're at, let's recognize that sometimes the homemaker should be the Dad.

I'll get off the soapbox now.

You make an excellent case for the homemaker. I've never really considered homemaking within the context of BDSM, and would have liked for you to have expanded upon that a little.

Well said! Setting a firm foundation has always been the key to success

I agree with you that it is wrong to denigrate the work that goes into being a homemaker.

But you succumb to equally biased thinking when you contend that the ills of society are due to women now having the opportunity, that was rare prior to the advent of second-wave feminism, to pursue whatever path they choose to follow in life without socially-imposed and sometimes even legal restrictions on those choices.