Me a Housewife?!!

This past spring I turned 30. Something about major milestones tends to inspire reflection. So here I am.

I am a housewife. Oh we don't tend to call it that anymore. In this age of feminism or post-feminism, if you buy that, the title of "housewife" is certainly not something to be looked up to. But I am on a quest to define myself and so I think it is best to look at all the various definitions I could use and housewife is one of them. For three and a half years I have stayed at home in order to care for my children, now ages 1 and 3. I have one boy and one girl which in some circles would be called the perfect family. My husband is a brilliant up and coming professor. Many people would say we have just about everything.

I didn't exactly plan on staying home. In college I considered myself a feminist (still do actually) and had plans to become a journalist, then a politician, and finally a social worker. I ended up with a Master's in Social Work and worked in the public school system for three years before I quit to stay at home. I wanted to stay at home because I wanted to do what was best for my kids. And I also hated my job. I didn't just dislike my job. I hated it. I counted the days until I was done with it, walked out the door and never looked back. I really have no interest in returning to work at this time. Many of my friends who stayed at home when their first child was born are now returning to work. I do not want to be a social worker anymore. I'm not quite sure who I want to be I guess. Once upon a time I almost went into the ministry but I closed the door on that a long time ago and am unwilling to revisit it at this time. So for now I am very much a housewife.

People who have a profession have a term that, whether they like it or not, tends to deinfe who they are, at least most of the time because let's face it, we spend most of our lives at our jobs. My mom is a nurse and that not only defines her life but just from saying that you probably have a general idea of what she does all day. My husband is lucky because he was obvisouly born to be a teacher. Being a professor, for him, is not just the job he does during the day, it's what he IS at his core. It's what he's called to do. And this then is the gold standard, at least for me. My forner pastor used to say you need to find that place where your deep happiness and the world's deep need come together. I have yet to find that place.

"Housewife" is such a stange term. It almost sounds as if I'm the house's wife. Certainly I have experienced that. When you stay at home all day you start to feel as if you're married to the house. It is your homebase and your prison. It is where you have everything you love and yet you can never get away from anything. When you have small children even the bathroom is a high traffic area. You are never alone. You are never off duty. You never get any vacation. The house becomes your husband. It demands things of you, mocks you when it's a mess, and makes you feel good when it looks good. You can start to easily think of it as your whole world.

And what about your husband? Does he see you as a "housewife" too? Are you the wife of his house? Now it gets tricky. If you're the wife of his house he can leave you there, in your proper place, and go off to work. But who is his wife at work then? Does his secretary or assistant become his "workwife"? If she does (and of course I'm assuming here that she's a she but in many cases this is true so cut me some slack) does that start to blend the lines there? Does he start counting on his "workwife" like he counts on his "housewife"?

So we leave that term "housewife" behind because who really wants to be married to a house. We pick up the term Stay at Home Mom (SAHM). That is the term I use the most when I describe myself. Except that too is far from accurate. It seems to say that I stay home alot. Only I don't. I in fact hate staying at home all day. I start to get stir crazy. I'm more of a on the run mom, which is to say, I'm like every mom. Not much there that actually goes to define who I am or where my life is going. Moms who work outside of the home are often called "working moms" which seems to imply that those of us who stay home don't actually work. I don't know of too many people who, if they stayed home all day with two children, would agree with that. I've heard the saying that all moms are working moms, which though true, doesn't tell me a whole lot about anything.

Today I was playing with the idea of "Professional Mom" but I'm not sure if that comes close to what I do. And there's the bigger problem that no one would understand it anyway. Part of the beauty of language is that, for the most part, we have a shared understanding of words. Is it worth it for me to use a term no one else will understand?

So I am left with being a housewife and seeking to define and redefine that all while seeing to the crying child clinging to my leg. This is going to be quite a ride.