The Modern Homemaker's Dilemma
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What You Might Have Missed At Classically Abby…
Mark Your Calendar: Book Club Is Tuesday, August 29th
This month we are reading fiction (we switch up month-to-month) and the book we will be reading is…A Gentleman in Moscow! I have heard amazing things about this book, so I’m really looking forward to reading it with you all. Mark your calendars for Tuesday, August 29th at 8:15 PM EST. Looking forward to seeing you all then!
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If you would like to have a one-on-one session regarding dating, leveling up, fashion styling, wardrobe help, makeup guidance, homemaking, navigating career choices, or anything else you’d like my advice on, I will now be offering one-hour sessions for a small extra fee. Only premium subscribers have access to these sessions, and for $75, we can have a really focused conversation about how to get you where you want to be!
If you’re interested, leave a comment down below. Once you’ve booked a session, I’ll send you a questionnaire so we can determine what you want to work on. Then we’ll schedule a time that works for you! I’m so looking forward to chatting with you all and getting to know you even better.
Quote of the Week:
"A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide." - Mickey Mantle
Classic Style Inspo
When I was traveling with my family for our reunion, I picked up this amazingly soft shawl, and I’m in love! It’s the perfect piece of clothing to throw on for modesty without making me overheat in this Florida summer. I love the embroidered flowers and light fabric. Try a light shawl rather than a cardigan next time you’re looking to cover your arms when it’s hot out!
Things I’ve Been Loving: Hero Sunscreen
I have been on the hunt for a mineral sunscreen that doesn’t leave a white cast and that sits well under makeup. This is my favorite so far! It almost feels like a normal sunscreen, but it doesn’t have nearly as many of those nasty chemicals. I’m a fan!
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I'm a wife, mama, opera singer, entrepreneur, YouTuber, and your guide to becoming the classic woman you've always wanted to be! Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter to see how! And together, let's be classic.
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The Modern Homemaker’s Dilemma
Hello my lovely friends! How are you all doing? I am so excited to be back in the swing of things, getting into a schedule, and sitting down to write for all of you. We are back from our family reunion and it exhausting but fun! We did a ton of activities for the kids which meant we were all beat by the end of the day - for example, I went to sleep at around 9:30 PM each night. I have had sciatica during this pregnancy, and I must have overdone it during our reunion because one day I woke up and LITERALLY couldn’t walk. It was a little scary, but after stretching my leg and doing some pressure points, I felt so much better. But in my panic, I made a prenatal massage for the day we got home and, WOW, I am so grateful I did. After the craziness of this summer, it was so nice to allow my body and mind to reset and refresh. For the first time in quite a while, I felt renewed rather than burnt out. If you can afford to get a massage and you are in need of one, I highly recommend taking the time for yourself. It is one of the only places I can really turn off my mind and, at the same time, give my body a chance to heal.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’ve lost the art of homemaking through decades of feminist ideology and thought. We are at least one generation removed from the women who knew how to run a household, who were taught home economics, and who knew having children was an essential part of womanhood (for those to whom it’s accessible).
I look at my own history, and I can see the line of communication was broken years ago. My mother grew up in a feminist world, where everything to do with homemaking was discouraged and relegated to second-class work. Cooking? Too time-consuming for a woman who should be using her time to climb the corporate ladder. Cleaning? A waste of time for someone with an education. Staying at home with your children? “A comfortable concentration camp,” according to Betty Friedan. I’m not saying my mother held these beliefs as her own, but her own homemaking capabilities were seriously hampered by these pervasive ideas. She was a very involved mother and a wonderful role model, but homemaking was at the bottom of her list of priorities.
My grandmother on my mother’s side was not a homemaker, either. Despite the fact that she wasn’t a product of second-wave feminism, my grandmother was a business woman. She cooked as a carry-over from my great-grandmother, but she didn’t pass on the same love of cooking to my mother. Her work was very important to her, and so my mother was raised with a careerist attitude from her own mother and from the feminism of her era.
By the time I came around, homemaking was a thing of the past. Women worked. They hired cleaning ladies to take care of their homes. They brought in interior designers to place furniture and picture frames in the most “aesthetically-pleasing” places. They began cooking for speed and efficiency rather than for the delicious meals that everyone remembered fondly as “mama’s home cooking.” They stopped learning how to budget in favor of earning ever more money, constantly needing to make more so they could have more. They didn’t put their children’s needs first; they put their own self-identity ahead of everything else. They blamed all their children’s outcomes on nature versus nurture and removed the onus of responsibility of parenting from themselves. Managing time for each part of homemaking, the small and big things that make being home warm and inviting, was moved so far down the totem pole that home life became chaotic and stressful.
And now women don’t even know how to make a home at all. Women are lost and fumbling and when they try to make a home they don’t have the tools.
What we need is a homemaking curriculum.
Each day I embrace my role as a homemaker, I am learning how to be the best at my “career.” I take seriously how to be a better wife, mother, and creator of the home that houses the people and things that I love and am so grateful for. I wasn’t raised with it. I wasn’t taught how to do this. But, in the same way no one is born being a lawyer, I am teaching myself my vocation. Perhaps the passed down wisdom of mothering, homemaking, and womanhood is no longer available to us. So now, we must approach these jobs as we would any other. We must learn ourselves.
So here, now, let’s begin. Class is in session. 😊
Cathy Here (we haven't had success as two subscribers to have a way to post separately)
Was blessed beyond measure having my parents make the effort and sacrifice for my mother to be full-time with me and my 3 brothers. As a daughter, this was invaluable to me! Icing on the cake, she was an excellent home-maker(miss her HEAPS!) and was so richly gifted in hospitality. Recognizing the immeasurable blessing she was to me and my brothers propelled my husband and me to do whatever it took so that we would be raising our children. We are so thankful that we made that decision. Perhaps Annette (my daughter also subscribed) could comment on her observations (though I hope she offers grace with my homemaking inadequacies, since my mother's homemaking excellence was not inherited by me...must have skipped a generation as I see Annette has it. She is my mother's namesake :) )
I grew up surrounded by amazing homemakers. My father's mother worked because she had to as a young widow with 3 children, but my mother, and my maternal grandmother were both homemakers and stay at home moms, and I was lucky enough to grow up with my father's grandmother also alive and well.
I feel like I have a headstart as a homemaker, because I grew up surrounded by incredible examples of what to do and how to do it. I didn't inherit nearly as many recipes as I would have liked (mostly because they were never translated to English on my mom's side, and never written down on my dad's), but I did inherit a wonderful sense of pride in and duty to my home and my family. ❤️❤️❤️