The first time I heard someone use the term “homemaker” in real life, I was at a clothing swap in my friend’s backyard. It just so happened that many people at the gathering knew me for my work leading an education nonprofit (called CREA) that is no longer in business. It also just so happened that I was still in the habit of over explaining my decision to stop working to strangers, which I’ve written about here.
Anyway, as I was mingling at the swap, someone asked me “are you still doing CREA?” and instead of saying the simple truth, “No, I’m not working right now.” I launched into the whollllle story: “Well, not at the moment. I was, but…the pandemic, and babies, and changing relationship to work, and my husband’s work schedule, and my priorities right now, and maybe I’ll pick up something part time…and, and, and.” The recipient of my rant nodded politely and I heard myself going on and on, and the sun seemed to be beating down directly on me, and suddenly I regretted wearing a black long-sleeve blouse. I wrapped up the babbling with a lighthearted “sorry to tell you my whole life story, ha! I stay home with my girls now. I’m adjusting.” And she said, with her 9-month propped up on her lap,
“That’s what they call an ego-death.”
I nodded, out of words to say. That sounded right to me.
Then I asked, “how are things for you? The first year can be hard.”
She said she loved it! And I felt a little embarrassed for assuming it had been hard. She told me she’d pulled back from career in the years leading up to having her daughter. She found great joy and value in staying home. She loved to do projects in her kitchen. “I love the work of homemaking,” she said. “I know it’s a little weird to say…homemaking.”
It was a little weird, I thought. Outdated, traditional, hinting at conservatism, at odds with her new age talk of ego deaths just a few utterances earlier. At odds with her cool vintage jeans and screen-printed tote. But I liked her. I liked the ease and assuredness she seemed to possess about being a “homemaker,” whatever that was. As we talked, she pointed to other women milling about the yard. “Kathy stays home, too” “Sid stays home with her son,” she told me as if to boost my obviously precarious confidence.
A few weeks later I found myself in her kitchen which was filled with mason jars and sourdough starter and wicker baskets and cool-toned linen aprons. A wooden broom with cedar bristles leaned next to the front door, not like my plastic Walmart broom, a jarring and synthetic royal blue.
I was inspired by the homemade feeling of her home, by the sprouted beans she fed her baby for lunch and the Kombucha brewing on top of her fridge. She showed me the grass seed she’d bought in bulk and seemed to know which variety would thrive in each season. If this was what she meant when she said homemaking, I guess I thought it was pretty cool. It seemed modern even. If I saw her at coffee shop I’d guess she was a graphic designer or the founder of a sustainable fashion brand. But, the term homemaker, and even this hip version of it, made me bristle in the way it harkened to an era in which women where excluded from the public sphere, the very circumstances that sparked second wave feminism in the 60s.
In the weeks following I became the proud owner of sourdough starter, which I was gifted by a new friend who I’d also met at the swap. I was intimidated. I had tried the sourdough thing at the beginning of the pandemic, but I’d just had Riley and could barely feed myself between the breastfeeding- supplementing- pumping rotation which left me with 30 minutes between repeating the whole cycle again. I remember reading one of those beautifully curated recipe blog posts with the “skip to recipe” buttons at the top, and feeling like it was a college chemistry text book.
But things are different now. “I can do this!” I thought. Something had shifted in my relationship to motherhood in the months since I’d stopped working. I found myself saying “I’m pouring into motherhood right now,” which looked like taking my kids to playgroups, libraries, classes about bugs hosted by public parks. I checked out parenting books from the library. I had a new friend who used the word “homemaker,” apparently. I scheduled playdates like I used to schedule meetings: color-coded on my calendar. I felt pride in the end-of-day-exhaustion of full-time parenting like I did when I worked long hours at the office. And if mom-ing was my job now, I guess baking sourdough fit the description.
Along with the sourdough, my new friend sent me a bunch of links to YouTube videos about sourdough: how to feed the starter, easy no-kneed recipes, what to do with “discard” (the sourdough jargon for leftovers). And as one does with YouTube, I binged the videos which led to a bunch of other videos by the same creator. What I discovered was that she too had a kitchen full of jars and wicker baskets. She had that same linen apron. And as it turned out, she’d sewn it herself! She had seven children who never watched TV, and whom she homeschooled between making fresh bread and preserving vegetables from her garden. And she also appeared to be very passionate about reclaiming the work of homemaking.
And, yes, as I dug deeper it became clear that this reclamation of homemaking was wrapped up in religion. Phrases like “the ministry of homemaking” “God’s original design for motherhood” “Doing the lords work” popped up…casually! Like so so casually! There I was, engrossed in a video about sourdough, and God had entered the chat. And to be clear, I believe in God. I pray sometimes and I like going to synagogue, and I think religion can add depth and meaning to our lives. I have endless respect and admiration for my many friends who have built impactful and beautiful lives informed by their relationship with God and Christianity. But that is not me. And yet, I couldn’t stop watching.
Of course, religion can, has, and is presently wielded for political power, to oppress, and the harm.
But that’s not what this piece is about.
I was intrigued. And also confused by my intrigue. I am a Jewish city girl, lol. My mom didn’t DIY anything! We baked cookies from a box and we burned them more often than not. We played outside, but we also watched a lot of Cartoon Network. Me and my friends were ambitious and intellectual and wanted to live in big bustling cities. We didn’t think about kids or marriage until well into our twenties and early thirties. It has been difficult for me to let go of life before kids because - even though I wanted them - I never dreamed about my life with them. Motherhood is the best thing that’s happened to me, but I couldn’t have predicted that it would become the central thing. And now it is. And I like it…mostly. And these women in their linen aprons, making fresh bread, calling homemaking their vocation…it touched on something I’d been grappling with. They spoke so frankly and unapologetically to the value of mothering. They took such pride in the daily tasks of caring for their children and their homes (they insist on saying “home” not “house,” I learned). They made laundry and dishes and keeping a garden sound like a divine task in the same way the buddhist poets and slow living philosophers and the spiritual podcasters and writers and artists that love Julia Cameron do. And they didn’t doubt for a second that their work mattered. And this spoke to the wavering part of me, the part that over explained when asked “Are you still doing CREA” at the clothing swap. The part that has resisted and resisted and resisted the facts of my life right now, that I want to be doing this. That I love it most days and some days I don’t. That I am so lucky to have the option and I am grateful and also sometimes I’m too tired to be grateful.
And that it matters. And to these women - whom I found myself stalking and binging and weirdly resonating with for a bizarre two week stint - it mattered not just to them and their family but to their God and their church and the culture they are immersed in. And for me, it matters because it matters.
And I just want to say, all this is true for the working parents (which I plan to be one day again) too: mothers, fathers, caretakers of any kind. It all matters. In all its ever-changing configurations.
The other day I was having one of those completely defeated days. Exhausted. Out of patience. Wanting an out. I texted my friend something along the lines of “I am tired and this is too hard!” And then we started talking about having more kids and she said she wanted another but she worried that another would actually break her. And I said “I think every child beaks you and then you reconfigure into a new shape.”
And that feels true. I am a new shape.
In Jenny Odell’s book, which I’ve written about before, she examined how we can shift our perspective, or attune our attention, to dissolve the limits that the “filter bubble” (aka: social media) has placed on how we view the people around us. She argues for “a view of self and of identity that is the opposite of the personal brand: and unstable, shapeshifting thing determined by interactions with others and with different kinds of places.” And maybe that’s at the root of a Jewish city-girl obsessed with Christian homemaking YouTube. And at the root of “ego death” and “homemaker” uttered in the same breath. And living all our contradictions, and rejecting continuity, and being messy, nonsensical, never one thing or another, impossible to categorize or reduce to a Jewish city girl or Christian homemaker to begin with.
With love,
Stephanie
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Korean SAHM homemaking videos...have been so good for the soul 🤍
Eg.... https://youtube.com/@Honeyjubu
Ohhhh I loved reading this. And am pretty sure I’m about to lose an hour or 2 down the ‘homemaking’ rabbit hole. I notice I hide behind “running a business” with my husband, when, in reality, I’m a stay at home mum who works one day a week on the business. I also love it and although it’s hard, when I’m at the beach with my son on a random Tuesday I find myself SO grateful to have this time.
Loved this piece, thanks for sharing