Aaargh!!!
Okay, I've been trying to post for several days now and the universe is conspiring against me. This morning alone I've had to find the tools to unlock the bathroom to let the cat out (nobody would admit to pushing down the button), put away DH's tools that he left all over my washer, and fix the stupid internet connection on the computer! GAaaaaah!!!
Pant, pant.....okay...I'm okay now...really.
Anyway....
Sunday morning found me the only guest at a lovely little pity party I was throwing for myself. You see, yet again, after a busy week taking care of everybody but myself - as soon as I stopped - I got sick. Not really sick. Not, get me to the doctor sick. Not, please God kill me now sick. Just - annoying sick. Sore throat, swollen glands, achy all over and feeling like God just made gravity stronger. Sick enough that if I managed to force my body to function and push everyone out the door to church I'd be very sorry later.
So, we stayed home. And I lay there with my thoughts. It wasn't helping that Sunday was just gorgeous like the first day of spring and the rest of the family was outside enjoying it.
I thought about how it seems like all I do is housework and errands and shuttle children around. I thought about my college days and the career that never really got off the ground because I stayed home and helped my mom care for my father after his open heart surgery instead of moving out. I thought about how even though I've always wanted to be a wife and mother how many days I feel like I do neither very well. I thought about how hard being a SAHM is and how moms have to do so much every single day and rarely get credit for any of it. I thought about how sometimes I feel like the pioneer women must have felt - all alone with their children and their work - not having time or anybody around to socialize with.
Well... that line of thought triggered the researcher in me. I started Googling around now curious about just exactly how life would have been for my pioneer sisters before me. So I read a bit about that, and then got curious about motherhood and homemakers throughout history.
And ran up against a startling thing. I had this thought in mind that someone, somewhere would have written a web site (or book, I still like the kind with paper pages) about women's roles throughout history. And well, no. They haven't. Now, I didn't exhaust all my possibilities yet. But really these days, if someone has researched it you can usually find at least a reference to it somewhere online. Nope. Couldn't.
Lots of references on recent history - pioneer women, Victorian age women, pre WWI women, lots and lots from the suffragette movement to the present. Decent amount of stuff from the middle ages. But from the 1st century to the 15th almost complete silence. A few references under the Dark Ages - very sketchy.
Pre 1st century you can only get if you look up a particular empire, i.e. Rome or Greece. You mean to tell me that in the 21st century no one has put together a comprehensive history of women and their roles? I found this rather unbelievable so I gathered up the baby and went about it the old fashioned way. We went to the library. I asked the nice reference librarian my question. She found it very valid. And she (with all her sources and interlibrary stuff) could find precious little. Feeling a bit nonplussed and confused I hiked over to the women's interest section and browsed the shelves. Hmm. More of what I saw online - lots of stuff from the 1700's onward - nothing before that. I emptied half the section with what books I could find and returned home to start learning.
I'm by no means done. But what I've gleaned so far is fascinating. I suppose this should have been intuitive, but I found out that throughout time (what I could find of it) society has always tried to put women in little boxes, dictated what's expected of them, told them what to wear, placed the ultimate responsibility for home and child rearing on their shoulders regardless of where they were, expected them to get all their work done regardless of conditions or resources, and took it for granted they would work even when sick, tired, or weak from hunger themselves.
In every society in every age that I could find, the women picked up the slack no matter what the men were doing. And during times of war, famine, and crisis - they did more.
Well, I didn't exactly feel better - but I sort of did. I feel like maybe my life drives me crazy sometimes, but at least I'm part of a long line of my sisters before me. They did the work because it had to be done and no one else was doing it.
Mabye I need to look into this further. It really frustrates me that I can't pull out a few books and share with my daughter our history across time as women. Maybe someone has done something about this. Maybe I'm supposed to be that someone - I don't know.
But now my curiosity is peaked and I'm on a quest. And on a quest for knowledge, I'm like a bloodhound....
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