I am an eighteen year Black male who grew up in an upper middle class African American family. By no means should it be inferred that I am incapable of performing household duties and chores. Barbra Ehrenreich article “Maid to Order,” offends not only me, but my entire up being. In her article she talks about working as a maid for upper class and upper middle class families. The conclusions and opinions contained in the article were all based upon her personal interactions with the children and wife’s she worked for as well as her observations of the treatment of other maids by the families they were employed by. She takes no prisoners in distain for the matriarchs of upper middle class families. The unbridged she has for upper middle class …show more content…
It was a right-of passage that I, and everyone else I knew, had to endure. I do not know one person who likes doing chores. My parents not only had me do them because they had to get done, but to teach me how to be self- sufficient. No self-respecting adult should ever have to ask anyone how to wash dishes, clean a bathroom or do their laundry. These were the types of chores I did on a weekly basis. The statement that Enrenreich makes is probably one of the rudest things I have ever read, “Upper-middle-class children raised in the servant economy…are bound to grow up as domestically incompetent as their parents and no less dependent on people to clean up after them”(Enrenreich). I cannot even remember the number of times I have washed dishes, mopped/vacuumed floors, taken out the trash or even shoveled snow. As I said before, I am guilty of being an upper-middle-class child. Though people have cleaned my house, I too have done that. So I completely appreciate it when others do the cleaning, but I am speaking for myself and not all children that grew up in an upper-middle-class household. Reading Enrenreich’s article did cause me to reflect on how I acted around the cleaning people that worked in our house. Her anecdotes brought back memories of some of the things I had done. Though, I was young and did not fully understand that what I was doing wrong. However, as I continued to read the article I felt compelled to check my …show more content…
When Enrenreich said, “No one wants to put the kids to work again,” I all but looked up from the reading looking around as if to say who’s parent is that, for truly she had not met my mother or any of her friends. I believe that my parents want more for me. They want and expect me to achieve more than they did. For them putting me to work was the first step to achieving greater goals. I remember my last month home before starting college. My dad told me that I was going to mow the lawn once before I left. It took me three hours to mow the front and back yards. It was not until I spoke to my dad later that I learned that the lawnmower had a lever which I could have used to make the mowing easier and faster. That is to say, undenounced to me, I pushed and pulled a fully self-propelled lawn mower for three hours that afternoon. My parent aren’t the ones, cannot be the one’s Enrenriech is talking about. Part of the way my parents were raised may have to do with the way they raised me, but for now Enrenriech article only works to strengthen my commitment to both my dad and mom for everything they have done for
...Even with the pitfalls in Ehrenreich's research, she managed to shine a light on the everyday plight of the low wage worker. She achieved employment at several different low wage service jobs and she also achieved friendliness with the coworkers there. Unfortunately, she could not achieve her goal of making enough money to pay the following month's rent at her accommodations, as she dictated to be her sign of success at the beginning of the project. Without this success, she can truly say that the plight of the low wage worker and the women leaving welfare is an extremely difficult one with great hardship and lack of fulfillment as these participants of the lower class work day to day to keep their chins up and make do with what, even if little, they have.
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
In chapter three of this report a section is established exclusively for matriarchy in the Negro American family. Based on the Moynihan Report, the role of the black woman in the family is to be aware her sense of self, financially, academically, and emotionally, while also uplifting and solidifying the status of the Negro man, as well as her children, both male and female. The genesis of matriarchal dominance amongst the Negro family is, according to Moynihan, education. Moynihan compares various educational rates of white males and females and nonwhite males and females. Statistically sh...
Lillian Smith provides a description of the typical black woman and the typical white woman "of the pre-1960's American South" (Gladney 1) in her autobiographical critique of southern culture, Killers of the Dream. The typical black woman in the South is a cook, housekeeper, nursemaid, or all three wrapped up in one for at least one white family. Therefore, she is the double matriarch of the South, raising her own family and the families of her white employers: "It was not a rare sight in my generation to see a black woman with a dark baby at one breast and a white one at the other, rocking them both in her wide lap" (Smith 130). The southern black woman's duties extend far beyond rearing children, as she also serves as a family counselor, confidant, and nurse for the entire white family (Smith 129) and her own if time permits. She can do all this and more because she is strong, wise, and insightful in all areas of life (Smith 119). In short, the southern black woman is the cornerstone of the southern, domestic life. The white woman in the South has an equally important role. The southern white woman is responsible for maintaining southern social order, better known as Southern Tradition.
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
The majority of cultures around the world believe women belong in the household and are responsible for cooking, cleaning, raising children and taking care any and all needs of the man. While fulfilling all these task women are also except to look their best at all times. Being a maid requires the worker to take the roles of cleaning, looking their best as they clean, and in some cases raise the children. Ehrenreich states that maids have to dress “In the most eye-catching elaboration of the home-as-workplace theme”. The typical attire of a maid is a tight, black and white short dress that leaves little to the imagination. In the sixties to seventies, maid service was viewed as the “Great Equalizer” that allowed women to leave the house and work by utilizing the skills they are supposed to know. The Great Equalizer was growing to the extent that in “1973 congressional hearings on whether to extend the Fair Labor Standards Act to household workers”. This hearing would grant maids a minimum wage pay of 7.25 per hour, overtime pay eligibility, record keeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers. Ironically a great counter argument was provided "the demand for household help inside the home will continue to increase as more women seek occupations outside the home." This argument proved very troublesome since it strongly suggests to keep women oppressed by gender standards and maintain the cultural values of the sixties to seventies. Even with this counter argument the act was extended to domestic workers in
In “Scrubbing in Maine”by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich decides to work at the Maids Franchise so she can observe how the system was made for the maids. During her time being a maid she became emotionally impacted by the way her and the women were treated. Ehrenreich experiences in the article”Scrubbing in Maine,’’are the ones I can relate to even though both jobs don’t seem the same, the fact is my time spent working at Jewel is remarkably and depressingly similar to the time spent by Ehrenreich as a maid. In both instances employees are not really human, but are parts of a bigger machine and only Blue collar workers are stereotypes as uneducated unthinking individuals. As Blue collar jobs emphasized the routines, dehumanization of the employee, and loss of control over a person’s time. Workers do not engage in cognitive skills, but physical
The black woman in the U.S. holds a precarious role: she is a woman, she is black and she is quickly becoming the dominant force of her people. The black woman is increasingly the sole bread winner in her household because she is forced into that position because of the...
Kuttner also agrees, “a lot of ugly realities were concealed by “traditional values”; the legal and economic emancipation of women was long overdue, and the task now is to reconcile gender equality with the healthy raising of the next generation.” (124). Before the 1890s, females had no other options but to live with their parents before marriage and with their husband after marriage. They couldn’t work and if they did, their wages were way lower than men.
Not only has she graduated from two exceptional Ivy League colleges (Princeton and Harvard), she is also a lawyer. She was raised on the South Side of Chicago, had opportunities to study at prestigious universities, returned to her hometown, married, and raised two beautiful daughters. Unlike Barack, Michelle has two black parents and a black sibling, and she comes from a city readily associated with black life and politics. She even has a family tree that traces back to American slavery. Observers comfortably frame Michelle Obama as angry Sapphire figure, but how is that possible when she is one out of the few mothers who hold degrees from the most reputable schools around the world. Again, her critique was taken as evidence of her ideational anger. Michelle Obama is the most known example of an African American woman who has worked hard to become who she is today and is probably the most idealistic perfect woman. Still the success and difficulty she has experienced in gaining accurate recognition is emblematic, if not typical, of black women’s citizenship struggles. She is still only seen as the stereotypical black woman in the eyes of supremacist even though she has out succeeded the majority of people today. One could assume that Michelle Obama is someone who could be looked to as faultless representation of how black women can achieve and obtain such incredible power. Unfortunately, not even the first lady is respected even with her credentials. For example. there were attempts to frame her with the common trope of hypersexuality. In the heat of the general election fight, Fox News referred to her as “Barack’s baby mama”. Instead she fights strong against these over rationalized comments because she knows she is better than what they say. If Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States, is not recognized as credible, than it is clear that no black woman will ever be
One of the most common expectations for women then is that they are responsible for doing the chore of cleaning whether it is cleaning the house, doing the laundry. The McGuffey Readers mentions the women’s duty to clean in a multiple places. In this handbook it gives clear directions to the woman on what she is to do when cleaning, “This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the wall and ceilings with brushes dipped into a solution of lime… (Gorn 111).” The book explains how it is the women’s job to thoroughly clean the house once a year in a manner that sounds very laborious! It further states, “The misfortune is, that the sole object is to make things clean (Gorn 112).” In this part of the book it is very clear that it is saying that the woman’s duty is to clean. In Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey it illustrates this in a couple of passages. For example, one woman wrote in her diary, “Oh! Horrors how shall I express it; it is the dreaded washing day . . . but washing must be done and procrastination won’t do it for me (Schlissel 83).” Although this woman obviously did not like doing the washing she saw it as her job to do. In addition, the book describes this scene, “The banks of a river would be lined with women who carried their kettles, their washtubs, and piles of unwashed linen (Schlissel 82).” Again, it is the women who are doing the cleaning. The McGuffey Readers being the handbook that young girls would read in school taught them that it was their place to do the cleaning. It is apparent that they took that into consideration as shown by the Women’s Diaries and even today is seen as their role.
My parents are two of the most hardworking people I know. Although a college dropout, my father is now an engineer at the Boeing Company, while my mother ran a well-known daycare until I started high school. My parents had decided to homeschool my three siblings and me a little after I was born, and to do so, they had no qualms about sacrificing time, money, or respect. When I entered ninth grade, my parents chose to close my mother’s daycare to better homeschool my siblings and me, which meant my father had to then single-handedly support our family of six.
As slavery was replaced by lowly paid domestic help, female servants, particularly the young maids, were often forced to become the sexual playthings of the members of their employers' families. A domestic servant was afforded little privacy, dignity, or freedom to socialize with others. The employer expected sexual favors to go along with the rest of the duties exacted from the domestic servants. The domestic servant who became pregnant could no longer anticipate marriage. If she bore an illegitimate child, she would be dismissed from her job and shunned by society. As a last resort, unemployed dome...
I go out of my way to make it seem natural that I’m raising her son while she’s at the manicurist. All the little stories I tell and the ‘Sure, I’d be happy to’ make her feel like I live there. And then she forgets that I’m doing a job…” (page 124). Nanny feels like she doesn’t even care about her or what she is doing. Nanny feels trap and stuck on a constant routine every day because Mrs. X can’t be there for her son half of the time, so Nanny has to be there for him. Nanny can’t do certain things because of the economy. The economy is very stable during this time period which, the wealthy people get richer and tend to spend more money on stupid expensive stuff they don’t need but crave for it. While the poor people get poorer or seem like they are begging rich people for money, which, isn’t the case. Mrs. X treats Nanny as if she is the bottom of the “food chain” and Mrs. X and the wealthy people see themselves as if they are at the top of the “food chain”. They act like they are better than everybody else. Even in 21st century, people are still treated like second class citizens by the
Due to parents having to take on 2-3 part-time jobs or low wage jobs, parents are required to deal with long hours, unusual hours, lack of benefits that cover paid sick days, paid medical, parental leave, and vacation time. This prevents parents from participating in their children’s development. (Spross, Jeff. "Low-Wage Jobs Don’t Just Harm Workers — They Harm Their Children." ThinkProgress RSS. 7 Dec. 2012. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.) Parents are not home to look after their children. When parents are home, it is for a short period that allows parents to feed the children, bath them and put them to bed. Parents have to choose their family time or making income and income is priority to try and provide the necessary needs like a home, electric, and food. This struggle between income and family has put tremendous stress on parents which lead to a higher level of depression which affects the whole family. Some young adult children are forced into the work force before they graduate to help the family. If these young adults are one of the fortunate ones that don’t need to join the workforce, they are still faced with taking on an adult role due to having to play mommy or daddy to their younger siblings. Having this kind of responsibility at such a young age causes some of these young adults to fall into a depression or stressed out with all the responsibility that they start rebelling authority or looking for