“I’m just a Housewife” is on page 24 of Gloria Steinem’s (She is the pretty feminist; Betty Friedan is the ugly one. Not surprisingly they did not get along.) The Feminine Mystique. The quote is in the first chapter titled “The problem that has no name” which should’ve been entitled “The problem that was not one till feminism made it so after 60 years of trying.” Contrast this view with this plaque found in a Lutheran cemetery dating from 1874 in North Austin.
I’m pretty sure Dessau Extension was name for north of the City of Austin before it was incorporated. Homemakers associations were in one time in vogue, but then it became a dirty word. Homemaker, according to Merriam-Webster.com was first used in 1867 that came to replace the 13th century word “housewife”. Based on the aforementioned source’s “Recent Examples on the Web” print media prefers “homemaker” while video prefers “housewife.” These were farmers living on the outskirts of a city. Home was the center of life not school “Room 222”, not the workplace “Cheers”, not friends “Seinfeld”, not hobbies “Big Bang”, not even church “Greenleaf”, but home.
Men can be house makers and homewreckers but not home “makers”. Women too can be homewreckers, of course, but when they are songs are written about Wicked Feleena, Jolene, Mrs. Robinson, or Mrs. Johnson.[i] Not many are written about the men who do the wrecking, and such songs when written are certainly not as popular.
What about songs written as ode to homemaker’s? The closest I can think of is Marty Robbins “My Woman, My woman, My Wife”. It was written in 1970; doubt it would or could be today.
Think of all the positive connotations “home” has. It’s “Take me home country roads” not “Take me to my house”. It’s “home is where the heart is” not “house”. I suppose one can be house sick, as in being sick of a particular house, but homesick is an altogether different thing. Even in Robert Frost’s competing views of home in his poem “The Death of the Hired Man” where the man says, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.” is answered by the woman’s, “‘I should have called it Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’”, there is something touching about both.
It’s grace. Homemakers make a place where grace is not only said but is. My wife for 44 plus years on our 1040 has written “homemaker”. No “just a” in front of it. And as Paul shows in 2 Timothy 2:15 that was no less important, spiritual, or God pleasing than my “ordained clergyman.” I preached the grace of God in Christ Jesus, but she made a home for it. I’ve told her only recently what someone else said – by this time I probably had told 50 couples I was marrying for 30 years prior but had never told her – I made the living, but she made the living worthwhile.
[i] You know what the charming thing is about Mrs. Johnson in the 1968 song “Harper Valley P.T.A.”? These lines, “I wanna tell you all the story ’bout a Harper Valley widowed wife/ Who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High/ Well, her daughter came home one afternoon and didn’t even stop to play”. Yes, in 1968 teenager’s still played and Junior High was still difficult but not a nightmare. Circa 1998 a LCMS pastor who had served in Guadalajara, Mexico said that teenage girls there still played with Barbies. I wonder: do such folks know what sort of country many of them long so desperately to get into?
