Discover the complete social history of the housewife archetype, from colonial America to the 20th century, and re-examine common myths about the “modern woman.”
The notion of “housewife” evokes strong reactions. For some, it’s nostalgia for a bygone era, simpler and better times when men were breadwinners and women remained home with the kids. For others, it’s a sexist, oppressive stereotype of women’s work. Either way, housewife is a long outdated concept—or is it?
Lisa Selin Davis, known for her smart, viral, feminist, cultural takes, argues that the “breadwinner vs. homemaker” divide is a myth. She charts examples from prehistoric female hunters to working class housewives in the 1930s, from First Ladies to 21st century stay-at-home moms, on a search for answers to the problems of what is referred to as women’s work and motherhood. Davis discovers that women have been sold a lie about what families should be. Housewife unveils a truth: interdependence, rather than independence, is the American way.
The book is a clarion call for all women—married or single, mothers or childless—and for men, too, to push for liberation. In Housewife, Davis builds a case for systemic, cultural, and personal change, to encourage women to have the power to choose the best path for themselves.
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Housewife is a deeply researched, passionately-argued pro-choice book—for women's work. Davis entertainingly looks beneath the hood of housewifery and finds all kinds of surprises: Paleolithic huntresses; radical working class housewives accosting men with sausages (really!); the exploited labor of the First Lady; and ‘tradwives,’ reinventing a ‘tradition’ that was actually an anomaly. Her quest: to figure out how women and mothers can choose the life they want, and how society needs to shift to make that happen.
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Peggy Orenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex