Lisa Selin Davis, HOUSEWIFE: Why Women Still Do It All and What to Do Instead
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake,
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[0:31]Lisa Selen Davis is the author of Housewife, why women still do it all, and what to do instead.
[0:36]Lisa is the author, also, of Tom Boy, the surprising history and future of girls who dare to be
[0:41]brilliant, as well as two novels, Belly and Lost Stars. She has written for The New York Times,
[0:46]The Washington Post, The Free Press, and many other publications. Welcome, Lisa. Thank you so
[0:51]much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Housewife, why women still do it all,
[0:56]and what to do instead. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.
[1:02]I love this. I love this book, but I particularly love on both Instagram and in the book all
[1:07]these retro ads that you have everywhere. It's just amazing. I did this project in college once
[1:13]where I had to analyze ads of a certain type when talking about same sex marriage or something else.
[1:17]Anyway, it's so interesting how popular culture really reflects some of these things. Anyway,
[1:23]talk about that, but also just tell everybody what your whole book is about.
[1:26]Okay. I'll start with the ads because actually you've just given me an idea which is
[1:35]it would be great to have a coffee table book of ads directed at Housewives over decades,
[1:43]because they go from, let's say, in the 30s during the depression where they want women to
[1:50]give up their jobs, so the few jobs there are can go to men, so they tell Housewives the patriotic
[1:56]thing to do is to give up your job, and then in the 40s, the right thing for Housewives to do
[2:03]is to do men's jobs at the decade before they were told they couldn't and shouldn't do,
[2:09]and now that their domestic skills actually apply in the munitions factory, and then in the 50s,
[2:17]it's back to Housewives should stay home, and here are all these amazing appliances that will
[2:25]make your life better, and will please your man and make you raise the right kinds of kids,
[2:32]and then in the 60s, there are all these ads for pharmaceuticals that will treat your depression
[2:39]for how bad you feel about that one. This one is my favorite by the way. It says,
[2:45]you can't set her free, but you can help her feel less anxious, and it's like a woman with a
[2:49]mop, oh, worried. It's like, oh my gosh. Anyway, keep going. Sorry. Yeah, you could actually tell
[2:56]the whole history in these ads, which I hadn't thought of before, and it really shows you how
[3:04]society redefine women's work in all these different eras, depending on what they need from women,
[3:14]and they tell women what's normal for them. Obviously, that changes in the 70s when
[3:20]more women who don't have to work go to work than we enter a new era. But yeah, the story can
[3:26]be told in ads directed at women in Housewives alone. The ads today are interesting too.
[3:32]I mean, because now it's geared towards men, it's always showing different family types,
[3:37]and it's really, really changed. Go back to where did your personal fascination with the Housewives
[3:47]construct come from. It actually started right after I had a baby in 2009, and I joined a moms group,
[3:54]and I am not a joiner. I guess I was technically in a click in high school, but it was kind of like
[3:59]the get stoned and go to the art room. It wasn't much of a click. So I just was not a person who
[4:06]joined groups, but I did it, and it was actually fantastic. I've become much more of a joiner since then.
[4:12]This was in Brooklyn, and it was during the great recession, and it was a very confusing economic
[4:20]time, especially for me as a full-time freelance writer. I have a baby and not very much work,
[4:28]and I have no idea how to figure out how much childcare to get, or I just was very confused.
[4:35]And then one day, this mom who I didn't know wrote in response to, I don't even know what we
[4:42]were emailing about, but she wrote, I was a housewife before I was a stay-at-home mom,
[4:48]and I just thought, who is this? And who done that? And I think with a little bit of judgment,
[4:56]but also some kind of fascination of I did not even know that was an option, and it had never,
[5:03]it had never been an option for me. My husband did not like the idea, all of me, not working.
[5:10]And I tucked that in the back of my mind, and then one during the pandemic and Trump's
[5:17]re-election, he kept tweeting about suburban housewives, and housewives, I'm getting your
[5:23]husbands back to work, which really sounds a lot like those old ads. And when I looked into it,
[5:30]you know, the person most likely to be a suburban housewife now was a poor immigrant woman of color.
[5:36]So I thought, who is he packing to? Not too many people, but he's drawing on this vision of
[5:44]America that's very powerful, but was very fleeting, you know. So I just kind of got obsessed,
[5:52]and I went down the housewife rabbit hole, and now I came to this book.
[5:56]Oh my gosh. I mean, you can almost be a housewife without a husband. If you, it's a lifestyle,
[6:04]right? It's like the lifestyle, domestic goddess, you know, in parts of that really have been
[6:12]glamorized lately, you know, on Instagram and entertaining and cleaning with like this new
[6:20]modern aesthetic to the cleaning supplies and, you know, all of it. It's like it's become a different
[6:27]kind of choice, almost. Yes. And I think we're grappling with that, because I think what happened
[6:33]as a result of assuming that women will work and have children is, once again, we look down on
[6:42]women who stayed home. So I think there is a generation of women, a new generation saying,
[6:47]I choose this, and it's a feminist choice. Right. And more old school feminists are saying,
[6:52]no, it's not. This happened after I finished the book, but there were a bunch of articles
[6:57]about stay at home girlfriends who were not married, and they just stopped working, and I guess
[7:03]they had wealthy boyfriend. Sounds good. Sounds good to me. But the problem is always the same thing
[7:11]with women who dropped out of the workforce to take care of children, you just become very
[7:18]financially vulnerable. But I kept running into is, you know, especially if you're, I assume these
[7:24]girlfriends, who stay at home girlfriends have some kind of contract, but even with the married women
[7:32]who gave up careers to stay home, if they got divorced later, we don't really do alimony anymore.
[7:40]And they gave up their future earnings and whatever debt existed in the marriage also would get
[7:48]divided between them. So they would end up really financially vulnerable. And I think that's what we
[7:59]have to deal with right now, which is if we want to have choice, which we should,
[8:04]that's the goal. The goal is to have a choice about, do you want to raise your kids full-time?
[8:09]Do you want to work full-time? Do you want to work part-time? But we don't want to end up really
[8:15]financially vulnerable by the choices we make. And that's where we haven't progressed. We made all
[8:23]of this cultural change and not enough structural change. And that's why we still do it all.
[8:29]I know. I love how you have the whole thing on like where this sort of super mom, you said it
[8:35]better. Super powerful mom came from and like how we've gotten ourselves into this mess essentially,
[8:40]like how did we arrive here? Because it does feel that some of these roles are somewhat
[8:46]unsustainable. Right? It's quite complicated to do everything. And all this lip service to juggling
[8:55]and it's really like, well, it is sort of impossible in a way. It is. And I start the book with
[9:03]this commercial. Now, I'm really thinking about commercials for Angelique. Yes, that's right,
[9:09]you did. Yeah. It was a, I think that's Gen X or we'll remember this ad. And it was a hugely
[9:15]successful ad for this perfume for the 24 hour woman. But it's eight hours for work. And eight
[9:23]hours for kids and eight hours for husband. So like, what about the sleeping and what about the
[9:30]hours for yourself? And it really, for me, I thought, oh, that's what you're supposed to be. And I
[9:36]think for a whole generation of women, okay, we're supposed to work and parent and be the domestic
[9:43]goddess. And yeah, it isn't sustainable. And a lot of that is because we didn't pass child care
[9:51]laws and family leave laws. I mean, this is, you know, it's a little boring policy stuff. But it
[9:57]ended up being really important because there was this.
[10:00]huge cultural shift of women working full time with nothing else changing and I felt like when
[10:08]when I had a kid, my first kid and I was just kind of like I don't understand the calculation
[10:16]of how child care is so expensive and I also want to spend time with my child. We don't want to
[10:26]give up my career. It was completely unsustainable and some of that would be helped by having
[10:35]really affordable good child care, like really investing in that and really seeing that as patriotic
[10:42]as if you give family's choice and if every choice is reasonable and good, you have the
[10:50]greatest chance of making good citizens, like creating healthy young people. When I think about
[11:00]those ads and how much they shape me, it also takes me to the caldon ad of me. It takes me away
[11:08]and pretty soon after all of this change the ads were kind of like, we know this is horrible for
[11:16]you. Here's another product you can buy. I do spend a lot of time in the back. I guess that affects me too.
[11:27]I know that is like a such a mom trope, right? Go for love. Take a bath. I often, I'm like trying to
[11:34]convince people to read. I'm like it's not like you have to go take a bath. You can just open a book.
[11:39]You don't even have to run the water and you've already escaped. That's true. You can escape anywhere
[11:48]with a book. That's right. Okay. So 30 years from now, let's just say when your child and I have
[11:55]kids around the same age, are that not all ages, but getting there. Yeah, maybe you might get.
[12:00]Well, anyway, it doesn't matter. You know, in 30 years, where do you think the housewife and the mom
[12:06]life will be? That's such a good question. And I have not thought about that. And I wonder if
[12:14]A will be continually having culture wars still about what we men should be doing in what
[12:22]women's work is. But I think that with each generation, you know, I interviewed a few kind of
[12:30]millennial parents. And they were much less concerned about what women should do and what men should
[12:39]do. They were much more amenable to dividing the task of domesticity by skill. And of course,
[12:49]some of that is affected by gender stereotypes or by whatever we're maybe prone to as based on sex.
[12:58]But, you know, I think men are feeling much less worried about being emasculated by doing child care
[13:06]and housework. Hopefully, what we'll have is a vision of the families where people can work out
[13:17]on their own how it works best for them without a lot of cultural noise telling them that whatever
[13:26]they've decided is wrong. And hopefully, we will have more structural support. So we will have
[13:33]really good child care for those who need it and some way to protect stay at home parents financially.
[13:42]So that the marriage falls apart. They don't end up really poor and struggling. That sounds nice.
[13:49]That sounds great. I wonder about the effects of, you know, having non-binary parents.
[13:59]Like, what does that look like? You know, there's a, you know, maybe the concept of gender itself
[14:03]gets continually deconstructed over the next couple of decades and then automation increases.
[14:09]And so there are maybe fewer home things that, like, if you're fridge can be ordered
[14:15]to the groceries, maybe it's not, right? Then it's not in a drone is dropping things off of your
[14:20]front door. Then you don't have to. And a robot is doing the vacuuming, then you're all good.
[14:27]You can just sit and read your book. Oh, yeah. I admit I'm very attracted to the robot vacuum,
[14:34]but we have so many cords everywhere and are so disorganized. I can't ever get a robot vacuum.
[14:41]That is one vision. I did do a bunch of research about same-sex parents,
[14:48]because there's not a lot of research to get about trans parents. But it was pretty interesting
[14:54]in same-sex couples. And one, I don't know if this is accurate, but according to one study,
[15:01]lesbians have the highest divorce rate. But there is much less bickering over who does what,
[15:09]based on how masculine or feminine each woman is. However, in gay men's relationships,
[15:17]there was a big difference. And if there was a feminine man, more feminine man and a more masculine
[15:25]man, the feminine man was expected to do more of the housework. So they had kind of gender roles
[15:33]based on masculinity and femininity in the way that women didn't. You could look at that,
[15:40]I don't know how accurate the data is about lesbian divorce. But I think more conservative people would
[15:46]say, yeah, we need these gender roles. And when you don't have them, when it's all confused,
[15:54]it breaks down. That would be another way to interpret it. I'm not sure how to interpret it,
[16:00]because there's not a ton of research. But I did feel like through this book,
[16:09]we had a very uneven distribution of labor in my marriage. I read that.
[16:14]It wasn't about, you know, man does this. And woman does this. It was about he worked more
[16:20]hours than I did and made more money than I did. And I felt like I had to do more because I
[16:25]really needed to protect his job. And I worked at home. And I think with the women, they're sort
[16:32]of like, we're both women. We should both be doing everything because women do everything.
[16:37]If there's a similar situation of one person works more, makes more money. The other woman is like,
[16:43]on some level, but you're a woman. So you do everything. We ended up redistributing the labor in my
[16:50]marriage, but not in a very traditional way. So now my husband does all the cooking. He does
[16:57]most of the shopping. So I was thinking about that. What if the fridge orders the grocery.
[17:02]He wouldn't like that, because he loves going to the co-op and doing the shopping. Whereas I find
[17:07]our food co-op to be intolerably hippie-fascist. So I hate going. And I liked cooking, but there
[17:17]were things that I was doing that were really hard for him in terms of, you know, the big picture
[17:22]parenting of what do we need to do for the kids now so that they get to a place later. So he
[17:27]took the world all the cooking and he cleans the whole kitchen too. And it really helped. I have
[17:34]more time. It took me a long time to get used to it. But because I was like, ooh, I have a little
[17:40]extra time. I have no idea what to do with it. I haven't had this experience in years. And of
[17:46]course I worked more. But I liked that. I liked work. And I liked exercise. So I did more of that too.
[17:52]So I really feel like it's so much more about the distribution of labor in this very unromantic way.
[17:58]A successful marriage, a successful family. It's probably not what most people are thinking about.
[18:04]But I think it's really important. So you feel supported and you feel like whatever way it
[18:11]makes sense to break it up to you. You know, and it's not going to be the same in every family.
[18:15]And lots of families don't have two parents. Yeah. My husband does cooking, cleaning, you know,
[18:21]all the shop, the food shopping. He's into the food. He's so good at it. And I've been taking care of
[18:26]all the logistics, which I hate because I'm also not going to logistics. Like give me as many
[18:32]loads of laundry. I'm like, I don't mind that at all. But yeah, all the all the kids stuff, I do
[18:36]all the kids stuff, everything, everything. You know, but the logistics and the like, okay, which
[18:41]flight and what did it? And the other day, he like organized some like transportation that we needed
[18:47]somewhere. And he was like, Oh, I took Herman and I was like, you did. And he was like, yeah,
[18:54]he's like, you told me that was your love language. And so I did it. And I was like, it is my love
[18:58]language. Like I don't give me another sweater the rest of my life. Like I don't care about
[19:03]if you have a car waiting for me, the airport or something like that, that is everything.
[19:09]I guess just knowing, you know, your buttons and having someone who cares enough and can help.
[19:14]I agree. And I'd never expressed it that way. But I might when I my my my husband, this is my
[19:21]love language too. Like when I come home and the living room is vacuumed, I feel so good. And part of
[19:28]this is I work at home. It is really messy. I never expected to have not only a messy, but a dirty
[19:36]home. This was not my vision. My kids are messy. One more than the other. It's hard to work. Sometimes
[19:44]it's hard to clear my mind to work. And I don't even have my own workspace. We do have a little
[19:50]office in our apartment. But I share it with my husband because now he works at home. So that's
[19:55]cluttered and not the. So yeah, anytime there's just a clean.
[20:00]off-surface. I feel so good. But that makes me think about what I feel like is the big take away
[20:09]from this book. Thank you for getting us back to the book. Which is not necessarily the love
[20:16]language, but I actually do think that's important. One of the things that really surprised me
[20:21]was discovering that what we think of as the traditional family, the nuclear family, was really
[20:27]an anomaly in human history and even in American history. And that, you know, we subsidize
[20:35]all kinds of families, for instance, to move with, along with the railroad and gave them really,
[20:41]really cheap land. And then set up all of these community institutions, churches and, you know,
[20:48]there weren't funeral homes, but there were people who would get together or if somebody died.
[20:53]And there was just, we replicated the plan of early humans in all kinds of ways, basically until
[21:02]the 1950s. And people, until then, a lot of people lived with extended family, they lived in either
[21:10]early or in tight-or-knit communities. I mean, there was some suburban expansion in the 20s,
[21:16]but even then, it was very connected to city centers. And when we moved out to the suburbs,
[21:24]it was also very, very heavily subsidized, you know, the government paid for the highways and
[21:30]they subsidize mortgages. And they paid all of these people to leave their extended plans and cities
[21:39]and take up in their own private families, in their own little private love-a-town houses,
[21:45]with their private yards instead of public parks and their private washing machines,
[21:50]instead of, you know, the laundromat and look a lot of that is really great. But it ended up establishing
[21:58]that as the norm when it actually had never happened before. And all of the sudden, this very
[22:05]human plan is gone. And all of these people who are saying, you know, we need to get back to the
[22:13]traditional nuclear family, are, are conjuring of very recent anomalistic kind of existence.
[22:22]So I felt like what I learned from doing this research is that you need to make your plan in whatever
[22:29]way you can. If you have money, you pay someone to clean your house, maybe a nanny, you replicate
[22:38]what's called aloe parenting, which work, you know, the kind of, it takes a village. If you don't,
[22:45]if you don't have enough money for all those for a housekeeper and whatnot, that makes me think
[22:50]about the Brady Bunch and the six kids, but they also have Alice. If you don't, there are all kinds
[22:57]of ways. There are babysitting co-ops and, you know, in mom's groups, there are certain
[23:03]center we shared information. We shared instead of like living in an extended family and a
[23:11]close-knit community where there's kind of generational knowledge passed down that we don't have
[23:16]that. But we came together and shared, you know, here's how you win or here's information about
[23:25]sleep training or or the opposite attachment paradigm. That feeling that I had early on, like,
[23:32]I can't figure out how to do this by myself. There is no roadmap I don't understand.
[23:38]That turns out to be a common feeling and it quite a normal reaction to the way we live now.
[23:45]And I remember thinking, you know, I live in an apartment building so I was like, all these other
[23:50]women are home making dinner by themselves. Why are we not helping each other more? Why aren't we
[23:58]just like a slightly more, you make dinner Tuesday for my kids and I make dinner Thursday.
[24:04]So I think what I tell women now, women who are pregnant or who have your own kids is
[24:10]try to figure out what your plan is. Make your plan in any way you can. That actually made
[24:16]me feel better about how hard it was. Yeah. Take the village. 100%. Take the village. I mean,
[24:24]it's a cliche for a reason. I am. It's absolutely true. Lisa, thank you so much for coming on,
[24:30]for talking about housewife and I mean, even the cover. And now, how are we going to get this
[24:35]coffee table book out in the world with more ads? I love it so much. I love all the,
[24:42]I love it. I just love it. I think it would be such a cool project to just look at
[24:48]how essentially men advertise what, who women are supposed to be and what they're supposed to do
[24:55]over these eras and how it changes in response to cultural and, you know, historical events.
[25:02]I think that would be cool and fun. Totally cool again. Let's do it. You can do it. I'll read it.
[25:09]I'll buy it. I'll buy it and put it on my coffee table. You should, you should have it come out
[25:13]time to Mother's Day. So think, you know, 20, 25 on the other day. There you go. Okay. Next up. Okay.
[25:19]I love that. Thank you. Thanks. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Bye.
[25:27]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. If you love it, please leave
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