A letter written in 1876 by an anonymous American farm woman to the editor of a suffrage magazine:
Married in pioneer times a poor man, and by our joint efforts have made us a home worth several thousand dollars; have borne nine children, and took the whole care of them. Five are men grown, four of them voters. The first twenty years I did all my house-work, sewing, washing and mending, except a few weeks at the advent of the babies. For the last sixteen years have had help part of the time; but have had from two to four grandchildren to care for the last three years, one of them a baby. And now I want to go to the Centennial and cannot command a sixpence for all my labor. Husband owns and controls everything and says we have nothing to spend for such foolishness. Have no more power than a child. Now if my labor has been of any value in dollars and cents I want those dollars and cents to do as I please with. I feel like advising every woman not to do another day’s labor unless she can be the owner of the value of it.
All the property that I possess in my own right is this pen and holder; a present from my brother in California.
PEN HOLDER
(Letter is from Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood).
Many women still have far too much in common with Ms Pen Holder of 1876. Broadly speaking we eventually countered this exploitation of women’ labour not by bringing domestic labour into the marketplace, where the work could have been valued monetarily, but by bringing women into the industrialised labour market. Domestic labour remained an oversight. As a result many mothers have found themselves either with a ‘double shift’ of work inside and outside the home, or facing more or less the same vulnerability as Ms Pen Holder in the 1800s as a stay-at-home mother.
Motherhood is feminism’s unfinished business.
Yes.
As a work from home mother, to whom the lion’s share of work falls despite the good intentions and willingness of my partner, I would say indeed, motherhood and its attendant work is definitely unfinished business.
Yes. Absolutely. And it’s a long journey ahead.
‘Except for a few weeks at the advent of babies’.
Sheesh.
Yes! Completely.
What an amazing letter.
I guess this idea of domestic child raising labour has deeper implications. Something I haven’t come across here is discussion about the changes in the conditions of the sole parenting payments, family Court directions and Child Support payments. there has hardly been anything in the press either. Basically monetary acknowledgement of the work (mostly) women do has been given a severe hacking back the Sole parent pension was the first time in the history of Western civilisation ( post matriarchal times) that women had been given an income, independant of individual men, to support her in the task of raising children. Not ideal obviously…below the poverty line, struggle as a sole parent but still independant . the men’s lobby has been very efficient in buttonholing the attention of Liberal politicians…”the feminists have gone too far…”
see the website National council for the single mother and her children for further information
[…] Blue Milk republishes the words of a nineteenth century American woman explaining what happens when domestic labour isn’t recognised. Married in pioneer times a poor man, and by our joint efforts have made us a home worth several […]
[…] identified and rewarded, women wanted to own themselves and the fruits of their own production (see here for a beautifully captured example of this). The only problem with all this revolution is that […]