The home: its work and influence

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There are degrees of speed, skill, intelligence, and purchasing power, of course; but this is a modest average; two hours for breakfast, three for dinner, one for supper. The preparation of food as a household industry takes up half the working time of half the population of the world. This utterly undeveloped industry, inadequate and exhausting, takes nearly a quarter of a twelve-hour day of the world's working force.

Cooking and sewing are inimical; the sewing of the housewife is quite generally pushed over into the evening as well as afternoon, thus lengthening her day considerably. Nursing, as applied to the sick, must come in when it happens, other things giving way at that time. Cleaning is continuous. Cooking, of course, makes cleaning; the two main elements of dirt in the household being grease and ashes; another, and omnipresent one, dust. Then, there are the children to clean, and the clothes to clean—this latter so considerable an item as to take two days of extra labour—during which, of course, other departments must be less attended.

We have the regular daily labour of serving meals and "clearing up," we have the regular daily labour of keeping the home in order; then we have the washing day, ironing day, baking day, and sweeping day. Some make a special mending day also. This division, best observed by the most competent, is a heroic monument to the undying efforts of the human worker to specialise. But we have left out one, and the most important one, of our home industries—the care of children.

Where is Children's Day?

The children are there every day, of course. Yes, but which hour of the day? With six for food, with—spreading out the washing and ironing over the week—two for laundry, with—spreading the sweeping day and adding the daily dusting and setting to rights—two for cleaning; and another two for sewing—after these twelve hours of necessary labour are accounted for, what time remains for the children?

The initial purpose of the home is the care of children. The initial purpose of motherhood is the care of children. How are the duties of the mother compatible with the duties of the housewife? How can child-culture, as a branch of human progress, rise to any degree of proficiency in this swarming heap of rudimentary trades?

Nothing is asked—here—as to how the housewife, doing all these things together her life long, can herself find time for culture and development; or how can she catch any glimmer of civic duty or public service beyond this towering pile of domestic duty and household service. The particular point herein advanced is that the conditions of home industry as such forever limit the growth of the industry so practised; forever limit the growth of the persons so practising them; and also tend to limit the growth of the society which is content to leave any of its essential functions in this distorted state.

Our efforts to "lift the standard of household industry" ignore the laws of industry. We seek by talking and writing, by poetising and sermonising, and playing on every tender sentiment and devout aspiration, to convince the housewife that there is something particularly exalted and beautiful, as well as useful, in her occupation. This shows our deep-rooted error of sex-distinction in industry. We consider the work of the woman in the house as essentially feminine, and fail to see that, as work, it is exactly like any other kind of human activity, having the same limitations and the same possibilities.

Suppose we change the sex and consider for a while the status of a house-husband. He could be a tall, strong, fine-looking person—man-servants often are. He could love his wife and his children—industrial status does not affect these primal instincts. He could toil from morning to night, manfully, to meet their needs.

Suppose we are visiting in such a family. We should find a very rude small hut—no one man could build much of a house, but, ah! the tender love, the pride, the intimate emotion he would put into that hut! For his heart's dearest—for his precious little ones—he had dragged together the fallen logs—chipped them smooth with his flint-ax (there could have been no metal work while every man was a house-husband), and piled them together. With patient, loving hands he had daubed the chinks with clay, made beds of leaves, hung hides upon the walls. Even some rude stools he might have contrived—though furniture really belongs to a later period. But over all comes the incessant demand for food. His cherished family must eat, often and often, and under that imperative necessity all others wait.