Shannon Hayes, an American of Irish descent, describes her younger self as "ravenously ambitious". When she was 16, she attended high school by day and college courses by night. She had a Phd from Cornell by the age of 27.
Her first college paper was about the psychological benefits of enrolling babies and children in full-time daycare. She was grateful that her mother’s +generation had fought for and won the right to work outside the home.
So how does a woman like that end up at a Dublin Climate Gathering last week talking about the book she wrote called Radical Homemakers? Did she ditch her feminism and sell out?
Hardly. She had always intended to return to the Appalachian farming community where she grew up, but she just thought she would do it as a professional – hence her degrees in rural sociology, sustainable agriculture, community and rural development, and adult education.
She and her husband, Bob, equally highly educated, bought a cabin seven miles from her parents’ farm. Then Bob lost his job.
So they had a stark choice. They could do what most Americans would in those circumstances, that is, pack up, and chase the paying jobs. Or they could stay and work on the family farm raising grass-fed livestock.
They added up what they would pay for a new home, commuting, professional clothing, and buying instead of producing their own food, not to mention childcare. They might still be richer in cash, but an incalculable degree poorer when it came to fulfilment, strong community relationships, and a meaningful life.
Non-consumer choice
This choice led them to a radically non-consumerist lifestyle, and to some intriguing conclusions about society.
They believe the heart was ripped from the home by the Industrial Revolution. The home used to be the sphere of both men and women. The word ‘husband’ originally came from two words: hus, meaning house, and band, meaning bind. A husband was someone bound to his house, in the sense of a freeholder.
‘Husband’ has connotations of frugality and good stewardship. Homes were centres of production, where as many needs as possible were met.
The Industrial Revolution changed all that, sucking men into the paid workforce. The household was then seen as the feminine sphere, and sadly, devalued as a result. But it also became a lucrative market.
Feminist Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, quotes a man who earned millions as a motivational researcher in the 1960s.
“Properly manipulated,” he said, “if you are not afraid of that word, American housewives can be given a sense of identity, purpose, creativity, the self-realisation, even the sexual joy they lack – by the buying of things.”
The dual-income family provided an even better market. Women were sucked into paid work as well, which left a gigantic hole in the home which had to be filled with purchased goods and skills, leaving people struggling to pay for the very things they had once provided for themselves.
By the time of the final edition of The Feminine Mystique in the 1990s, Betty Friedan realised that the key issue was no longer gender, but the power of corporations.
We have all become consumers, rather than producers. In order to reverse that process, we need more homemakers.
A life to savour
It's not an attempt to re-chain women to the kitchen sink, but to develop an egalitarian view of the household, where ecological sustainability, social justice, and care of family and community are the tenets we live by.
We can rediscover skills taken for granted just a generation ago, such as how to make a chicken stretch to provide three meals, or grow our own vegetables, and buy less and live more. We might even rear our own children, rather than outsourcing that, too. There’s a radical concept.
Shannon’s message is not some hippy-dippy nonsense. Food security is becoming a worry. A mere month’s delay in growth saw animals starve to death on Irish farms this year.
The grass-fed beef we are so proud of was fed by French fodder imported at enormous expense. Moreover, our love affair with cheap food that has to be transported thousands of miles is enormously damaging to the environment, not to mention killing Irish farms.
We need to support responsible local producers and take responsibility for producing what we can ourselves.
Easy for Shannon Hayes, you might say, on her farm, but she points out that there is enough unshaded roof space on skyscrapers in New York to grow food for the entire city. Think of what our little green country could do.
It's a positive, life-enhancing message. Lettuce in a windowbox, or an effort to buy local and avoid waste are steps towards a lifestyle that not only saves us money, but is more sane and sustainable.
radicalhomemakers.com