Why women did the housework and men plowed the fields

In a series of long back-and-forth between feminists and normal people, E. Olson reminds the historically illiterate why women did the housework.

E. Olson

March 11, 2019

Lesley – you wrote: “A society in which a woman’s only meaningful social role is “mother” and that demands a woman stay put with children is a society in which women are themselves dependents.”

What meaningful roles would have otherwise awaited women? Pushing a heavy cast-iron plow through the soil? Mining for coal, gold, or silver in a dark, damp hole in the ground? Charging across open ground towards canon and machine guns? Any of those sound appealing to you? Of course woman could resort to prostitution, or household servant, or if from a wealthy family and allowed to finish high school, could get a 6 month teaching certificate and be assigned to teach 20-30 children aged 5 to 15 in a one room school house. Do any of those sound more appealing than cherished mother and wife?

And why was being a mother a full-time job? Because just cooking family meals was a 30-40 hour per week job in the days of wood burning stoves, no refrigeration, and no microwave meals. Store bought clothes were a luxury, so mom and daughters spent much time making and repairing family clothes, and washing them in a nearby stream with a washboard, while father and son were plowing fields, milking cows, or mining coal for 12+ hours per day. And yes you probably would have 5 to 15 children if you didn’t die during child-birth, and you would grieve as several of your children died of childhood illnesses, and try again because the family needed the labor and income that children provided the household and the “social security” they would provide you in old age or widowhood.

And who can you thank for all the choices and freedoms that women have to pursue their aspirations today? Well you can thank the men who invented reliable and cheap birth control, and the men who figured out how to reduce high child-birth mortality rates, and the men who invented the modern kitchen and modern household gadgets that mean taking care of the house isn’t a full-time job. And you can thank the Protestant men who were the first to think it important that girls learn to read the Bible, and the property owning men who gave women the vote. Are you still with me? Well then you can thank the expendable men who gave their lives following “woman and children first” on the Titanic, and the men who pay most of the taxes that go towards paying for the government welfare spending that goes predominantly to women. And finally you can thank the men who allow women to have a career, or career and marriage and children, or just marriage and children, or any combination, which is not a menu of choice that men have ever given themselves.