Status, Class Divide and Homemakers

What status do we and should we accord homemakers? Jim Dalrymple has an excellent new post on this issue: We Need an Elite Paradigm that Values Stay-at-Home Moms. I encourage you to read it, as it argues we’d be better off if our elites valued the work of homemaking and parenthood. The social status of homemakers seems to be a trendy topic, as evidenced by a recent viral post titled It’s Embarrassing to be A Stay-at-Home Mom, arguing that in order to improve fertility rates, motherhood must become “high status.”

I believe it is important to respect mothers, fathers, and homemakers. Indeed, that is the main purposes of this Substack and almost all my public writing: as a society we should recognize the important work homemakers do, and help support those who do it.

Still, I am dubious about efforts to make homemaking “high status” in the sense of the kind of status that attaches to occupations like “film star,” “investment banker,” or “New York Times staffer.” To be sure, for some wealthy elites, having a a wife who doesn’t work is indeed a status marker for the husband — query whether it is always so for the wife. If you are interested the weirdness that surrounds this issue for the New York City ultra rich, Primates of Park Avenue is a memoir that offers insight into that particular subculture. I’m not sure how accurate the book is, but it’s a fun read.

Some additional complexity surrounding homemaking, wealth and status: I’m sure there are some wealthy families who have unemployed wives (or husbands!) that do little but brunch and shop. However, many high-status, wealthy families have a homemaker who does extremely valuable work, including:

1. Managing the family, including the education and activities of their children (almost a full-time job itself);

2. Cultivating social relationships essential to the working spouse in creating the personal networks necessary for business success; and

3. Engaging in charitable giving at a scale to make a real impact. Indeed, I know some ambitious, wealthy husbands for whom one of the best contributions they’ve made to society — in my opinion — is to make it possible for their wives to engage in very serious charitable giving and (unpaid) non-profit service. A number of modern cultural and educational institutions simply would not exist without the dynamic of one spouse making the big bucks and the other spouse dedicating serious time and resources to non-profit work. If you are interested in a historical example of this, Chasing Beauty is a fascinating read on the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a Gilded Age wife and philanthropist. After losing her only son at age one to pneumonia, she dedicated the rest of her life to supporting various social and cultural institutions, including founding the renowned museum named after her in Boston.

In contrast, I’m not sure that homemaking as practiced by regular people will ever be high status. It certainly is not currently, and it seems unlikely that policy efforts could move the needle much on this issue. Status in 21st century Western societies — at least as I understand it — usually comes from wealth (i.e. investment banker), fame (i.e. movie star), or significant gatekeeping (i.e. New York Times staffer). Being a stay-at-home mom or dad is certainly not a ticket to wealth or fame, nor are there any professional gatekeepers for this occupation.

It’s also important to point out that many families with a homemaker are low-income. As excellent research in a report titled The Real Housewives Of America: Dad’s Income And Mom’s Work done by the Institute for Family Studies points out, the income of families with a stay-at-home mother forms a u-shaped curve. Both mothers whose husbands make a great deal and those whose husbands make very little are more likely to stay home.

Source: IFS

Additionally, homemaking is mostly about dedicating your life to the service of others, whether that be immediate family, extended family, or the larger community. It’s an occupation or vocation that some feel called to, but certainly it isn’t for everyone. Putting aside practical questions facing many families surrounding the need for both parents to bring home a paycheck, there’s a lot of work involved in homemaking, and much of it is not glamorous. Indeed, certain kinds of status games seem orthogonal to the meaning of homemaking.

I do hope that in our country homemaking will achieve the kind of social recognition and support that is sometimes awarded to those who decide to work for charities, for religious institutions, or otherwise serve others for little pay or fame. One more modern example might be the rightful social recognition given to those who donate a kidney to a stranger. An essay by Josh Morrison in The Washington Post argues that we should have “a path of transplant support that treats organ donation like a public service and honors donors like public servants.” We might likewise push society towards viewing those who voluntarily drop out of the workforce to care for home and family as giving of themselves to care for others in a way which is deserving of public respect and support.

As we think about that social appreciation, however, is important to recognize the significant class divide among homemakers. This kind of class divide can make shaping policy solutions quite difficult. Should support go first to low-income homemakers as they are in greater need of help? Alternatively, is it better to dedicate public resources that impact all homemakers, in order to create widespread political support for the project? How would any support for low-income homemakers interact with the alphabet soup of programs that already exist to support the poor? These are difficult questions to answer. However, I believe any responsible policy proposal must start with acknowledging the class divide on this issue, and that there is likely no “one size fits all” solution. As usual, there’s a depressingly big gap between identifying the problem and creating the policy solution that should be used to solve it!