LONG LIVE THE DOMESTIC CHIEF EXECUTIVE

After having done quite a few surveys over the last few weeks and having to go through the same initial process on each one where it asks age, sex (yes please), job status and salary, I’ve begun to wonder about how the status of Housewife (or worse, Not Working for any other Reason and please note it never says Househusband; come on guys, I’m beginning to think that they think lower of you than they do of us) should be renamed/reassessed.

Let’s face it, the world around us is constantly being renamed; benefits get called different things with each reassessment and government (amongst other things), pubs and clubs get renamed to try and attract better clientele (even though that rarely if ever works), even countries and cities get renamed (look at St Petersburg verses Leningrad), so isn’t it about time that the status of Housewife gets an overhaul.

In the 40s, 50s being a housewife was something that most women aspired to; admittedly it may have been their only choice as married women working wasn’t looked upon as being appropriate. 

Then we had the women’s liberation movement and suddenly it was ok for women to work (and get equal pay); we begun having a choice.  We could go to university, become business women, run our own corporation, even become prime minister; go us. 

But nowadays we don’t appear to have a choice, we are expected to work. To be honest we kind of have to if we are to maintain the lifestyle that we are supposed to want; a mortgage, holiday abroad, fast car, nannies or child-minders (what happened to raising your own child?), etc, etc.  ‘Housewife’ has become a dirty word, even amongst a lot of women.  I cannot count the amount of times a women has asked me what I do and when I’ve replied ‘I’m a mum and housewife’ has answered with a disdainful look and a sarcastic ‘really? Don’t you want a career?’

Actually, I have a career you stuck up cow!  I have a bloody hard career!  I’m responsible for part of the next generation; I’m raising it with the entire moral, rights and wrongs and behavioural lessons to teach that are required to live and work within the big wide world out there.  I manage a household; the day to day running, the finances, the comings and the goings.  I organise birthdays, Christmas’, holidays and days out and I'm responsible for paying them.  I sort out all the utilities, including the telephoning if there is a problem.  I also have the added responsibility of home educating (admittedly my choice although, with my son’s Asperger’s, school just didn’t work), so I organise timetables, project work, liaise with outside educational organisations, mark and assess work and speak to medical professionals about his needs.

In addition I have a life!  Amazingly I have a social life, with other women (and occasionally men) who have also chosen to recognise that the raising of their children and the running of their household is a career.

I’m a nurse, a teacher, a referee, a liaison officer, a secretary, a manager, a financial consultant, an accountant, a gardener, a cook, a shoulder to cry on, a moral and social mentor; the list goes on.

So, after all of this, I’m suggesting that we are no longer called housewives or househusbands, we are domestic managers; actually we are chief executives of our own business with as many ‘staff’ as we have partners and children and pets.

We have chosen this career!  It is an important career!  We have not chosen to pass our responsibilities of parenting or household running to others; we are doing it ourselves.

Do not look down on us!  We are Domestic Chief Executives!!  Ner!  Ya boo sucks to you and your ‘careers’ (although if that is your choice, fair play to you).

Long live the Domestic Chief Executive! Any chance of a raise?

Cya