Blog #3 The Housewife Dilemma

As a woman, I do feel a great deal of pressure to be a good wife and good homemaker because I grew up watching my mom be a good wife and homemaker. In our society, there is still a great deal of pressure for women to be a good housewife and homemaker because that's what our society sees as our gender role and I feel like that I must fulfill that role. Even though there is that pressure, it's also something that I want to personally accomplish and I have had this idea in my head since I was little that I was going to be the best wife, mother, and homemaker that I can be. I also feel that there is more pressure for me to be a career woman as well. Through the waves of feminism, women have been to work and have their own careers and not solely count on a man. In today's society, women are able to support themselves and some don't even get married and have successful careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and astronauts. These days, I believe that there is greater pressure on being a great career woman because women have fought so hard to get equal rights and I personally feel pressured that we need to continue on with women being great career women. I feel that they pressure to become a great housewife and homemaker has gone down a lot since the 1950s. I have asked my mother about her choices that she made in her younger life and she thought that getting married at the age of 24 and having me at the age of 25 was a mistake because she wanted the dream of being married and having kids right away. I believe that society doesn't have high expectations for lower-class women and so we don't expect much from them to be a good wife and a good mother because then you have images of DHS. I personally believe that every woman has the potential to be a successful housewife and career woman, but some just need that extra encouragement to reach that point. I think that men can feel both angered and relieved at women changing from housewives to career women. In Revolutionary Road, the women had no careers and they stayed home all day and took care of the kids. When the Wheelers told their neighbors that they were going to Paris and the wife was going to work while the man was going to relax, they thought that they were insane and crazy. Now, it's not uncommon to see a man taking care of the children while women are working. I think that men probably in the 1950s had a hard time with the transition of women having careers, but I also feel like there may have been a feeling of relief to these men eventually because the pressure to be the only provider of the family disappeared. I do believe that women should still embrace their domestic role because we are the caregivers and have those qualities to be a good wife and mother, but I also believe that women should have the career of their dreams and be able to achieve it. Friedan writes about "the problem that has no name" and the problem is that women were becoming bored of being that housewife all the time and they were beginning to become depressed about not having anything to do other than cleaning all day and taking the children to all their practices and having dinner on the table before their husbands got home. I would call this problem the housewife dilemma and I know it's not very creative, but that's truly what I would call it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e90xev4g1vk&feature=related

This video is a funny spoof of housewives from the 1950s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxzRthDEg4c&feature=related

This is a video talking about women working in the 1950s