Were she still alive, my mother would today celebrate her 86th birthday. Sadly, she died in 2008, a few months shy of her 70th birthday. Every August 24th, my three siblings and I recollect together our beloved late mother.
I was curious if, during Cafe Hayek’s first year (2004), I’d written anything about my mom. So I went to the archives to investigate. Turns out that I didn’t write anything, as I likely then found no good angle for a blog of this sort. But I did find a post that I wrote exactly 20 years ago. It’s titled “A Dark Lining Around a Silver Cloud.” I didn’t realize it then, but this post – written and published on my mother’s 66th birthday – is indeed connected with her.
The connection, that I now see, is this: From just after I (her oldest child) was born until I was 15, my mother’s only job was as a diligent homemaker and caring mother. Our small ranch house, built in 1962, in a New Orleans suburb (on “the westbank,” for those familiar with New Orleans) was a typical working-class home of the era. By the standards of today, my mom’s housekeeping chores were difficult and time-consuming. (I cringe in shame as I now recollect how many times I complained about having to help her.) But by the standards of her mother’s day – and even more so by the standards of her grandmothers’ day – modern conveniences available even in the 1960s made my mom’s housekeeping chores much less burdensome and (yes) less dangerous.
This Cafe Hayek post (beneath the fold) from August 24th, 2004, reminds me that, although not rich by American standards even then – and certainly not by the standards of today – my family’s economic lot in the 1960s and 1970s was far better than was the economic lot of almost everyone just a generation or two earlier. My mother, who was proudly never afraid to work hard and with her hands, would agree.
A Dark Lining Around a Silver Cloud
DON BOUDREAUX
AUGUST 24, 2004This morning on NPR, correspondent Susan Stamberg interviewed Susan Strasser, author of Never Done: A History of American Housework. (Originally published in 1982, this book is now back in print.)
Listening to the interview was an exercise in controlling my frustration. I gather from the discussion between Ms. Strasser and Ms. Stamberg that everyone agrees that housework before the 20th century’s gift of electrical household appliances was ceaseless drudgery borne almost exclusively by women. In addition, everyone agrees that “big, shiny appliances” (as Ms. Stamberg kept referring to them) released women from this back-breaking drudgery, as well as made households much cleaner and more sanitary. Ms. Stamberg and Ms. Strasser agreed also that no modern woman (including themselves) would want to return to the pre-appliance days of yore.
And yet these two women, searching diligently, found the dark speck in this bright, blue sky.
For example, when women had to hang their laundry to dry, they had greater chance of encountering their neighbors doing the same in their respective backyards. A good conversation resulted. Today, according to Ms. Strasser, women are more isolated – and made so by electrical appliances, kept in their basements by the convenience of an automatic clothes dryer. Also, mindless, repetitive tasks are often a blessing, according to Ms. Strasser. Having, say, to iron wrinkled clothing or darn socks “roots us” or “cements us.” (I forget her precise words; the link to this interview won’t be posted before tomorrow. [Note 20 years later: I found a link to the interview; it is above.])
This interview is evidence that bright people can find the downside of any piece of good fortune – but that the same bright people do not necessarily possess the wisdom to weigh the downside properly against the upside. It’s as if a very ill child was completely cured by a talented physician, and the parents of the child, admittedly grateful, focused their discussion on the fact that now their little one will grow into adulthood and have to pay bills, suffer heartbreak in love, find a job, and encounter the many trials and tribulations that every adult endures. These are downsides, to be sure, but they hardly count against the blessing of seeing your child saved from death.
There are downsides to greater convenience and greater household cleanliness. But how weighty are they?
