Housewife

I don't feel well. I'm having a runny nose issue again; gosh, it makes me feel yucky.   After getting home from work today, Dave and I were talking and I began thinking about our modern day society.  As you know, I'm all for women in the workforce.  I personally believe that all women should have the opportunity and the right to work if they choose.  I am all for the wife being the primary breadwinner and I fully support "house husbands."  However, the expectation that both the husband and wife work is not necessarily the answer.

Tonight I found myself really missing my nights and weekends.  I want to be here when Dave comes home.  I want to keep house.   I've never considered myself to all that domestic but how much of that was because it was never very much stressed.  Growing up in the fifties, young women were under the expectation to maintain the home.  Her pride was dictated by the house she kept.  Today, women's pride is supposedly dictated by the jobs we work.  Is that any better?  Now there's that need to keep house, keep the job, have a relationship, have personal time, have time for friends, and eventually there will need to be time to be parents for both men and women.

I watch my mom struggle with trying to manage the balance of maintaining the home, working with my dad to help raise my sister and me, trying to find daycare when they were both at work, and trying to be a wife.   She did a wonderful job but it wasn't always clean.  We were expected to do chores but there were times that was hard to enforce because my mother herself couldn't always do her part of the housework and she wasn't always around to hold us accountable due to her daily responsibilities.  Maybe it would've been easier for her to stay at home while my father worked.

I don't know.  Tonight I just found myself desiring the life of a housewife.   Maybe it's the whole "the grass is greener" feeling but it's still there.  The worst part of it is that if I did try it many jobs want to have any gaps in employment fully explained.   What did you do during those 6 months that you weren't working?  First, what business is it of theirs?  Second, maybe I did decide to dedicate my time and energy to my family.  Maybe my husband wanted to do that.  Why should that be held against us?  Like I said earlier, I understand everyone having equal opportunities and rights to work but I don't like that it's an expectation.