Seriously, Housewife?
So, a little while ago, I got a call from a firm doing a policy audit for my auto insurance. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my insurance company, but this is one of those times when the fell flat on their face. We’ll blame it on the third-party company, but I’m still exasperated!
To start out with, the representative insisted on calling me Mrs. Smith. As far as I am concerned, Mrs. Smith is my mother-in-law. I went to school for a long time to be called Dr. Smith – and if you are calling me in the middle of dinner when I am trying to get two kids to the table in time to get them off to Tae Kwon Do, you need to get it right!
But I let that slide in the interests of keeping the call brief, and things were going relatively well (less the arguing children in the background – why do they always wait until you are on the phone to disagree - LOUDLY?) until we got to the question of my employment. Now, I don’t know why it even matters to the insurance company, but I was given three choices. “Are you employed, self-employed, or a housewife?”
Am I a WHAT?! I was floored. (And speechless. Fortunately, I have recovered.)
I respect people who stay at home – I wish sometimes that I had the opportunity to do so. But regardless of my own choices, I have a large number of friends who are currently at home with their children and not otherwise employed, and I know it is HARD WORK.
However, “housewife” isn’t exactly the most acceptable term. It has never, so far as I know, invoked a good impression of the bearer. In the 18th century, it was used to describe “a mending kit where people usually kept toiletries.” The last century saw it replaced with the warmer, and probably still the most accurate term, “homemaker.” The last few years have just dragged it out to the club and through the mud with “Desperate Housewives,” and reality-ish shows like “Housewives of (fill in the city and locate a handful of snobby women of questionable character and call it television).”
Getting beyond the term itself, the real frustration hit me a few moments later when I realized that while I had been asked the question, my husband had not! No, his choices were “employed and self-employed.” The company had the audacity to assume that as a woman, I would be likely to be staying home, but my husband would not.
I did a little research. No one can agree on the number, but there are at least 200,000 men staying at home with their pre-school children in the United States. Probably more, given the current economy. What about them? Why is staying at home an acceptable choice for a woman and not a man? And what would they be called if it were?
And so, a seemingly simple question has provoked a bit of a tirade on the current societal perception of gender norms, and how one should correctly refer to those important men and women whose primary task is keeping their household running smoothly.
Perhaps I spend too long thinking about these things – insurance companies clearly don’t!
Coincidentally, I had to call the health insurance company today, and they also wanted to confirm some information.
Their only question: Is your daughter still in school?
Pause. What?
My response: Uh, yeah, she’s EIGHT.
Well, SOMEONE has to think about these things.