Yeah, that was a thing that just kind of stunned me, traveling. I'd never thought about it before. I'd simply accepted that "normal" households have a wife/mom who does all the cooking and cleaning (and if he's really nice, husband/dad helps out once in a while). I've never known anyone who enjoyed that work-- it's dull, lonely, and mostly unappreciated. But in rural southeast asia, where I was visiting, it's so radically different in so many ways. I learned so much, but the biggest shocks were, how *little* work there seemed to be, and how quick, genial and sociable the work was. Our modern conveniences: hot water on demand, washers, dryers, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, etc. do not save us any time or work: they *generate* unnecessary work! People who wash clothes by hand wear their clothes more than once between washes, they are more careful about the clothes-- from eating carefully to selecting fabrics for what will wear well, to just... not carelessly abusing them. They spot-clean, they're meticulous about hygiene (nobody uses deodorant or shaves), and they only have a few clothes to begin with.
Weirdly, just having a washing machine means you *must* have more clothes to use the machine efficiently. Otherwise you run out of clothes to wear before you can put together a full load. Ditto for dishwashers and dishes-- when you don't wash your own dishes, you carelessly use more of them, and you *need* more of them or you run out of cups when the washer's only half full. Sweeping is much faster than vacuuming. The only reason wall-to-wall carpet happened was because of affordable vacuum cleaners. The vacuum cleaners caused more work. And what of the refrigerator? Oh, now that means you only have to buy groceries once a week! Who needs milk delivery when you can get a whole gallon that will keep? But for people who live without that appliance (and I have done so for almost a year), getting something to cook for dinner is a pleasant daily outing, the food is better because it's fresh, and it's a little bit of social contact.
Cars... yeesh. Cars mean we can have everything zoned so there's never a place to buy food in walking distance. The mere presence of widely-affordable vehicles so altered our landscape, that in most places you almost can't buy groceries without a car. Everything's too far away. So while overseas, I lived without a fridge just fine, walked to the market or the store every day, chatted with the ladies there, and it was great! I can't do that back stateside. I'd have to get in the car and go to the store every day, and what a drag that would be!
Don't get me started about how much crap we all own, and how much harder, and more time-consuming, it makes cleaning our houses! Every time I go through my house and try to declutter all the junk people have strewn across every flat surface, I'm envious of my friends back in the village, who just didn't have enough stuff to make their house ever look cluttered. And didn't need it, either. We are dominated by our stuff, and it is suffocating us.
But that is how feminism happened in America. It was totally inevitable once we had the nuclear family, fridges, washing machines, cars, and carpets. Children shipped off to school, women sealed off from the community and from each other, doing each their work all alone, thankless work, pointless work, isolated work. Work that any trained monkey could do. Who could be happy that way?
It'll be an interesting adjustment, when all that starts to go away. The work will be harder, require more skill and knowledge... and it'll be more valued and less lonely. It is a weird sort of tradeoff. People in my great-grandmother's day (and she did laundry with her girls, with a boiling tub over a fire in the yard!) knew the value of a good, savvy, intelligent, shrewd woman running the household. It could determine how many of your children survived, and whether they went hungry or not. We've been so prosperous for so long that we haven't needed that kind of thrift, skill, and ingenuity. But I think we'll rediscover it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-07-16 10:14 pm (UTC)Weirdly, just having a washing machine means you *must* have more clothes to use the machine efficiently. Otherwise you run out of clothes to wear before you can put together a full load. Ditto for dishwashers and dishes-- when you don't wash your own dishes, you carelessly use more of them, and you *need* more of them or you run out of cups when the washer's only half full. Sweeping is much faster than vacuuming. The only reason wall-to-wall carpet happened was because of affordable vacuum cleaners. The vacuum cleaners caused more work. And what of the refrigerator? Oh, now that means you only have to buy groceries once a week! Who needs milk delivery when you can get a whole gallon that will keep? But for people who live without that appliance (and I have done so for almost a year), getting something to cook for dinner is a pleasant daily outing, the food is better because it's fresh, and it's a little bit of social contact.
Cars... yeesh. Cars mean we can have everything zoned so there's never a place to buy food in walking distance. The mere presence of widely-affordable vehicles so altered our landscape, that in most places you almost can't buy groceries without a car. Everything's too far away. So while overseas, I lived without a fridge just fine, walked to the market or the store every day, chatted with the ladies there, and it was great! I can't do that back stateside. I'd have to get in the car and go to the store every day, and what a drag that would be!
Don't get me started about how much crap we all own, and how much harder, and more time-consuming, it makes cleaning our houses! Every time I go through my house and try to declutter all the junk people have strewn across every flat surface, I'm envious of my friends back in the village, who just didn't have enough stuff to make their house ever look cluttered. And didn't need it, either. We are dominated by our stuff, and it is suffocating us.
But that is how feminism happened in America. It was totally inevitable once we had the nuclear family, fridges, washing machines, cars, and carpets. Children shipped off to school, women sealed off from the community and from each other, doing each their work all alone, thankless work, pointless work, isolated work. Work that any trained monkey could do. Who could be happy that way?
It'll be an interesting adjustment, when all that starts to go away. The work will be harder, require more skill and knowledge... and it'll be more valued and less lonely. It is a weird sort of tradeoff. People in my great-grandmother's day (and she did laundry with her girls, with a boiling tub over a fire in the yard!) knew the value of a good, savvy, intelligent, shrewd woman running the household. It could determine how many of your children survived, and whether they went hungry or not. We've been so prosperous for so long that we haven't needed that kind of thrift, skill, and ingenuity. But I think we'll rediscover it.