Homemaker hiring a family assistant. Do-gooders need not apply.
I have enamel paint on my hands from painting for the remodel I started last winter, just had a conversation on B Corporations with my unschooling tween, am keeping an eye on my toddler daughter and almost pre-tween son who are watching Disney+ cast on the TV in the front room in between playing make-believe games, while my remote learning high schooler escapes to his workspace in the basement to do homework and try not to get behind when state testing in person begins while remote learning happens simultaneously.
I’m a homemaker. Radical Homemaking has been on my radar and in my heart for over a decade, ever since a colleague at a non-profit I worked at told me about Shannon Hayes, while we folded newsletters for bulk mailing.
To be honest, I’m probably more of a disruptive homemaker, since all of what I do is far more queer, Indigenous and decolonizing than what Hayes experienced and shared in her book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, though even then she challenged the notions of homemaking only belonging to women who had no other choice.
And of course, doing all of this during a pandemic takes this adventure to a whole new level.
Many of my progressive parenting friends are bemoaning the isolation of 21st century parenting, especially with the pandemic. Many are single parents, and being that I have the privilege of what seems to be a heteronormative marriage to a Euro-American male, I don’t say much.
But it doesn’t mean I’m not wrestling and feeling a lot of the same issues. This is nothing new to me: needing help at home and trying to figure out how to ask for it.
Years ago, as a single mom, when I was working for that non-profit, I tried to hire a Family Assistant. (Yes, that’s a thing.) The person was a young friend in Christian community with us at the time, and I tried to pay her well and treat her as a professional.
She was so confused, as in her mind, she was basically providing charity. People helping me out with my home or family out of a sense of obligation or charity is so counterproductive. This makes it doubly hard to ask for help because I loathe people feeling sorry for me. I know I brought five children into this world, and it's actually because I don’t want to send my children out of the home that I need to hire domestic help within the home.
I needed that as a single mom working insane hours at a non-profit, and I need it now, as a married mom whose primary job title is Homemaker and who is unschooling/homeschooling during a pandemic. I also choose to do nonprofit work (usually volunteer) and do remodeling and tons of intentional living that takes time and labor. I love and adore my life. Yet, because these are all domestic functions, people misunderstand me constantly. It really makes me feel alone. I also don’t believe it is up to my husband to spend every moment he isn’t working in helping me with housework. Sure, he needs to be active in taking care of himself and parenting, but everyone deserves downtime.
And I need to be able to layout the work that needs to be done and have a professionally-minded person do it. Yes, while I’m home, too.
I’m also very well aware of issues of class and race. Trust me when I say that my husband and I are not rolling in the dough, so this idea of wanting a nanny or some other rich people’s version of domestic help is not what I want either. I also know plenty of people would say that this is why there are schools, handymen, contractors and the like.
However, I think the merits of radical or disruptive homemaking where we take part in literally making our homes, generating production from home instead of only consumerism, of intentional living including that of community building are all valid and maybe even necessary in today’s world.
I once had a man joke that I was the closest thing to a ‘professional mother,’ he had ever seen.
Well, this Homemaker needs some help.
Do-gooders need not apply.
