Is Domesticity Dead?

In the selected readings from Joan Williams’s “Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It,” Williams discusses the system of domesticity. She defines this system as “a gender system comprising most centrally of both the particular organization of market work and family work that arose around 1780, and the gender norms that justify, sustain, and reproduce that organization.” After defining domesticity, Williams studies its origins and explores its effects on society. In her introduction, Williams describes the two defining characteristics of domesticity as a gender system. The first is that as an organization of market work built upon an archetype of an ideal worker as one who works long hours that leave little time for caregiving. With such an organization, caregivers are unable to meet archetypal requirements of the worker. This leads to the second gender system distinction, which is that of marginalizing the caregiver. The system of domesticity must isolate the caregiver from “most of the social roles that offer responsibility and authority” (Pg 1) in order to ensure that the task of caregiving be carried out. Williams discusses how the role of the worker and that of the caregiver were delegated to each sex according to the gender identities that domesticity established. In establishing gender identities, gender character traits and personalities were assigned to each sex. For men, this character trait was natural competitiveness, which meant they were destined for market work, and for women it was selflessness, which made them naturally inclined for childrearing. In discussing the implications of domesticity, Williams spends much of chapter one refuting the argument she calls “choice rhetoric” that claims that no discrimination occurs if the woman chooses to be marginalized. Her claim is that in establishing the organization of market and family work, domesticity also creates social dynamics that force women into an arrangement of domesticity. In the context of domesticity, as Williams describes, there are three tenets that perpetuate the system; she compares these the context of these tenets to the context of the system of patriarch, which prevailed before the nineteenth century. The first of these tenets is that employers are entitled to ideal workers. The second is that men are entitled to be ideal workers. In the system of patriarchy, men defined themselves by their religious, political, and social roles as well as economic ones. However, in the shift to domesticity, men’s economic role became the primary definition of their worth. The last of these tenets is that “mothers should have ‘all the time in the world’ to give” (pg30). This arose from the creation of the symbolic world of domesticity, which painted the market realm as a cold and uncaring place full of strangers pursuing their own self-interests. Women, therefore, felt the need to care for their children on their own rather than commodifying that job by delegating it to the market realm. This tenet also arose with the arrival of the middle class as it ensured that mothers would develop the skills and middle-class virtues in their children. Williams concludes the chapter by asserting that the traditional arrangement of domesticity limits women to two options. The first is to devote themselves to market work and forgo the comforts of the family life market workingmen are granted. The alternative is to devote themselves to caregiving and forgo market work. Neither of these options, according to Williams, amount to equality. In reading this, I found myself supporting Williams’s arguments. It was fascinating how she described domesticity as a self-nourishing system. It creates the very stereotypes and organizations that sustain it, forcing both and men and women to unconsciously submit to it. I know that I am personally submerged in this organism of domesticity, though was not consciously aware of it before learning the term. This unconscious participation is said to be a choice, but as Williams explains it is not a choice. A choice is choosing between two candy bars. Being forced to accept your situation is not a choice, it is a necessity. I found the part about parents being terrified of allowing their kids to be raised by strangers. I was largely raised by a nanny, as were all the kids I knew. I do not have any negative feelings about this, I love my nanny as much as I love my mom as she treated me like her child. Furthermore, I don’t believe parents have to worry about their kids not learning their values. Parents can only do so much anyways, friends and their outside environment does the rest.