FOCUS, (40/1999)
MODERN LIVING Elation and Frustration
Kitchenwork can cause stress. Nevertheless, the role of a
housewife is astoundingly popular amongst younger women.
[A graph was contained here in the article. It showed that the numbers of
people in the work force in all of Germany (in the former East- and West Germany) evolved
as shown in the following table
Numbers of employed men and women (millions)
| |
1978 |
1998 |
| Men |
16.3 |
16.9 |
| Women |
9.9 |
12.4 |
The title of the graph is "Statistic — Employment"
The caption is "Into the office instead of to the stove" The subheading
of the caption reads "Since 1978 almost four per cent more employed men, but 25
per cent more women." —WHS]
Enough!
Determined housewives fight against being
slandered.
Society
Counter Move
[The original text is a colloquial pun and loses its meaning in the translation]
The Manifesto of the German Housewives's Movement puts Career Women and radical
Liberationists alike through the Wringer
When the trend researcher Peter Wipper-Amann saw a few months ago the results of his
new women's survey, he was left speechless: 60 percent of the younger women (between 14
and 40) wanted to be housewives, rather then to move through life as a "modern
amazone" or a "smart slut." (FOCUS 25/99)
Other recent opinion polls too showed that no less than about half of
West-German women yearn for the ostensibly dated ideal of the homely all-round
provider. It's hard to believe, considering that according to the opinions promoted
by the media, the housewife thoroughly disappeared.
Women's periodicals tirelessly produce portraits of heroic women who pursue
professional careers, and, in TV crime shows, as cool female police officers hunt down
every sinister perpetrator (and thereby at the same time the patriarchy).
The media believes that *a woman needs three things,* a fantastic job, a
tolerant man, and at the same time -- for additional strengthening of her self-esteem -- a
hot lover (and, if it can be arranged at all, a child or two could be added to that as
well).
That grates on the nerves of Karin Jaeckel from the Black Forest, an
author of Children's and non-fiction books. At any rate, the mother of three finds
it to be quite agreeable when other women are ready to be "the wife at his side'
(book title) -- meaning, to be at the side of a nice, sole-income-earning husband.
Protection of her flanks is provided in the form of safe conducts offered, through
comrades-in-arms from the German Housewives' Union and the World Organization of Mothers
of all Nations, W.O.M.A.N..
Karin Jaeckel's first objective is to pillory the revilement by feminists of
"family-women." Examples: The former Hessian women's minister Heide Pfarr
accused housewives of wanting to keep a load off the backs of their husbands, so that the
latter would be unfairly enabled to resist the competition by battallions of career
women, The housewife ideal, so Pfarr according to a quote by Jaeckel, "[I]
won't support, but will fight it wherever I encounter it." Sociologist Gunhild
Gutschmitt even considers housewives and their husbands -- figuratively -- to be parasites
of the social system, because caregivers don't have to make contributions to social
insurance and pension schemes.
"Marriages break increasingly more often under the pressure
exerted by the devourer of time and tolerance, SELF-REALIZATION."
— Karin Jaeckel
Many bitter words are thus loosened by Karin Jaeckel about the mobbing of
mopping women. Nevertheless, can it truly be that enjoyment is to be found in
cooking, in raising children and in caring for husbands? Don't look for any insights
from her into the world of life and emotions of today's housewives. She justifies
the existence as caregiver solely on the basis of the advantages it provides for the
emotional well-being of children.
She has ready a single role-model, although not exactly a fresh,
dew-sprinkled one: Katharina von Bora, wife of the Church-rebel Martin Luther, is said to
have been a self-determined woman, nevertheless a reliable companion, a circumspect
administrator, and a good mother.
As long as the author merely demands the right of the housewife not to be
discriminated against, one has to agree with her completely. In addition, Karin
Jaeckel is on the right track when she complains that relations between the sexes are
being disturbed through feminists' half- and quarter truths, such as the allegation that
men massively abuse children and beat up women, or that they are bad fathers whose
assistance in raising children can be foregone easily. It's all right when she lets
go against pedagogical experiments in whom little boys are weaned of their agressivenes
but little girls acquire it.
The anti-feminist poison-sprayer is unfortunately being used a little too
intensively. While feminists love to adhere to a conspiracy theory, according to
which an ominous "patriarchy" keeps women away from the arm chairs of power by
any and all means, Karin Jaeckel -- on the same level -- imputes that
"hard-line feminists" promote a secret program for "the destruction of the
family structure" and "the elimination of men." Female striving for
domination is supposed to be the cause of marital dischord, youth criminality, and
emotional disturbances in children, she suggests, and thereby she makes things far too
easy for herself.
It's not worth her while to mention the circumstance that for women too, in the
face of a divorce rate of 40 percent in the mean-time, it is fairly risky to interrupt a
career. Or that mothers simply go to work because their husbands don't earn enough.
When Karin Jaeckel eventually claims that feminism "estranged"
women, through "brain-washing," from their original role of living as
housewives, then she erects a dogma that is as foolish as that of her opponents. She
counters the feminist postulation of the carreer-enabled mother -- indirectly -- with the
norm that a mother with children must be, naturally, a housewife.
The author doesn't strictly adhere to her own advice. She's been
writing books for many years -- mostly several each year.
--Frank
Gerbert
Karin Jaeckel's book is being published by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich (317
pages, DM 19.50) [No ISBN was provided --WHS]
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