Christmas goodies and pondering domesticity

While home for Thanksgiving I read this Washington Post article The New domesticity: Fun, empowering or a step back for American women?   In it, the author is examining the booming Do-It-Yourself craze and the return to the domestic realm among our generation of women — the causes and the implications.  It immediately struck a chord.  Here we sat, the men watching football while my grandmother put the final touches on a colossal meal that she single-handedly prepared.  And me?  I’m hard at work planning the dozens of homemade Christmas goodies I will be making in the upcoming weeks, including a homemade jam.

I’ve certainly noticed that many of my peers have caught the DIY bug– I’m not the only one trying her hand in the blogosphere and Pinterest seems to have become a buzz word that pops up in many a conversation.  But why is this?   I don’t have an answer, I’m actually posting because I’m hoping to find out your opinion on the matter.  

For me personally, I can point to a number of factors.  First is the very fact that it’s a choice, not a duty.  Like most things in life, if I was told I had to, I probably would stop wanting to.  My mom can cook a beautiful meal, but she certainly is a career woman not a housewife.  I grew up understanding cooking and cleaning to be coed sports and paying someone else to make your meal to be a perfectly viable option.

The return of DIY is also an interesting example of class indicators reversing over time.  Not so long ago if you did many of these things yourself, if you had home sewn clothes for instance, it was because you couldn’t afford not to.  Paying someone to do it for you meant you had money.  These days, it’s cheaper to pay someone to do most things for you.  Having just made almost everything for my own wedding, I can tell you — it doesn’t save you any cash!  In an age of mass production, DingIY is not keeping money in the bank.  In fact, having the time and resources to DIY probably means that you are in an alright situation.  You certainly don’t have time to can your own jam if you’re working three jobs.

There is also the sense of accomplishment, of “I can do this for myself.”  Many jobs don’t have a tangible output anymore, something that you can see and touch — we’re not so often producing goods at work, so we’re doing it at home.  It’s a hands-on escape from an otherwise largely electronic world.

Finally, for me it’s largely the fact that if I do it myself, I know it’s done exactly how I want and if it’s not, there’s only me to blame.  At home, no one rolls their eyes at me when I ask for “hold the onions and extra cheese… oh and I would prefer pecans to walnuts please.”  When it comes to cooking, I certainly agree with article that it’s about knowing what I’m putting in my body.  I can make a mean lasagna for 1/3 of the calories of Olive Garden’s and really, vegetables taste just fine without butter.  As for my wedding, there is much more pressure to personalize than there were in past decades (my mom kindly explained that she was not discrediting my obsession with perfecting a ‘theme’ for my wedding… it was just that when she got married, all you had to choose was a husband, a dress and a reception hall).  My closet perfectionist snuck out, tapped me on the shoulder and said “no one can make any of this exactly how you want it as well as you can!”

So what do you think?  Why, at a time when we are receiving a higher-education than ever before (in fact college enrollment among females is on the whole higher than our male counterparts) are women returning to these domestic tasks?  Is it empowering?  Will it turn back into a chore?  What’s the motive and implications? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts…

Johanna