"I Think I'm a Housewife"
The Case against Euphemisms
A couple of months ago, when I took my youngest to college, I retired from my twenty-one years as a stay-at-home mom and became a housewife. Unfortunately, the word “housewife” can seem rather disreputable these days. Think about it: in the media you never hear of a woman being called a housewife unless the words “just a” precede it. We women who work inside the home don’t usually call ourselves housewives; instead we’re stay-at-home-moms, freelancers, tutors, family managers, domestic goddesses—all jobs that we do proudly, and all jobs that are in fact part of being a housewife. I’m reminded of the early 1980s comedy Taxi, in which Elaine is an aspiring art gallery owner, Tony is an aspiring boxer, Bobby is an aspiring actor, and Latka is . . . well, I don’t actually know what Latka is.
Only Alex is a cab driver and nothing else—the implication being that for most of the characters it is shameful to be “just a” cab driver.
Because “housewife” is not always a respected role, we use euphemisms like “domestic goddess” instead. In the song below, Michelle Shocked writes to an old friend and gets a poignant letter back. The friend feels “anchored down in Anchorage” and says Michelle’s letter “take[s] me back to the days of the foreign telegrams and the all-night rock-and-roll. Hey Shell, we was wild then.” Her letter ends, “Leroy got a better job so we moved, Kevin lost a tooth, now he’s started school. I’ve got a brand-new eight-month-old baby girl. Uh, I sound like a housewife. Hey, Shell, I think I’m a housewife.” The song makes it clear that she thinks this is a bad thing. I have decided to reclaim “housewife,” at least in my own life, in order to rebel against the assumption—in this lovely song as well as in our culture—that being a housewife is a sad fate.
For the four reasons I discuss below, I’d like to advocate for avoiding euphemisms in other situations as well and, in their place, choosing plain, honest, courageous speaking.
Euphemisms reveal our secret discomfort or even disgust with traits that should be neutral and normal. Maybe because I just turned 55, I have become frustrated by how social services, healthcare workers, and the news media no longer say “old people”; the new term is “older adult.” But what is wrong with saying people are old? Being old is not terrible—it sure beats the alternative! When we replace “old” with “older adult,” we imply that being old is regrettable and that it is rude to notice a person’s age.
There are many examples of this phenomenon in addition to replacing “old” with “older adult” or “housewife” with “domestic goddess.” The writer Lindy West wants to reclaim “fat” as a neutral descriptive term. Some readers may remember the days when gay men were “confirmed bachelors.” A couple of generations ago, homosexuality was viewed as so terrible that it was literally unspeakable. A very funny scene from The Office, in which Michael Scott asks Oscar if he’d like everyone to call him a “less-offensive term than Mexican,” captures perfectly how euphemisms often reveal our underlying prejudices.
Euphemisms are imprecise. “Older adults” is a perfect example of euphemistic imprecision. Who, exactly, are we talking about? My kids are eighteen and twenty-one—is my twenty-one-year-old an older adult? Are we talking middle-aged folks like me, or people in their 90s? OK, I’m being disingenuous here, but you see my point: everyone knows what we mean when we say someone is old, but in some conversations—especially in public policy, healthcare, and journalism—the exact age of the people being discussed is relevant, and “older adult” is vague.
I recently encountered another puzzling euphemism in a murder mystery.1 In the book, a man was having sex with women who had, in the author’s words, “learning disabilities.” The other characters thought this was shocking and immoral. But why? I wondered. We don’t require people with dyslexia and other learning disabilities to be celibate. I was so confused—until I realized that the author was using the phrase as a euphemism for Down Syndrome. She added an author’s note in the second novel of the series, in which she explained what she actually meant by “learning disabilities” and apologized because some readers might be offended by even such a mild term.
Euphemisms are frequently not what people call themselves. While most professionals who work with autistic people use “person-first” labels (“people with autism”), the vast majority of autistic people and their families prefer “identity-first” labels (“autistic person”). Autistic people think of their condition as an integral part of their personality rather than as a disability, and to them saying “person with autism” suggests that autism is a tragic condition inflicted upon them. Here is another excellent article that makes a persuasive case for identify-first language. Many Deaf people dislike “hearing-impaired” and “auditorily disabled” because these expressions suggest that deafness is bad. Instead, they choose to capitalize Deaf to show membership in a community that has a common language and culture. I’m sure readers can think of other politically correct terms that don’t match what people call themselves.
Euphemisms lie about suffering and struggles. I would wager that every one of us as a child has felt betrayed by a doctor who told us, before giving us a shot, that we would “feel just a little pinch.” Of course the pain of a single injection, while more than a little pinch, is minor, but euphemisms like “confused,” “differently abled,” “discomfort,” being a “little down,” “having it a bit tough,” etc. minimize the experiences of dementia, disability, chronic pain, depression, and other conditions. These euphemisms protect us from acknowledging and sympathizing with what other people are going through. Euphemisms impede honest conversations and deeper connections with other people.2
I really can’t put this point any better than the brilliant George Carlin, who notes that saying PTSD instead of shell shock3 hides the cruel reality of war.
When we are considering whether to use a euphemism for another person or situation, we should ask ourselves, What does our need to use this term say about us? Is this a term the person uses, or did we assign it without asking first? Will this label comfort the other person, or are we using it to shield ourselves?
To return to my own situation as a proud and happy housewife, I’m reminded of a cute story from when I was in graduate school. A professor I worked with, Larry, taught a freshman humanities class on War and Peace, and he noticed that his students invariably misunderstood the ending, in which the lovely, vivacious, teenaged Natasha Rostov matures into a “strong, handsome, fertile woman.”4 The eighteen-year-old students always thought this ending was the most terrible tragedy for poor Natasha! But in fact Tolstoy wanted to show that she was living a happy, settled, fulfilling life. Larry got fed up, so he invited his fiancée, who was in her late 30s, to come talk to the class. She introduced herself as a “strong, handsome, fertile woman” and added, “And you know what? It’s actually pretty great!” Similarly, from now on I’m calling myself a housewife—it’s actually pretty great!
I have woven a second thesis through this piece, beginning with Michelle Shocked’s friend and ending with Natasha Rostov. As the years pass, we replace the all-night rock-and-roll with a more settled life. We grow into strong, handsome adults. We accumulate experience and grow old. These are good things. Let’s say so.
How about you, readers? What euphemisms do you find particularly amusing or frustrating? Are there any euphemisms you would like to jettison from your life? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
Jokes from dictatorial regimes use euphemisms cleverly: everyone knows the brutal truth but can only refer to it elliptically, through a joke. Our family loves a genre of jokes I call Cynical Russian Jokes, including this Armenian Radio joke, from the Soviet era:
Armenian Radio opens up the phones for questions. A caller asks, “What is the most beautiful city in the world?”
Armenian Radio responds, “Yerevan is the most beautiful city in the world.”
The caller asks, “How many bombs would it take to destroy Yerevan?”
After a pause, Armenian Radio replies, “Tbilisi is also a very beautiful city.”
The book is The Long Call and is the first in Ann Cleeves’s excellent Two Rivers mystery series. In spite of my quibble about her confusing euphemism, I highly recommend these books!
Of course I am not suggesting that everyone must talk forthrightly about their struggles if they would prefer not to. We all cope with our struggles in our own way. The key distinction is whether it’s the suffering person or the observer who is applying the euphemism.
My son, who studies history, raises the important caveat that during and after WWI, people were extremely unsympathetic to those who suffered from shell shock. So Carlin’s point isn’t entirely correct—strong, clear terms don’t always lead to greater empathy and understanding.
This was the quote Larry always used. My edition, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, has it as “strong, beautiful, and fruitful female” (p. 1154).
Beyond the negative associations that accompany the word housewife, I think it's clumsy and imprecise. No one who works in the home, raising and caring for a family-- maintaining the domestic space, finances, schedules, nutrition, education careers, neighbor and family relations, activities and outings, etc. are married to their house. Let's just face it, housewife is a female gendered word that has been devalued like any job or career path that is traditionally female dominated. It's encouraging that US economists in the Labor Department or Treasury are attempting assign monetary value to home makers, which I think is more accurately describes the job. Indeed, providing a stable and safe place to live, one that nurtures healthy familial attachments, nourishes the stomachs and the souls of its habitants, and supports educational and career opportunities of family members, is really invaluable and incalculable, but at least it's a start. My recommendation, don't settle for a word that inaccurately describes the valuable and critical role you play to the economy and to society (And yes, Margaret Thatcher there is such a thing as a society!) I vote for home maker!
I agree with most of this, except one point. PTSD isn't just caused by war- it can be caused by house fires, car crashes, the suicide of a loved one, or even a lot of small tragedies stacked on top of each other. I'd argue calling it "shell shock" minimizes the real harm done by all these traumas.