By Anne Schlafly Cori, Chairman, Eagle Forum
After the pandemic, working from home is now normal and only a few want to go back to the commercial office. Home is comfortable; the refrigerator has food you like and the bathroom is private. The thermostat is set at the temperature you like and your pet is at your feet. Side home projects like baking bread or turning on the washing machine are easy to accomplish on break. Plus, no commute! No highway traffic or mass transit indignities. Home can be a very comfortable office.
As one young mom recently said to me, “I am so not going back to ‘the office’!” However, it was not always so easy to stay home and work from home.
Phyllis Schlafly created her home office seventy years ago and launched a national movement out of the office in her home. As women, wives, and mothers were urged that the only route to success was to enter the paid workforce and physically go to a commercial office in the 1970s, Phyllis purposely chose to stay in her home office.
Why did she want to be in her home? Because she wanted to mother her children. Phyllis Schlafly was my mother and on this Mothers’ Day, I celebrate my mother who loved being at home and being available to her children. Her open office had no door so I could pester her at any time. And I did. I even used a child-sized desk in her office so I could be her “mini-me”.
Betty Friedan called the home, “a comfortable concentration camp” in her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique. Phyllis Schlafly thought the idea of home as a prison was ridiculous, because your home is what you make it. Home is where the heart is. My mother loved to do her work from home and even when she did pay for commercial office space, she still preferred to work from home.
My mother blended her public and private lives with her home office. Our home telephone number was the same number as her “office” number. She was completely comfortable in the public sphere and, since she liked being accessible, our home phone number was always listed in the phone book. So I answered plenty of crank calls. I consider it an advantage that I grew up in a home office, because I learned at an early age how to deal with the press and the public.
I also learned from my mother that transparency is key to living an authentic life. There was no difference between my mother in her home or my mother in her office. Her beliefs and actions were consistent throughout her life.
Some critics of Phyllis Schlafly have harped on what they consider inconsistencies in her life. Karen DeCrow, who was president of the National Organization for Women in the 1970s, said “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be a housewife just like Phyllis Schlafly” – snidely indicating that she did not see Phyllis as a housewife. But my mother never saw the home as a closed and gated community; my mother saw her home as a launching pad.
The home does not imprison women. For my mother, her home gave her the freedom to do what she wanted. The only boss she needed to please was her husband – and his office was not in our house.
Happy Mothers’ Day to all mothers. I am grateful to my mother and that I grew up in a home office.
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