The Balance Myth, cont.
July 17, 2013
MRS. C. writes:
I just finished reading your post, The Balance Myth, and it rang so true I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was raised in the ’70s, when a woman was encouraged to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let her husband forget he’s a man. My mother decided to “have it all” and went back to work when I was 11 and my brother 9, even though my father made enough for us all to live comfortably. For the rest of our childhood we were latchkey kids, raised by part-time parents and whatever was on cable TV. We knew not to bother our parents when they came home from work as they were often tired and short-tempered with us. My mother continued to do the family’s laundry and cooking, but was put upon to do any household chore and endlessly complained about these duties.
Fast forward 30 years or so, my husband makes enough for us to live comfortably on one income. We moved to a rural area where, unless we want to live on fast food, I have to cook two to three meals almost every day. I’ve become a dedicated housewife out of necessity, but for the first time in my 44 years on this planet, I really love what I do. I feel my life has more natural meaning, balance and rhythm now than during my 15 years in a Fortune 500 company. However, I was unpleasantly suprised by all the negativity I had to face from friends, family and my husband’s coworkers. I’ve been accused of being lazy, spoiled, stupid, even having some kind of mental disorder like agoraphobia or depression! All this because I chose to stay home and take care of my home and family? Do they make a pill that can cure me and make me “normal?” I hope not. Anyway, I’m enjoying the articles on your website. As housewives are portrayed as useless, drunk, plastic surgery addicts on TV these days your website is a refreshing change.
Thank you for writing.
I’m glad you enjoy your life at home.
But even if you didn’t enjoy it, even if you were depressed and sad, even if you were troubled because it is so different from what people expect of you, even if your husband could barely support you, even if you didn’t manage your home well because you had never been taught or prepared to do it, you would still be doing the right thing because you would be fulfilling your most basic duties, not only your duties to your own home and family, but your duties to your culture, which requires a community of mothers and homemakers to be the guardians of virtue, the protectors of hearth and soul, and to God. There’s a good reason why people disparage you. There’s a good reason why they paint your life as abnormal. If it’s not abnormal then their lives are. If what you are doing is right then what they are doing is wrong. It’s not possible to reconcile opposing ideals. It’s not possible for a culture to valorize both the careerist and the homemaker. The project to promote “balance” is a vast enterprise to pry women from their homes.
Freed from “balance,” which wrecks the interior life and divides the attention, we can also orient ourselves toward our proper end. After all, our homes are only temporary shelter. We are wayfarers in this world. As Aquinas said, “Each single being is perfect in the measure in which it reaches up to its own origin.”
