Comment by DoreenMichele

Comment by DoreenMichele 10 months ago

I didn't know she was so influential with regards to kitchen design and universal or inclusive design. Wonderful article with a lot of depth and much food for thought for anyone interested in trying to find solutions for this problem space.

Americans strikes me as being in crisis due to various social factors making full-time wives and moms relatively rare. Our food culture, recipes, kitchens, home design etc etc are rooted in an implicit assumption that your wife or mom is doing the grocery shopping, cooking, keeping track of your health issues and dietary needs etc when this is no longer true for most people.

There seems to be an endless stream of people complaining they either don't have time to cook or they are fat and broke from consuming takeout and an endless stream of companies trying to address the issue, such as meal delivery companies.

I like Julia Child's skepticism about the effectiveness of productizing the space as the only or prime solution. It seems likely to me we need to rethink and rework our food culture so everyone can eat adequately, even if they don't have some privileged life with a high quality kitchen and full-time wife and mom taking care of all the nutritional concerns and logistics behind that, which are substantial.

artificialLimbs 10 months ago

What would be the benefits? Sounds like we should prioritize family, as has been tradition for the entirety of human existence. The new approach of ‘everyone has a house/dwelling and their own independent life apart from anyone’ is the experiment.

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DoreenMichele 10 months ago

Off the top of my head, in no particular order and probably not comprehensive:
Improved health for people not living that way.
More freedom to live as you choose. Heteronormative culture has long pressured young people to get married and have kids and told them from birth they are straight without giving them time to figure out for themselves what their sexual orientation is.
Freedom to leave a marriage that isn't working because you no longer are a prisoner of the fact that your wife knows all your health issues and the dietary restrictions they dictate and cooks better than you, so she is essentially irreplaceable because that catalog of data about you isn't readily replaced by merely marrying a good cook -- assuming you can even arrange to remarry immediately and aren't forced to feed yourself (inadequately) for months or years while looking for a wife
Fewer mental health issues from society no longer dictating to everyone "You will be straight, don't confuse us with the facts. You will fall in love with The One meant for you, never mind the overwhelming evidence this is the exception not the rule. You will fit your entire life around tasks society decided are yours at birth due to the bits between your legs."
Less homophobia, less transphobia, less misogyny, more economic stability due to more personal flexibility.

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- artificialLimbs 10 months ago
  
  I didn't know what 'heteronormative culture' was, so I went to look it up. I found this: "Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal sexual orientation." It seems to me to be a pretty radical idea that culture could not be 'heteronormative' because heterosexuality IS the preferred and normal sexual orientation since 1-babies need to be born for existence to perpetuate (this is basically the purpose of life) and 2-non-heterosexual people continue to this day (even with all the radical celebration of deviance) to be a tiny minority. That said I think it is dumb to try to pressure kids to 'be straight' (lol, you don't choose who you're attracted to). If you're saying 'to live as you choose' to mean 'to live as a single person with no familial support', then yea, you're setting yourself up for a rough time and I can't imagine how you're going to 'restructure the culture' to support this, nor why you would want to aside from attempts at self gratification.
  I don't even know what you're talking about with this 'Freedom to leave a marriage' part. It seems like a smorgasbord of ideas smashed together rather incoherently, my apologies but it's after lunch and maybe my brain isn't all functioning 100%.
  Ok I also don't understand what you're talking about in 'Fewer mental health isues' either. It seems like you're trying really hard to imagine a fantasy reality where non-heterosexual people can live by themselves - but with a partner if they want - but they can leave - but they should be able to leave and be by themselves and be just fine - all with regard to COOKING specifically. Am I getting in the ball park there? I don't really know what you're getting at. When you deviate from 'normal' culture, life is going to be harder for you. That's how our world works. The people that have and are trying to change that... just watch for if things are getting better in their wake, or worse in their wake.
  I suspect economic stability comes more from personal responsibility than 'personal flexibility'. One must make great sacrifices, in general, to develop the character to be able to progress in most areas. What I typically see from the crowd wanting more freedoms is the freedom to be more hedonistic, where I see the people more grateful to exist and actually progressing growing their discipline and losing their selfishness.
  >>> "in crisis due to various social factors making full-time wives and moms relatively rare"
  >>> "It seems likely to me we need to rethink and rework our food culture so everyone can eat adequately"
  How could the second work without fixing the first?
  
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  DoreenMichele 10 months ago
  
  I'm a former full-time wife and mom. I got divorced and got a corporate job at a Fortune 500 company where most of the women were shocked and jealous that my sons took over most of the cooking, grocery shopping and cleaning.
  I've thought a lot about this problem space and the connections I have listed are clear in my mind. If it's not clear to you and you are interested in the idea, you are welcome to do your own reading and thinking and draw your own conclusions.
  Given that I met exactly one woman with children who didn't feel affronted by how I was living, I imagine my opinions and such fall far outside the Overton window -- which seems to be the story of my life.
  
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dyauspitr 10 months ago

Maybe not full time but I would still say the vast majority of women still do all the duties around the house and those regarding raising children. America has become more like countries in Asia that way where women always worked but still did everything an American full time housewife did.

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DoreenMichele 10 months ago

This is true.
And also false.
In households with a nuclear family or heterosexual couple, women still tend to do the lion's share of "the women's work."
But people are generally marrying later, having fewer kids, more couples are having no kids, the number of households with four or more related members has plummeted, the number of households with one to three members has skyrocketed and far fewer people have someone in their life whose primary role is doing the women's work and looking out for their welfare.
People are time stressed, fatter and less healthy, etc. We point to a lot of different causes for those very well established facts and I'm saying that one common denominator that gets largely overlooked is the decline of the number of full-time homemakers.

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