Must-Read: Heather Boushey: Home Economics

Must-Read: Heather Boushey: Home Economics: “American businesses used to have a silent partner…

…the American Wife. She made sure the American Worker showed up for work well rested (he didn’t have to wake up at 3 a.m. to feed the baby or comfort a child after a nightmare), in clean clothes (that he neither laundered nor stacked neatly in the closet), with a lunch box packed to the brim with cold-cut sandwiches, coffee, and a home-baked cookie. She took care of all the big and small daily emergencies that might distract the American Worker from focusing 100 percent on his job while he was at work…. For decades, the American Wife gave American businesses a big, fat bonus….

This unspoken yet well-understood business contract is now broken. Moreover, it doesn’t look like we’re going back to it anytime soon. Nor should we. American families look different today. Wives—and women more generally—work outside the home because they need to and because they want to…