I never thought
I’d say this, but the older I get, the more I want to be a housewife when I grow up (and maybe work part time.)
Eventually I would like to have a family and spend my time cooking, sewing my own clothes, starting a garden and making my own natural lotions, soaps and conditioners.
Ten years ago, I was sure that anyone who chose to embrace these things was anti-feminist in a way. But I have come to enjoy the simple pleasures in life so much more than the hustle of busting your butt at 60 hours a week for someone else’s dream. And what are we working for anyway? To have enough money to buy things we don’t need, to pay rent for an apartment we are not able to enjoy because we are working so much, to have enough money for a babysitter so we are free to clock in? Thanks, but no thanks.
My coworker just told me about a book coming out called Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From A Consumer Culture. I completely identify with that title and the author’s mission (so on point…see below). I will most definitely be preordering a copy. Thoughts?
Mother Nature has shown her hand. Our planet is on the verge of climatic catastrophe; the fossil fuel that drives our industrialized economies is running out; animal and plant species are facing extinction; social injustices are rampant. At long last, Americans have grown conversant in the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crisis: stop driving our cars; consume less; increase our self-reliance; buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.
What we have been afraid to articulate, however, is that at its core, the great work we face requires sweeping out our hearths and lighting the home fires.
Radical Homemakers is a book that looks at men and women across the United States who have opted to focus their lives on home and hearth as a political and ecological act; who have chosen to center their lives around family and community not only for personal fulfillment, but as a way to bring about cultural change. It explores what domesticity can look like in an era that has benefited from feminism; where domination and oppression are cast aside, where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.
Radical Homemakers from across the country speak out about their personal empowerment to bring about true change, find genuine happiness, to cast aside the pressures of a consumer culture, and live in a world where money loses much of its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity.
Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture will be published by Left to Write Press and distributed by Chelsea Green. It is due out in the Spring of 2010. To receive notification of its release, please click here and leave your name, address and email.
Shannon Hayes, Ph.D. is the host of grassfedcooking.com, and the author of The Farmer and the Grill and The Grassfed Gourmet. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.