My goal is to be a working housewife and I am proud of it.
— Why is being a housewife perceived as a devalued accomplishment? Without housewives, who will work on making our societies’ homes a great place for building a strong foundation that eventually spreads out into the community?
Maybe I am a part of the problem because I don’t believe women should be paid to stay home to take care of their kids and create a stable home. Growing up with two different sets of parents, one from the Philippines and another set from Saudi Arabia, I have two great mothers that have inspired me to become a mother who is able to take care of her children and still have a career. There is nothing wrong in achieving both. I would not ask for anything else because I see it as a great opportunity to become an independent, powerful woman who can do it all. Growing up in the Philippines, I’ve noticed that both men and women were able to cook. Men actually love cooking for their girlfriends or their wives. Although men who work are seen as providers, they made it their responsibility to give the money they earned to their wives because wives were seen as the providers at home. Being a housewife doesn’t only mean to stay home and take care of your children. It means taking care of the bills, making sure the house is safe for everyone to live in, and most importantly, making sure that the foundation being structured at home is something that can be contributed in our community, positively. I find these responsibilities something that I must accomplish, not only as a mother but as a person who wants to take control of her own life — a life that includes family. In my future, I see my husband and my kids supporting me for all these accomplishments, as I also provide dental care for unpaid organizations once I become a Dentist. There are many unpaid organizations in the world that helps people in need, which is the main reason I do not believe mothers should be paid for caring for their own family. It is our job, not as a woman, but as a human being to care for their children and their community.
Furthermore, being a housewife should not stop any of us women from achieving our careers. I have seen both my mothers do it and they come from different cultures. When I lived in the Philippines for 15 years, I watched my Filipino mom raise her children as our father worked abroad and sent her 95, if not 100 percent of what he earned so that she can create the best home for their children in order for our family to have a successful future. Not only did she manage our homes, but she also managed to have small businesses to earn more from what our father had given her. I believe this housewife and husband situation my Filipino parents had is a great example of the model Angela Davis talks about in “Women, Race and Class.”
— “Frederick Engels argued in his classic work on the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,[3] sexual inequality as we know it today did not exist before the advent of private property. During early eras of human history the sexual division of labour within the system of economic production was complementary as opposed to hierarchical. In societies where men may have been responsible for hunting wild animals and women, in turn, for gathering wild vegetables and fruits, both sexes performed economic tasks that were equally essential to their community’s survival. Because the community, during those eras, was essentially an extended family, women’s central role in domestic affairs meant that they were accordingly valued and respected members of the community.”
This means that Women’s responsibilities held as great importance as men’s because their jobs in their society were seen as complements of one another — which means one cannot work without the other. This is still true in some of today’s society, such as the Philippines for example. Without housewives, our homes will be abandoned and there will be instability in a society when homes are not structured with a strong foundation. With that said, the millennial generation has gone through such a great improvement being more open in understanding races, gender, religion and other factors in a society, and one step further should not be a problem. Let us all appreciate the women in our lives that have devoted their lives in making sure our homes are taken care of, just as we have to thank our fathers for helping our mothers make our families function in a way that they become successful.
