When I think of a housewife I think about a stay at home mom who is responsible for taking care of the house and doing chores. Whether that’s cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, making sure that the house has everything it needs and taking care of the kids throughout the day. However, it didn’t occur to me that some of these women gave up on their careers and things they wanted to do in life to be this person that their husband and kids need. Many lose themselves while trying to be this perfect mother and wife. After reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, society’s role in this was clear. It was stated how “For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers…. Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him,  how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion;” (Friedan). The word “yearning” was used to describe how there has been no word of women longing for something else. The fact that this whole thing was based on experts educating women on how to keep a man and being a mom shows how much they think that’s all that should be important to a woman. What about her goals? Her mental health? And her life outside of the house? Women have been told all their life how they should carry themselves, what they need to learn how to do and what they can’t do. With no room left for what they want. Their voice and dreams matter just as much as a man. It’s sad that it’s years later and women are still having these same problems.

Marams’ snapshot stood out to me because it showed how much a housewife actually has to do around the house by themselves. Which showed me that it actually is a full time job, I never saw it in this way because they aren’t getting paid to do it but it takes a lot of time and energy. Not only that but it showed what it would look like if men helped out with the load, such as helping clean, organize the house and much more which I thought was interesting. Seeing how gender roles were eliminated showed a different perspective which I believe to be good. Pat Mainardi talked more on this in The Politics of Housework and gave examples of how men would respond to this and what they really meant. One response would be “Housework is too trivial to even talk about.” MEANING: It’s even more trivial to do. Housework is beneath my status. My purpose in life is to deal with matters of significance. Yours is to deal with matters of insignificance. You should do the housework.” (Mainardi, 3). Housework is seen as unimportant to men which is why they believe women should do it. Implying that women cannot handle important and much more valuable tasks. Which just shows how little men think of women even when they are doing the most. This idea that housework isnt important shows how unappreciative some men are, especially those with wives as they continue to belittle women and underestimate them.