I enjoy doing housework, ironing, washing, cooking, dishwashing. Whenever I get one of those questionaires and they ask what is your profession, I always put down housewife. It’s an admirable profession, why apologize for it. You aren’t stupid because you’re a housewife. When you’re stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare.
– Tasha Tudor
The most dreaded question at the dinner party, ‘What do you do?’ It’s rendered me speechless over the years. Equally, it’s also turned me into a rambling, incoherent mess. And it’s often left me hiding in toilets, choking back the tears as feelings of inadequacy run riot through my mind. All because of one seemingly innocent question.
But it wasn’t always like that, for many years I ensured that I had a very good answer to that question, one that would be sure to impress the enquirer, convey success and validate my existence in this world. And then I had kids and all of the sparkle from my career became a constraint as I battled to balance it all and the reality of who I was and what I really wanted to do became clear.
I wanted to raise my family and build a home. But that did not fit in with today’s bucket list of successful things to do. It’s still largely associated with gender inequality, misogyny and domestic drudgery.
I found other females particularly viscous as becoming financially dependent on a man was modern day blasphemy and giving up my empowered position in society, to return to the home was considered backward, indulgent, somewhat pathetic and generally boring.
And that question, ‘so, what do you do’, became a loaded gun to shoot me with. Because in today’s society, like it or not, we are still defined by what we do and of course, how much we earn. It often feels that creating a home, raising our children and having time to take care of ourselves, are all secondary priorities, things to be done in our spare time.
So, it is no wonder there are so many stressed, knackered and broken people, living from ‘hand to mouth’ in terms of time and money, forced to make huge compromises every day about the things that really matter to them and not daring to step outside the norms of society, because if we are not working within those norms, what possible value can we be?
The frequency with which I write about the unseen and hugely under valued role of parents, home makers, carers and volunteers signifies the on-going wounds we continue to sustain, living on the periphery of a world where those efforts are not deemed as worthy as a ‘mainstream’ job with a title, salary and very defined roles and responsibilities.
And that seems a bit screwed up to me – that our hierarchy of value puts ourselves, our homes, our families and the most vulnerable amongst us, at the bottom of the food chain.
And so, as I embark upon a break from my current role to focus on the home, family and myself, I am yet again dreading that question of ‘what do you do’, just as much as I did all of those years ago. Because things have not really changed and titles still matter, no matter how f*xxxd up that may seem.
So, can we all try to be less of a title and more of who we really are and then I think things might just change for the better?
With love
Nik x
