Becoming Blondie

I am sure women all over America are writing blogs today in response to the news from Texas. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, it seems, is now offering a new undergraduate degree in Humanities with a concentration in Homemaking. The school is hoping to have fifteen women enroll this fall in the program. Many of us are wondering if we need to return to the days of Blondie in the comics, who for years was a traditional homemaker taking good care of Dagwood, Cookie, Alexander, and even dog Daisy.

My own experience straddling the cultures of feminism and traditional homemaking has had its share of conflict through the years. I consider myself a married feminist though it has been difficult through the years as a member of a conservative Baptist denomination to combine both interests. Feminism as a concept is often seen as anathema by those groups.

I do not think I could have been otherwise, however, since I was raised by a strong, independent single mother who worked a split shift as a waitress six or seven days a week, paid the bills each week (though often needing credit), and made sure my sister and I were both in school and church at the appropriate times. By the time the feminist movement arrived in the United States, I had already been married ten years and was teaching junior high English. It did not seem like a leap of faith to combine both ideas in my mind.

I think of my own training in high school in homemaking. It was under my teacher's supervision that I learned the basic rudiments of cooking, setting a proper table, sewing (I even wore the first jumper I made), and good nutrition. Though I have been a professional career woman for over forty years, the lessons I learned in Home Ec have been helpful in establishing my own home.

In other words, I don't think the new undergraduate program for women at Southwestern is necessarily a bad choice for women. After all, we feminists have fought for the past thirty years or so to advance the idea of choice for women. Also, we realize that our roles are not always static within a long marriage. For me, I have moved from being a traditional homemaker to being a career woman to being a retired homemaker again. Even Blondie made that choice in the comics as she herself has moved in recent years to being a caterer. My only suggestion for a woman at Southwestern who is considering the program is to perhaps combine the concentration with a professional choice as well like business administration.

Classes in homemaking will not be able to teach a woman everything she needs to know anyway about the home. She will still learn through trial and error. My husband can testify to that when, the first week after we returned from our honeymoon, I made a pot roast with vegetables. My husband seemed to be enjoying the meal until he realized I had not scraped the carrots.