{"id":3083,"date":"2019-02-13T15:06:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T19:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2019-02-13T15:06:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T19:06:12","slug":"wifehood-is-not-old-fashioned-heres-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/13\/wifehood-is-not-old-fashioned-heres-why-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWifehood\u201d Is Not Old-Fashioned \u2013 Here\u2019s Why It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"
By\u00a0Shani Orgad<\/strong>
\nGuest Writer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Shani<\/a>When the King of Sweden asks Joan, the protagonist of the newly-released film\u00a0The Wife<\/a>, what she does for a living, she replies, ironically, \u201cI am a king maker\u201d. This poignant scene takes place towards the film\u2019s end, as Joan (Glenn Close) takes part in the festive dinner celebrating her husband being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.<\/p>\n

The Wife, which is based on Meg Wolitzer\u2019s 2003\u00a0novel<\/a>\u00a0of the same name, centres on Joan, a bright young student at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the late 1950s. Joan\u2019s promising writing career ends early in deference to her husband \u2013 her former literature professor and distinguished author, Joe Castleman. As the film unfolds, we learn that beneath the veneer of the happy housewife \u2014 that quintessential image of the \u201cfeminine mystique<\/a>\u201d \u2014 is a self-effacing woman who begrudgingly buried her dream of becoming an author in order to facilitate her husband\u2019s literary success and eventual fame.<\/p>\n

Today, this notion of \u201cwifehood\u201d has largely vanished from public discourse. Motherhood has taken its place. The assumption is that women no longer give up their careers to support that of their partners \u2013 if they do, it\u2019s for the sake of their children.<\/p>\n

Indeed, discussions about and images of motherhood proliferate in films, news, television, women\u2019s magazines, advertising, celebrity, guidebooks, social media, and literary fiction. We live in a society which insists that women deserve equal opportunities to realise their talents in all spheres of life, while simultaneously inundating us with\u00a0messages<\/a>\u00a0about women\u2019s crucial roles as mothers and carers. Wifehood, however, seems to be a remnant of the past. This may be part of The Wife\u2019s charm.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Anthony Tran\/Unsplash.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Motherhood vs wifehood<\/strong><\/em>
\nBut recent\u00a0figures<\/a>\u00a0show that significant numbers of highly educated women are leaving paid employment. In this respect, they are not very different from the film\u2019s protagonist. However, the common\u00a0explanation<\/a>\u00a0as to why these women leave their careers is that they underestimate the difficulties of combining employment and parenting.\u00a0Lack of affordable childcare<\/a>\u00a0is another important factor that pushes mothers out of the workforce, although it affects poorer and less educated mothers far more than highly educated ones.<\/p>\n

Yet the picture is more complex than this. In\u00a0my new book<\/a>, for which I interviewed a range of professional women who quit their jobs after having children, I found that the decision to leave the workforce and become stay-at-home mothers was a decision they made as much as wives as mothers.<\/p>\n

The decision was as much about facilitating their husbands\u2019 continued career advancement as it was about their desire to spend more time with their children. To be sure, the demands and expectations of motherhood had a significant impact on these women\u2019s decision to step off the treadmill, as did the toxic working hours and conditions of both their and their husbands\u2019 workplaces, which were utterly incompatible with family life.<\/p>\n

But behind the women\u2019s complex stories of motherhood and work, there lies another story. These former lawyers, accountants, teachers, artists, designers, academics, social workers and managers rarely spoke directly about it, but their stories revealed how the choices they have made and their everyday lives have been profoundly influenced by their roles as wives.<\/p>\n

Tess, formerly a senior news producer, quit her successful career when her children were young. She felt needed at home, she told me, and her workplace gave her a generous redundancy package. \u201cBut there was another factor,\u201d she admitted more than half way through our interview. Her husband\u2019s career as a lawyer was about to take off and although at the time she earned substantially more than he did, she decided to leave her job.<\/p>\n

This story is far from anomalous. Tanya, a former senior partner in a law firm, quit her career to enable the smooth running of her family, and crucially, she admits, of her husband\u2019s career. Rachel, a mother of three and a former senior accountant, whose husband is a partner in an accountancy firm, confided that her husband strongly encouraged her to leave her job to look after the children full-time so \u201che doesn\u2019t have to worry about it\u201d. And when I asked former HR Manager Anne what she found most satisfying in her life, the first thing she said was cooking her husband the food he loves.<\/p>\n

Retro housewives?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Seth Hays\/Unsplash.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

These women may sound like the reincarnation of the \u201ccaptive wife\u201d Hannah Gavron described in her book about homebound mothers in 1960s Britain. They may appear to be \u201cretro housewives<\/a>\u201d or the \u201cnew traditionalist\u201d \u2013 the professional woman who unambivalently throws over her career for family and homemaking. Yet they adamantly reject the label of \u201cold-fashioned\u201d or \u201ctraditional\u201d wives, which they see as belonging in their mothers\u2019 generation (and Joan Castleman\u2019s), not theirs. They detest domesticity, keep their performance of household chores to the bare minimum, and see themselves as independent.<\/p>\n

However, often indirectly, with pain and pause, many of them admitted that they have unwittingly deferred their identities to their husbands\u2019. When the two-earner household could not cope with the pressures of both partners combining paid work and parenting, it was the woman who gave up her job.<\/p>\n

Although these women are a minority, both socio-economically and in terms of their employment path, their stories about the central role of wifehood are crucial for understanding how gender inequality, both in relation to work and to family life, endures.\u00a0Today\u2019s wife<\/a>\u00a0may no longer be reliant on her husband\u2019s status or money, nor does she labour in the kitchen. And, yet, the role of wife continues to shape, if subtly, the pursuit of her desires. The popularity of the acronym DH (for Dear Husband) in numerous threads on the popular parenting website Mumsnet teaches us that so many of the dilemmas, tensions, disappointments, as well as pleasures of motherhood, are inseparable from women\u2019s identities as wives.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, a\u00a0YouGov survey<\/a>\u00a0of people in 24 countries found that Britain was the only country where more women than men agreed with the statement that \u201ca wife\u2019s first role is to look after her husband\u201d. While the percentage of both female and male respondents agreeing with this statement was relatively low, mine\u00a0and other studies<\/a>, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest that wifehood is far from pass\u00e9.<\/p>\n

In the wake of renewed discussions about women\u2019s inequality in the workplace, it seems ever more crucial to understand how our desires continue to be shaped by the imperatives of male dominance, as women, mothers and as wives.\"The<\/p>\n

Shani Orgad\u00a0<\/a>is an\u00a0Associate Professor in Media and Communications\u00a0at the\u00a0London School of Economics and Political Science<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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