Notes on Mothering
Martha madness
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006While the baby was merrily throwing his food around his highchair tray and over the kitchen walls, I picked up last week’s Sunday Telegraph Magazine which promised revelations about ‘America’s domestic goddess on life after prison’.
I couldn’t really care less about Martha Stewart, indeed before she went to prison she barely registered on my radar, given that my domestic skills are somewhat lacking, and - even better - that I couldn’t care less about that fact. So I don’t really know whether she is loved or loathed by American women (loved, I suppose, given her empire). However, there is a limit to how much conversation you can have with a ten month old so I decided to read the article. Like the woman herself, most of it barely registered on my radar, busy as I was with catching bits of bread mid-air, but when I got to this passage I registered a slight intake of breath and felt my hackles rising. She says:
‘With all of us women, especially, going off to work, leaving our families in the care of others, leaving our houses to housekeepers’ care or nobody’s care, I knew that we had kind of unbalanced our lives very seriously. I was one of them. I was one of those homemakers who left and deprived some of our family of real care because I felt a need to go out and do something for myself…I started to bring back the idea of tradition, the idea of allowing us to feel good about decorating.’
I’m not sure if the paraphrasing has changed the context of this, but is she not implying that working mothers = bad? Depriving family of ‘real care‘? I don’t work, at least not in the traditional out-of-the-home sense, but if I did I would certainly take huge offence at this.
But what’s even worse is the implication that ‘real care’ = decorating. Obviously looking after my children while I am at home is not enough. I should be out with the paint brush and icing bag (possibly both at the same time) whipping up a domestic frenzy.
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Posted in Notes on Mothering