200
SUSAN SONTA G
say, the
Un~ted
States; with its consumer-society style of life just getting
underway; and with hardly any "service" facilities.) Even when the
wife holds down a job ,that is as honorable or as physically tiring as her
husband's, when they both come home it still seems natural to the hus–
band (and usually ,to the wife) that he rest while she prepares the dinner
and cleans up afterwards. Such exploitation will continue, even with
the rising number of women entering the labor force, as long as
their
work so rarely challenges the notion of the "feminine" role.
Because most jobs that women get are conceived <to be suited to
their "feminine" aptitudes, most men and women experience no contra–
diction between that "woman's job" and the traditionally "feminine"
arts (assistant, nurse, cook) that women are expected to exercise at
home. Only when all sorts of jabs are filled by many women will
~t
no
longer seem natural to a husband to let his wife do all or most of ,the
housework. What appear to be two quite different demands must
be
made jointly: thillt the range of employment no longer be determined
along ,the lines of sexual identity, and .that men share fully in the tradi–
tionally "feminine" work of domestic life. Both demands encounter in–
tense resistance. Men find both demands embarrassing, threatening,
though ,they seem to be made slightly less uncomfortable these days by
the first ,than Iby the second - demonstrating that the grammar of fami–
ly life (like language itself) is the most intense and stubborn fortress of
sexist assumptions.
In
an ar·rangement of family life ·which would not oppress women,
men will take part
in
all domestic activities. (And women will be ex–
peoted ,to give considerable time io "outside" obligations that have
nothing to do with their families.) But the solution involves more than
adjusting the degree of participation of men, ,the ideal being an equal
sharing of all chores and responsibilities. These activities must them–
selves be re-thought. The family does not have to be a sealed-off mole–
cule,
all
of whose activities belong to "it." Many domestic tasks would
be more efficiently
and
pleasantly carried
out
in a communal space–
as they were in premodern societies. There is no genuine benefit in each
family having (if it could) its private babysitter or maid; that is, free–
lance women hired to share or take over a wife's unpaid, unofficial
servant role. Similarly, there is no reason (besides selfishness and fear)
for each family
to
have its own washing machine, car, dishwasher, tele–
vision set, and so forth. While private human (mostly female) domestic
service is disappearing, except for the extremely rich, as countries
pass
from premodern economies to industrialization and consumerism, private
mechanical services proliferate. Most of the new mechanical servants
and
services whose acquisition
by
the "individual" family is the primary
