Housewives

While Dutch moms say the key to a happy life is a part-time or no-time job, German moms find the same life stressful because they want to work. But there is a whole other type of stay-at-home moms in every developed country: those who stay, because they can afford to.

They've been called jet-set moms, spending days shopping in high-end boutiques, at life-coaching classes, and traveling with husbands on business trips. Despite college educations and former careers, they don't miss working one bit. In fact, when the Daily Mail interviewed three couples who've divided marriage into two clear-cut roles — breadwinner and caretaker — all couples said their divide-and-conquer approach was key to a happy marriage.

If a woman wants to stop working to raise kids or focus on turning an hobby into a job because she can afford to, I say go for it. It's what the men say that's so disturbing. They croon over how their wives (with the help of a nanny) arrange their sock drawers, cook their dinners, wash their clothes, and plan vacations that they just "turn up for."

"Sam is the perfect housewife. She doesn’t expect me to do anything domestic. She buys all my clothes, and makes sure that when I am at home, I can totally relax," said 38-year-old Scott Mullins. She "never calls me with problems at work — she knows not to disturb me."

That doesn't sound like a marriage — if a marriage is a partnership — but nostalgia for good, old-fashioned sexism.

Teacher Frances Childs says the teenage girls she knows want to grow up to become doctors, lawyers, and housewives. She writes in the Daily Mail today that ambitious young women realize that educated and well-off "jet-set" housewives can actually have it all.

Childs claims American women would follow the lead of Dutch women, declining to work full-time and instead spending time with their children and enjoying hobbies, if only they didn't need two incomes. That's where the rich husband comes in. Not only will your husband's money keep you out of the office, but it will keep you out of the home, too, since you can presumably hire a nanny and housekeeper. Younger women, Childs says, "have realized that instead of spending the day listening to some bore drone on about sales figures, it might be more fun to go swimming with the children while the cleaner sorts out the house." She goes on:

Today’s breed of stay-at-home mother is impeccably turned out — after all, they're the only ones rich enough to be able to not work. Mostly in their late 20s, they're clad in designer gear and have the time to have their hair styled weekly at an upmarket salon.

If you ask me, jet-set housewives sound just like ladies who lunch.

The third most important factor in a happy marriage: sharing the housework, according to a 2007 Pew Research Center study.

Yet many of the happily married women I know still gripe that their husbands don't do enough around the house. Or, they do enough, but only when they are told to. It's an ugly truth that the most liberated, headstrong women are loathe to admit.

Which is why I found this article about how it feels to have a "househusband" alternately encouraging and depressing. Writer Louise Parker begins by asking, "Surely no woman about the house would fail to clean the fridge for three months, only do the washing-up when it’s threatening to suffocate the kitchen, or scrutinise pieces of lawn mower at the dining-room table?"

Though her househusband has his strengths — gender-stereotypical talents like fixing things around the house — Parker admits he doesn't do as much housecleaning as she'd like: "the househusband is not, and will never be, a housewife."

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