Then and Now, Women’s Work Remains Same

My recent review of the Ladies’ Home Journal for September, 1920, has brought mixed reactions from both men and women.

I concluded from the magazine that housewives in the 1920s were prisoners of housework and drudgery, and were besieged (by the Journal and other women’s magazines) to buy such labor-saving machines as vacuum cleaners and washers and wringers so they could dress up and get out into the world.

In a recent column Ann Landers said she had received five tubs of mail on housework, and found that 70% of the women claimed “they were doing 90% of the work around the house, plus the shopping, driving the kids around and the like, even though they also work outside the home.”

There is no need for me to add to those statistics, except that, in response to my Journal column, my readers verify that things aren’t much better today.

Juanita Matassa of Santa Ana claims that in the 1920s advertisers “invented” problems that their products would allegedly solve, and they are doing the same thing today except that they have invented new problems, such as underarm odor and tattle-tale gray.

Mrs. Matassa denied that her mother was a drudge. “She was more free to do what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it and to go where she wanted to go than is a person who is suffering the slavery of an outside career.”

Hudson Fields of El Toro recalls the horrors of wash day in the ‘20s and ‘30s: “Each Monday the washing machine and surrounding washtubs on the back porch were filled with buckets of hot water from atop the kitchen stove. After the clothes were surged about in the steaming wash water, they were fished out with a stick and pushed into a wringer. The soapy water was squeezed back into the washing machine by two meshed-gear rubber rollers that were most often hand-cranked. The clothes dropped into a galvanized tub of hot rinse water, and again were passed through the repositioned wringer into the laundry basket to be lugged to the outside clothesline to be hung to dry. In freezing weather the sheets, shirts and long-handled underwear came off the line stiff and board-like. Then came the ironing. . . .”

I mentioned my mother’s artistic yearnings, and wondered what she’d be doing today if she were 30. Anita Larson answers: “She would be vacuuming. She would be washing clothes. She would be cooking meals. She would be wondering wistfully about her ‘yes, no’ conversations with her husband. She would be using all that spare time, which her vacuum, washer and canned foods provided to develop her entrepreneurship into an income-producing career.”

Larson argues that the only equity men have helped women to achieve is the equal right to an earlier grave. “Now we can have an equal number of widows and widowers. Equity has been attained.”

“It may be we’ve exchanged one prison for another,” says Betty-Jean Darst of Fullerton. “Take a look at today’s women’s magazines. We’re expected to be radiantly beautiful, young-looking and sexy. Article after article tells us how to win and keep a man. Moreover, we’re expected to have a ‘career’ too. Frankly, the 1920s may not have been a high spot for women, but I wouldn’t mind ‘doing dishes for somebody’s kisses.’ ”

Lynne Stransky says she was a homemaker for 20 years, but her marriage did not survive. She went to work and raised her children, then remarried and is a homemaker again.

“Without a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner I wouldn’t have been able to get as much sleep or go dancing on Saturday night; but floors don’t mop themselves and we didn’t have a dishwasher.”

Mrs. Stransky says she taught her children to mow lawns, vacuum rugs, dust furniture, make their beds, help with the dishes, put their dirty clothes in a hamper and keep their rooms clean, besides keeping the pool in chemical balance. (Sounds like boot camp.)

“What I’m saying, Jack, is that no one mentions the glory of a clean house from the viewpoint that the caretaker has a healthy psyche!. . . . The American home is not a prison; it is a haven for soul-making!”

I wouldn’t say that any of my correspondents agreed that homemaking is a glorious, soul-making experience. But I suppose many women do find some satisfaction in it.

My wife probably does 90% of the housework, except that once a week we have a housecleaner; she takes the wash to the laundry; she cooks, she feeds the cats and the dog; she usually brings in the mail; she pumps gas; she does the gardening; she does the ironing because, she says, she likes to iron. Meanwhile she has a full-time administrative job.

But I am not entirely idle; I put my dirty clothes in the hamper; I change light bulbs; I call the repairmen when anything breaks down; I supervise the pool cleaner; I buy the wine and pour it; and I turn television on and off.

Altogether, it’s rather soul-making.