Home Extras

I keep thinking we’ve exhausted the subject of women’s roles and the decision of a local seminary to add a major in homemaking. But then I keep getting stuff like this:

“What is so disappointing to me in the Southwestern Domesticity Revival is what used to irk me so badly about the [student wives’] events at [another evangelical seminary]. Here we had these amazing professors, resources, etc., to teach us, but instead we planned our retreats to watch chick flicks and make doilies—neither of which I am against, but that's not what seems of value to me in that situation. It’s a stewardship issue. If I had three years where I was supporting my husband in seminary, what would I really want to get out of the time, to soak in, to get that I couldn't get anywhere else? It ain't cooking, that's for sure… When will women (and men, too) be valued for /all /of the gifts they can bring to the offering table, not just the ones 'we' have decided are most appropriate and valuable?”

And this…

“My soapbox for fifty-five years has been the promotion of homemaking, to the extent that I refused to be called a ‘housewife.’ It was worrisome to me that the responses were so strongly her vs. him.

“First, community colleges/high schools in [my part of the country] no longer provide a home economics major or even classes. It isn't happening. So don't pass this off to someone else.

“Second, a pastor is one of the most important of community figures. He is called on all hours of the day and night. A pastor's wife provides needed balance in the home, is a very important figure in the church body, and is usually pressed to do more than housework! (e.g., Bible studies, the women's organizations, music, be in the kitchen at church, church secretary when the church cannot afford one, etc.). A pastor's home is often more a public building than private. Though these aspects were not given as the reason behind offering the major, they are real-life. It seems reasonable that a major in Home Economics (is more than cooking and sewing; it is home management) might be helpful to the wife of a seminary student or a young woman hoping to find her husband there.

“Finally, given the crisis in the home of today I am interested in what today's woman, even today's Christian woman, has to suggest as possible solutions. How do we help woman today become the nurturers they need to be?"

Lots to consider, eh?

I ponder these as I read for my U. S. Women’s/Gender History class in a required text: Sex, Gender and Culture in Old California. It says:

“Washing for three adults and three children—at least two of whom were still in diapers—would have been downright harrowing. To do the job right, the women would have collected rainwater when it was available. Then they boiled it and shaved cakes of soap into it. Clothes sorted into whites, colored, work clothes, and rags were scrubbed on a board, rinsed, and hung out to dry. Whites required starching with a flour preparation and blueing” [118].

After reading this, I threw a load of clothes in the washing machine, tossed dinner in the crockpot, started the dishwasher and the breadmaker, and ran off to teach a class.