“‘There's got to be more than kids and housework,’ and I can remember fighting my inner self trying to say ‘I'm not happy,’ and being a pain in the neck to live with (Monica, age thirty-nine)” (32)

Reference: England, K. (1993). Changing suburbs, changing women: Geographic perspectives on suburban women and suburbanization. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 14(1), 24-43.

England conducts her research by interviewing 30 white women between the ages of 23 and 64 living in the Westerville and Worthington suburbs in Columbus, Ohio. While of course a flaw of this research is that there were no other racial groups represented, England addresses the fact that 97% of the women living in these suburbs are white. Her intent in conducting these interviews is to challenge the idea of suburban women being the victims of “spatial restraints” (25) in their home environments and to portray them as “knowledgeable, strategizing agents” (25)

“Given that gender is central to the allocation of resources, facilities, and opportunities, feminist geographers argue that it is essential to the structuring of urban spaces: the location of residential areas, workplaces, and transportation networks and the overall layout of cities reflect a patriarchal capitalist society's expectations of what types of activities take place where, when, and by whom” (24) 

This quotation validates what I learned in 3P74 and also in Federici’s text: capitalism and the reproduction of gender norms are synonymous with one another. Our society runs on the idea that in order to keep up with capital, men and women need to continue to carry out their specific gendered roles.

Argument of paper: “Unfortunately suburban women are usually presented as the innocent, passive victims of a built environment. I argue that this oversimplifies the complex interrelationship between people and spatial structures. First and foremost, people are agents with reproductive and transformative capacities. Thus, suburban women should be viewed as active and strategizing people able to alter their sociospatial relations and create neighborhood support networks to better meet their needs and those of their families” (24-25)

“…the state, property developers, planners, and architects have underwritten and designed postwar suburban housing and neighborhoods based on patriarchal and heterosexist assumptions about ‘appropriate’ gender roles and subsequent social practices. The ‘private’ sphere of consumption/reproduction, home, family, and domesticity being the domain of women, and the ‘public’ sphere of production, waged work, and political activity being associated with men” (25)

“In the suburbs White women were offered a new vision of the family, one based on the conspicuous consumption of mass-produced goods and services in pursuit of an arcadian life-style, away from the ravages and harsh reality of production in the central city. They became all-purpose, high-value, low-cost housewives whose job was to maintain a detached, single-family dwelling as a private, safe haven for the emotional well-being of their family” (25-26)

Women were almost brainwashed to feel important thinking that their responsibility to purchase all of these household goods for their family and provide for their family was their only purpose in life. I was having a discussion last night with my mom about feminism and she cautioned me about looking down on women who choose to take on the homemaker role for not going out and “doing something bigger” with her lives (that was how she described it). She told me that a big part of feminism is women doing what they want to do with their lives and not feeling obligated to conform to certain roles as a result of patriarchal societal influence (she actually said “…without being forced by a man” but I jazzed it up a little there to include institutional forms of male dominance). I of course agreed with her, and said if that’s what a woman really wants to do with her life I would never judge. I didn’t want to get into a full-blown discussion (it had been a LONG day) but what I had wanted to say and did not end up saying was that it is a difficult situation because you have to wonder how many of these women are actually doing what they do because they are passionate about their role, or because they feel obligated as a “labour of love.” I think that’s where things get complicated, and just as tradition was discussed in the last article, I think a woman’s feelings of obligation to be the woman her mother was (which for a lot of women, is the traditional homemaker) plays a large role in these “passions.” Thus, while I’m all about women choosing their own way and doing what they want with their lives, I have to be critical of where these desires came from: are they really their own, or do they stem from a deep-rooted history of oppression?

“Suburbs were built farther and farther from the central city, where most of the paid jobs were, meaning that men's commutes grew longer, decreasing the amount of time they could spend with their families. This, in turn, increased the isolation felt by women, especially as there was often only one car, which was used by the men commuting to their jobs in the central city” (26)

This is really interesting. Women were pretty much deserted on their own little island, often home alone all day if their children were school-age. The separation between the suburbs and the city with only one vehicle in most homes made it essentially impossible for women to seek work: how could they, when their husband had the car and neither one of them would be home in time for when the children arrived back from school?

“…some women felt that marriage had ‘rescued’ them from the tedium of paid work and the controlled environment of their parents' home. They felt that it was a form of independence because they actually had some autonomy and control in their own homes. Many remarked that as middle-class, White women they had been brought up to believe that marriage, motherhood, and full-time domesticity were something to aspire to” (33)

Coming from the perspective of a white middle-class woman, I can definitely relate to this way of thinking. I am twenty-two years old now and live at home because I decided to go to university locally for my program. It’s really difficult for me because just as England suggests, I really do feel trapped at times in my own home: I don’t have the money to live on my own yet, but at the same time many of the opinions of my parents are now beginning to clash with my own as I’m forming my own belief and value system. With regards to the part about being brought up to believe that marriage and motherhood are things that I’m supposed to be aspiring to, that has always been the case for me! Since coming to university I’ve been questioning if my dreams of marriage and children are actually my own, or if I’ve been made to believe that that is what is going to make me happy. As much as I love the idea of being on my own and out of my parents’ home, I question if this newly-acquired independence is actually an illusion whereby I would be moving from one place of oppression to the next…

“Being career-oriented was particularly prevalent among the younger women. In contrast to the older women, they talked of being brought up to expect to earn their living and to pursue a career” (35)

I think this quotation really reflects this transitional process that seems to have started in my parents’ generation and is now advancing into my generation. In addition to being told that I would one day be married with my own kids for as long as I can remember, I have also been taught that I should always try my hardest in school so I can get a good job someday. My parents have always drilled the importance of school into my head, and so now I find myself struggling to negotiate these two desires: to be a career woman, and a wife and mother. Is it possible to have a successful life in both the public (work) and the private (home) sphere, or does one need to take a backseat to the other? If I want to be extremely successful in my career, that probably will mean working at least five days a week and for long hours: will I be able to juggle this life with my desire to have a family someday?

A quotation from Clare, one of the women interviewed: “Anyhow with my education and upbringing I want to work. .... Housework has never interested me and being a stay-at-home mom would never satisfy me. Kyle's [her son] at an accredited child-care center, and though I still worry about him, I can see the difference his being there is making. He's very confident and outgoing; it's doing him good” (36)

I can definitely relate to Clare’s comment. Housework has never been something I’ve been interested in, and for that reason I’ve been butting heads a lot with my step mother because I don’t see the purpose of making a bed every day that is just going to be messed up again a minute later. I also think that her comment about her son’s progress in a child-care center is really interesting because it shows that having a mother around all the time is not necessarily the best way to nurture a child’s development; sometimes it is better to have the child out of the home and placed into social settings than it is to keep them isolated within the home.

A quote from Sylvia, another interviewee: “My husband does not help in the house. He always did do better at things like taking the kids to the park. He's often out there with all the neighborhood kids. If I asked him to hang a picture or wash the floor he'd look at me like I'd asked him to go to the moon. He never learnt that stuff, he isn't interested” (38)

It’s interesting to me that Sylvia’s husband does “better at things like taking the kids to the park,” meaning that he will only do things that he finds enjoyable. This is the nightmare relationship that I fear: of course it’s nice that he takes his kids to the park, but the fact that he doesn’t participate in any of the less-enjoyable tasks around the house is inexcusable. No one is truly “interested” in washing the floors but you do it because it needs to be done. For me, if there’s no cooperation and whoever I’m with isn’t willing to pull their weight, I’m done!

“Andrea (age twenty-seven) and her partner Mark had two children, five-year-old Gail and three-year-old Joey. Andrea commuted five miles to work. All of this suggests that her heavy domestic obligations had restricted her job search to areas in close proximity to her home. But this was not the case. Instead, the children were taken care of by their maternal grandfather and their father who worked at home” (39)

This quotation serves as a reminder that times are definitely changing: while still not terribly common, more men are becoming stay-at-home dads and becoming involved in the child-nurturing roles that were once solely the responsibility of the mother.

“Because societal expectations about gender identities are literally fossilized into bricks and mortar they will continue to partially constrain the possibilities open to women. However, it must be remembered that suburban women are not just the passive victims of this process, they are also agents, and as such can actively create strategies and neighborhood support networks to better fit their changing roles and responsibilities” (40)