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Comment by gustavus | Hacker News Reader

Does this surprise anyone this has been the way households have been structured for millennia, even among the elite aristocrats of ancient Rome, or Egyptian dynastys there would always the woman was primarily responsible for the running of the home, which despite what it sounds like could be quite a daunting affair, similar on the level of running a small business.

I couldn't do what I do without my wife, she is just as critical to running the household as I am. Honestly how did we convince half of society that it was liberating and freedom to be able to slave away for a corporate wage day in and day out?

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> Honestly how did we convince half of society that it was liberating and freedom to be able to slave away for a corporate wage day in and day out?

I think because until recently, housewives had a very poor standard of living (e.g. women couldn't reliably get credit cards til the 70s, very traditional views of a role of a woman in a family). It's not a surprise that the subsequent generations (Gen X and Millennials) were raised with distaste for the housewife lifestyle.

Summarizing stuff my mom and grandmothers said.

In the US during WWII women took over a lot of traditionally male jobs and got to run their own lives as men were often away. After the war there was a full court press to force women back into the home and traditional roles. And by 1960 women were in open revolt.

My mother mentioned being a housewife with small kids as. You spend all day at home with children and no adults to talk to. Then your husband comes home and now you have an adult to talk to. But he's been talking adult stuff all day and just wants some downtime.

>My mother mentioned being a housewife with small kids as. You spend all day at home with children and no adults to talk to.

The modern homeschooling movement is solving this problem. I've seen it firsthand. The caretaker parents put their kids in various daytime group programs and many days are spent with other parents and other kids.

The kids get time with other kids. The parents get time with other adults. It's the grassroots version of "it takes a village"

It is liberating to have a choice and agency.

How is it not liberating to not be dependant on another human being for everything?

Like a wage? I think we are all dependent on others either way.

It's not quite the same thing though, is it? You can walk away from one employer and go to another as long as you have employ-able skills. It's much harder to walk away from a marriage that is not working out for one and if some financial independence makes it easier to, then so be it!

I'm not arguing against choice, I'm arguing that despite downsides there are merits to having a homemaker and viewing the household as a team rather than a collection of individuals.

Perhaps the more equitable route is a household where both work fewer hours so both can be breadwinner and homemaker.

There’s the concept of ensuring a family wage, rather than an individual’s own living wage.

Better than being dependent on a soulless employer, while still having to take care of the family.

Actually, being able to depend on someone you trust is the real liberation.

In premodern times, it wasn't so much trust as societal mandate. You have to imagine that domestic abuse and neglect ran rife and was just accepted as par for the course.

What’s so different in modern times? Exploitative employers have taken their place via social mandate.

As pointed out elsewhere, far more flexibility in changing employees over changing domestic partners, even if that has gotten easier as well.

And as terrible as bad employers might be, they usually cannot inflict the levels of physical and emotional abuse that bad spouses can. Business, not personal.

It's liberating to give yourself entirely to another person, to make a supreme act of trust and faith and love, to say to that person that he is everything in your life now, and you forsake all others, because he is worthy of your trust and faith and love. It is liberating to be protected, to be cherished, to be placed on a pedestal. It is liberating to have someone who will lay down his life for you and your children. It is liberating to promise to each other that you will stay together, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer; that is liberation from worry, from doubt, from fear. It is liberation from want or need or desolation, because no matter what happens in the family's life, you will have each other. It is liberating to come together in complementarity, to each take half of the duties and rights and responsibilities of a marriage, and to be able to complete one another in terms of household responsibilities, child rearing, earning income, social activities.

I've seen some rather un-liberated comments above, such as "oh no! we could never make it as a family on a single income! both spouses need to work... or else!" "who can afford children in this economy? we're DINKs for life; we barely get by!" so it's rather apparent to me who is enslaved.

I highly recommend watching the Indian movie: The great Indian kitchen. It does really offer a different perspective to anyone who believes that a housewife's job is better than a corporate drone's :)

Has this been the way households have been organized for centuries, or is this just the way a particular upper-middle class or aristocratic families have organized?

> Does this surprise anyone this has been the way households have been structured for millennia

It's a good point. Let's put it in the same box as slavery and arranged marriage.

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