Many people say that women who don’t work aren’t contributing to society; the kind of society I grew up in, which was a wonderful place for both children and the elderly, and for a lot of women too, is not possible without large numbers of unemployed women.

I am a pampered unemployed wife, and I don’t even have children :) I have met with a great deal of social disapproval for not working, but that is why I don’t work: hell will freeze over before I will take orders from feminists. My husband isn’t rich-we live in a modest home in a working class area-but I was straight with him from the beginning about not wanting to work, and he seems to be fine with it. I will say this, though: my husband works from home, which means that he and I are almost always together. Because of this, I don’t have to grapple with the kind of social isolation that most housewives face: I don’t think I could deal with that.

Anyway, the point is, housewives are not and were not an upper class or even a middle class thing: for a period of time, at least, in America, it was a near universal thing, and it could be argued that life was a lot better for a lot of people including a lot of women during that time.