Gender equality means equal right to have access to work in the same way. The fact of assigning a job to a gender is not synonymous with freedom. On the other hand, if a person chooses on his or her own to work in a trade that is gender-specific, it does not mean that he or she is forced. On the contrary, it exercises its freedoms much more than those who accept jobs that do not suit them.
In short, don’t choose a profession based on your gender. Express your freedom to do what you want.
However, the status of housewives and househusbands is very precarious: they are dependent on their spouse. Can you really afford to stay at home when your partner has a precarious job? What happens if the spouse loses his or her job, falls ill or dies, or if there’s a divorce? There are no guarantees. Some may feel obliged to stay in a relationship that is bad, just to avoid being destitute.
And yet, education is much better when parents can devote themselves to their children’s upbringing. Homemakers have a real role to play. When both people in a couple work, they have to pay the people who do the housework: housekeepers, nannies, after-school care, ready meals and so on.
We need to revalue the work of housewives and men and give them guarantees, at the very least a basic universal income.
At present, couples have the choice between having both spouses overworking and seeing little of their children, or taking care of the house and children, risking plunging the family into poverty. In fact, single-parent families suffer more from poverty than other families.
Why Stay-at-Home Parents are Good for Older Children -Eric Bettinger – Graduate School of Stanford Business: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/eric-bettinger-why-stay-home-parents-are-good-older-children
Home with Mom: The effects of stayathome parents on children’s long-run educational outcomes – Discussion Papers – Statistics Norway Research : https://www.ssb.no/forskning/discussion-papers/_attachment/113165?_ts=13ea1e1e480
Towards a better future for women and work: Voices of women and men – ILO: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_546256.pdf
More Millennial Women Are Becoming Stay-At-Home Moms – Here’s Why – Sarah Landrum – Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2018/02/09/more-millennial-women-are-becoming-stay-at-home-moms-heres-why/
Stay-at-home fathers in Australia – Australian Government – Australian Institue of family studies: https://aifs.gov.au/publications/stay-home-fathers-australia/4-characteristics-stay-home-father-families-compared-other-familieswo
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One month, three months into our marriage, we return to college, where I teach Latin. Evening falls early, and we work together in the large hall. We are serious and fragile, the touching image of a young, modern intellectual couple. It could still move me if I let myself, if I didn’t want to see how we are slowly sinking into a rut. By cowardly consenting to it. Okay, I work on La Bruyère or Verlaine in the same room as him, two meters apart. The pressure cooker, a wedding gift that will prove very useful, you’ll see, hums on the stove. United, alike. The shrill ring of the timer, another gift. So much for the resemblance. One of us gets up, turns off the stove, waits for the crazy timer to slow down, opens the pot, serves the soup, and goes back to his books, wondering where he left off.
Me. The difference had begun.
With the dinner set. The university restaurant was closed for the summer. At lunchtime and in the evening, I was alone in front of the pots and pans. I didn’t know any more than he did about cooking a meal, just breaded cutlets, chocolate mousse, the extras, not the basics.
Neither of us had any experience as a kitchen assistant in our mother’s apron strings.
Why am I the only one of us two who immerses myself in a cookbook, peeling carrots and washing dishes as a reward for dinner, while he works on his constitutional law? In the name of what superiority? I saw my father in the kitchen again. He laughs, “No, but can you imagine me in an apron? “That’s your father, not mine!”
I feel humiliated. My parents, the aberration, the clown couple. No, I haven’t seen many men peeling potatoes. My role model isn’t the right one, and he makes me feel it. His is starting to rise on the horizon. Mr. Father lets his wife take care of everything in the house. He’s so eloquent and cultured. It would be comical, ridiculous, and that’s that. It’s up to you to learn, old lady. Moments of anxiety and discouragement in front of the canary yellow sideboard in the furnished apartment, eggs, pasta, endives, all the food is there, waiting to be handled and cooked. Gone were the decorative foods of my childhood, the cans arranged in rows, the multicolored jars, the surprise foods from the cheap Chinese restaurants of the past. Now, food was a chore.
I didn’t complain, scream, or coldly announce, “Today it’s your turn, I’m working at La Bruyère.” Just hints, snide remarks, the froth of ill-defined resentment. And nothing more. I don’t want to be a pain in the neck. Is it really important to ruin everything, the laughter, the harmony, over a bunch of potatoes to peel? Are these trifles really a matter of freedom? I began to doubt it. Worse, I thought I was more clumsy than the others, lazy on top of that, regretting the days when I used to stick my feet under the table, a lost intellectual incapable of cracking an egg properly. I had to change. At college in October, I tried to find out how married women did it, even those with children. Such modesty, such mystery. “Not easy,” they would say, but with an air of pride, as if it were glorious to be overwhelmed with things to do. The fulfillment of married women. No more time to wonder, to split hairs stupidly. That’s reality: a man who eats, not two yogurts and a cup of tea. It’s not about being a braque. So, day after day, burning peas in overly salty quiche, joyless, I tried to be the nurturer, without complaining. “You know, I’d rather eat at home than at the university restaurant, it’s much better!” I was sincere, and he thought he was making me very happy. I felt myself sinking.
English version, mashed potatoes, philosophy of history, hurry up, the supermarket is closing, studying in bits and pieces is fun but it’s gradually turning into a hobby. I struggled to finish a thesis on surrealism that I had chosen enthusiastically the year before. I didn’t have time to hand in a single assignment in the first semester, so I definitely wouldn’t get my teaching certificate—it was too difficult. My previous goals were lost in a strange fog. I had less willpower. For the first time, I’m indifferent to failure. I’m counting on him to succeed. He, on the other hand, is more determined than ever to finish his bachelor’s degree and political science in June, to complete his projects.
He’s pulling himself together, and I’m drifting away, numbing myself. Somewhere in the closet, there are some short stories he’s read. They’re not bad, you should keep going. Yes, he encourages me. He wants me to pass the teaching exam and “fulfill” myself like he has. In conversation, it’s always about equality. When we met in the Alps, we talked about Dostoevsky and the Algerian revolution. He’s not naive enough to believe that washing his socks makes me happy. He tells me over and over again that he hates women who are too domestic.
Intellectually, he supports my freedom, he makes plans for shopping, vacuuming, how could I complain? How could I hold it against him when he puts on his contrite, well-behaved child’s face, his finger on his lips, laughing, “my little one, I forgot to dry the dishes…” All conflicts shrink and get bogged down in the kindness of the early days of living together, in the childish words that strangely captivated us, “my little chick with little coconut,” and rock us tenderly, innocently.
“La place”, La femme gelée Annie Ernaux
Translated with Deepl
