{"id":22829,"date":"2015-09-10T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T07:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=22829"},"modified":"2015-09-10T00:01:42","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T07:01:42","slug":"the-politics-of-housework-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/the-politics-of-housework-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Housework, Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"politics<\/a>
Jon does all the cooking at our house. This was a special salmon dinner for my birthday. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, August 16, 1987<\/em><\/p>\n

Note: This story is one of the Oakland Tribune columns that might well end up in the book I’m putting together. It’s a memoir in essays — Erma Bombeck and Betty Friedan meet for coffee.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clean.<\/p>\n

One can be too preoccupied with clean.<\/p>\n

Or so I thought until a few weeks ago when I learned that I was allergic to the dustballs I had so blithely allowed to collect behind the bookcase and under the washing machine.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A clean, absolutely dust-free house held little cachet for us denizens of the hip ’60s. Clean suggested clean-cut, up-tight, polyester, color-coordinated, unnatural, lifeless.<\/p>\n

Then, as the ’60s became the ’70s, feminists dealt a further blow to clean. They exposed the politics of housework for what it was — and excused womankind forever from the bondage of clean.<\/p>\n

Clean was something women, not men, obsessed on, we told ourselves.<\/p>\n

Getting the household chores done, we reasoned, was a little like negotiating the price of car. Whoever cares the most, gives in the most.<\/p>\n

A woman is offended by the globs of grease on the wall behind the stove. Her man is watching the MacNeil\/Lehrer NewsHour. He does not see the grease.<\/p>\n

She wipes up the grease.<\/p>\n

Men Don’t Care About Housework — And Neither Should We<\/h5>\n

Men, we found, didn’t care about clean. If they did, they would know where the Ty-D-bol is kept.<\/p>\n

They would know the difference between Joy and Cheer. They would vacuum the draperies during halftime.<\/p>\n

And that was how we females got stuck with all the housework. We cared. We didn’t know why, but we cared.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, and here is where our reasoning got a little shaky, if men did not consider clean an<\/p>\n

\"Men<\/a>
Jon was happy to do his share of the childcare when the kids were little. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

important world issue — it was ipso facto<\/em> not an important issue.<\/p>\n

The secret to winning the housekeeping war, therefore, was not to care.<\/p>\n

Go ahead, we told ourselves, be free. Liberate yourselves from the oppression of dust.<\/p>\n

Let it collect behind the stereo and on top of the refrigerator. Let it scoot across the bedroom floor and settle in the flokati rug.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Jon still\u00a0does a lot of the guy\u00a0tasks around the house, like the sticky job of cutting down the trunk of our\u00a0Christmas tree . . .<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Clean doesn’t matter. We have bigger things to think about — developing our relationships, our careers, our abdominals and pectorals.<\/p>\n

More Quality Time, Less Drone Time<\/h5>\n

What we need is less drone time behind the mop and more quality time with children, husbands, mentors and ourselves.<\/p>\n

And now that we have everything we said we wanted back in the ’60s — job, family, house — there is scarcely time in our busy lives to keep the refrigerator stocked, let alone defrosted.<\/p>\n

Now, good housekeeping is a matter of carefully ordered priorities.<\/p>\n

The cleanliness of little Jessica’s diaper area matters.<\/p>\n

The cat fur accumulating on the sofa does not.<\/p>\n

Getting rid of Caleb’s head lice so that he can go back to child care tomorrow matters.<\/p>\n

The raisins smashed under the carseat cushions do not.<\/p>\n

Clean is a concept for the mothers-in-law and maiden aunts of yesteryear. They wiped a finger across the fireplace mantle, found dust and wrinkled their noses.<\/p>\n

The modern, liberated woman does not turn up her nose at another woman’s less-than-perfect housekeeping.<\/p>\n

She rejoices that she is not the only woman in the carpool who has systematically lowered her housekeeping standards.<\/p>\n

For her, cleanliness is no longer next to godliness. It is not even right up there next to good sex and fresh artichokes.<\/p>\n

Like handknit socks, cleanliness is expendable.<\/p>\n

Enter\u00a0Dermatophagoides Farinae<\/h5>\n

Or at least I thought it was expendable until a few weeks ago, when I first made the acquaintance of one Dermatophagoides farinae.<\/p>\n

Things have changed since I found out about\u00a0Dermatophagoides farinae.<\/p>\n

Those dustballs, I learned, the ones I had so carefully allowed to collect under my marital bed as<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
. . . and doing most of the heavy lifting and pushing. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

a symbol of my liberation from clean — those dustballs are alive.<\/p>\n

And they are killing me.<\/p>\n

Revising the Politics of Housework<\/h5>\n

After nearly a year of putting up with headaches and chronic sinusitis, I made an appointment last month for allergy testing.<\/p>\n

“That one is dust mites,” the allergist said, pointing to the puffy spot on my arm.<\/p>\n

“Dust mites?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,\u00a0Dermatophagoides farinae. They are microscopic critters that live in household dust. Every house has them. Some people are senstive to their droppings. and it looks like you’re one of them.”<\/p>\n

“They live in dust?”<\/p>\n

“Yes. Try cleaning your house, especially the bedroom. It should help.”<\/p>\n

I declared war on the dust mite. I cleaned the house. I cleaned under the bed.<\/p>\n

The dust flew. My eyes itched. My sinuses throbbed. My head and chest ached.<\/p>\n

My nose wrinkled and turned up.<\/p>\n

I cared.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 1987 The Oakland Tribune. Reprinted by permission.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Jon cooks. I wash the dishes.\u00a0Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m pretty sure that, as I was writing this\u00a0column for the Oakland Tribune back in 1987, I was also wishing I could get my hands on a copy of<\/a> “The Politics of Housework”<\/span> by Pat Mainardi<\/a> of Redstockings. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It was a seminal\u00a0piece of Women’s Liberation Movement writing that I came across around 1970 in\u00a0my early feminist days in San Francisco. Mainardi’s tract\u00a0caused the scales to fall from my eyes where housework was concerned.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In 1987, when I wrote this column for the Trib, newspaper deadlines were\u00a0tight; there was no time for a trip to the public library to hunt down a copy of “The Politics of Housework” — if the library even had\u00a0a copy of this handout. Today, thanks to the Internet, I can link you to the original document. It had a profound effect on me. Enjoy!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

More stories about Jon at “Confessions of a So-So Wife”<\/a>\u00a0and “Rejected Again — Telephoning Those Teenaged Babysitters.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Men<\/a><\/p>\n

As a feminist conversant with\u00a0the politics of housework, I tried not to\u00a0be too preoccupied with clean. Then I learned I was allergic to the dustballs under my marital bed. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,1535,1536,148,1032,29,689,55,81,82,1537,1538],"class_list":["post-22829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-dont-miss","tag-dust-mites","tag-dustballs","tag-feminism","tag-housework","tag-jon","tag-marriage","tag-family-stories","tag-oakland-tribune","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-the-politics-of-housework","tag-womens-liberation-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}