Our friends at the Institute for Family Studies are out today with a commentary on culture’s misunderstanding of homemaking. Ivana Greco writes:
“The decline of homemaking — both as a term and a recognized skill — is the result of a popular understanding that homemaking skills are no longer needed, given the technological advances of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”
Ms. Greco goes on to quote the late Betty Friedan, a radical feminist who once suggested new appliances and other advancements had rendered practical parenting work moot. In other words, she envisioned something of a “Jetsons” future where all you’d need to do to run a home is press a few buttons.
Jessica Valenti, a modern-day self-described feminist, is also quoted as suggesting homemaking is a luxury for “women who had husbands with enough money that they could stay at home.” But Ms. Valenti goes even farther, suggesting, “There is no version of American housewifery that has ever — or will ever — make women happier, healthier, or more fulfilled. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. And it might just be your own oppression.”
It seems neither Friedan when she was alive nor Valenti spend much time with happy families where full-time homemaking is the norm – and where moms and dads find the opportunity to shape and mold the next generation very fulfilling. | 
