I love Mad Men. The writing, the aesthetic, everything. It’s a brilliant show and it gave me a sense of what it must have been like to live in that era.
One of the fascinating themes of the show is the rise of the women in the workplace. Whether it’s the working mom like Joan Harris or the ambitious career woman, Peggy Olson, we see the struggles and challenges of balancing family, work, and relationships.
On the other end of the spectrum is Betty Draper Francis, the stereotypical 50s housewife. Unsatisfied, depressed, and insecure, Betty stays home while Don works late or doesn’t come home at all. The kids go to school and are cared for by the nanny who also does most of the housework while Betty looks pretty and is in charge of purchasing the family’s stuff. She is the head of Draper consumption.
But women in Betty’s great-grandmother’s day wouldn’t have been chiefly consumers. In addition to the role of mother, Betty’s great-grandmother would have been a creator. Between growing food, preserving food, cooking food and tending artisan crafts in the home she would have known that her contribution to the household was essential to the family’s welfare. Betty on the other hand is dissatisfied and finds herself questioning her value.
No wonder women like Joan and Peggy want to follow the men into the office! In addition to financial independence, Joan and Peggy want to be more than a consumer. They want to create something of value. And Megan Draper, Don’s second wife, also rejects the housewife model and pursues a career (even though after her marriage to Don she has no financial need to bring in an income). These women work because they like the challenge and creativity of it.
And yet, the life they choose doesn’t end up being paradise. While their struggles are certainly not 100% related to their lifestyle as working women, Joan, Peggy, and Megan’s relationships fail. Joan struggles with balancing her role as a mother with her career and gets precious little time with her son (until she begins working from home in the final episode). Peggy is devastated by the fact that she may never have a family. Betty’s lifestyle certainly was failing her (and also ended in divorce), but for Joan, Peggy, and Megan, the brave new world of women in the workplace isn’t delivering everything they dreamed of.
I think it makes perfect sense that a lot of women rejected the sort of life Betty Draper led (and even Betty decides to go back to school for a psychology degree in the final season). And I don’t think that women seeking to thrive creatively is problematic. The problem is that Joan and Peggy build their lives after an already failing model.
Peggy, for instance, is modeling her life after Don Draper’s. And that’s the life that’s broken. They are struggling, not because they have careers but because they follow in the footsteps of Don Draper and those like him who have lost the sense of the home as the center of life.
Don Draper is isolated from his family. His work has nothing to do with their home except for providing the money to purchase things for it. He has no common pursuits with his wife. He lives at his office, his family lives at their house.
But that’s not how things have always been. Just think of the word “husband.” Husbandry is the care and cultivation of crops and animals. Husband comes from words meaning “man who cares for his house.” The home was the center of not just his family’s life, but his life and work. So the separation of a father from a household to work first in the factories and now in the offices hasn’t been around forever. If you think of “the olden days” like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s experience, her father’s work was providing for their home. And that entailed working on his own land and being near his family.
We can’t all be Pa Ingalls, of course. And working from home isn’t the right situation for everyone, either. Some moms and dads have jobs outside the home that they love and make them thrive. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.
But I think we can all restore the home as the center of life. We can simply be around more, spend time as a family, cook and eat together around the dining room table. If home life is meant to be a school of love, then….we have to attend class sometimes, right?
In one of my favorite essays, “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine,” Wendell Berry says:
“The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.
There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, ‘mine’ is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as ‘ours.’
This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of both wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and a common satisfaction. “
What if the Drapers built their lives around that model? What if Don Draper hadn’t isolated himself from his home and his family? What if Betty hadn’t spent years as merely the purchaser of household goods and actually connected with her home and her children instead of outsourcing her mothering to the TV and the nanny? What if the Drapers had common creative pursuits that benefited their family and centered them in their home? What if they’d even just turned off the TV and sat down to dinner together every single night?
I can’t help but think that things would have turned out differently. What do you think?
If you’re hungry for more Mad Men musings, check out this one from a couple of weeks ago about Don Draper’s First Confession.
You’re so right! The saddest thing about this is that this consumer lifestyle dominated everything. At the beginning of Julia Child’s cookbook, she bemoans the fact that women of that era didn’t know how to cook anything that didn’t come out of a box! We look at the image of the 50’s housewife today and I think we have the wrong impression that they were all creators and cultivators of the home, but that’s just not true. I’m glad the modern trend seems to be slowly pulling away from this model and turning instead towards examples like the Ingalls family.
It is so sad how much was lost between my great-grandmother’s generation and my grandmother’s generation. My mom salvaged a few things that didn’t get passed down and I hope to nurture a few more skills to pass on to my kids!
I’ve been reading Farmer Boy to my 8 year old boy and 6 year old girl. So much family togetherness- we emulate them with our little garden patch in the city
I cannot wait to read that to the kids! We’re thinking about getting the whole series on audiobook for our road trip!
This is such a great reflection, Haley. Sometimes the trap of modern conveniences (which are supposed to make things easier for us and give us more time to spend in pursuit of happiness, right?) is that we get sucked into the MORE part and forget about the things that really matter…like each other. Having new stuff is nice, but having each other (and being in front of each other more often) is much nicer. Thanks for the reminder – I always need it. It’s so encouraging to see more and more people starting to realize this and make changes to their lives accordingly. Maybe there is hope for us yet! 🙂
Thanks so much, Abbey!
I think about this a lot and was just talking to another friend of mine. I struggle in the domestic arts. I have mom friends who sew amazing drapes and clothes for their kids, they always manage to have beautiful vegetable gardens and have etsy shops for their amazing creations. I seem to fail miserably at those things . My sewing projects look like a kindergartener did it, and while I can keep grow herbs, my veggies never pan out. My kids birthday parties are of the pin the tail on the donkey variety. This has in the past made me feel inadequate, especially in the age of pinterest and blogs and facebook.
But I have to start embracing what I am good at is teaching, reading, and working with high schoolers. Unfortunately with four little kids, giving my time to these outside endeavors leave less time for the sewing, gardening, and evening cleaning (yes twice a month I have a cleaning lady). I realize and sometimes worry that my kids will see their mom as a consumer, because we buy our food and clothes. I try to make sure the kids see me preparing for talks and classes at home so they see that while Mom doesn’t knit their scarves or bake their bread from scratch, I am contributing to society and our home in some way. My husband feels the same way, as his job is super demanding and we hire people to do a lot of things that other people do themselves. This is the struggle for those who don’t naturally “homemake” well. I need to make more of an effort to make meals and the home look beautiful and special since it doesn’t come naturally to me, because the home is the center of our lives. Thanks for the reminder..
Kathleen,
My mom is this AMAZING quilter and seamstress. She once made my daughter an entire pilgrim outfit in a weekend. Her stuff is gorgeous.
I….am not good at sewing. I am also not wonderful at putting food up and making bread (though I do both diligently). My vegetable gardens have about a 50% success rate, and if I ever had to actually sustain my family on them, we’d assuredly starve by October.
While a return to production and creativity, in a slow echo of our forefathers and mothers, is a worthwhile thing, I think it’s important to remember that even the hardiest, handiest pioneer wasn’t good at EVERYTHING. Lots of Pa Ingall’s crops failed. Laura once made pie that was so horrible it was barely edible. I bet Ma made lousy jam.
A return to self-sufficiency shouldn’t be confused with isolationism. So you don’t sew so well. Your veggies aren’t the most prolific. You’re not a master party-planner. But you DO know where your strengths are, and I think that’s by intentional design. We’re supposed to live in community, and if every person were good at every thing, then we’d never need each other.
Don’t let Pinterest make you feel like giving up on attempting new homemaking things, and don’t let it make you feel like your God-given talents aren’t good enough.
And for the record, I’m a TERRIBLE herb gardener, so please send all your tips my way.
Kathleen, I’m right there with you! Pintrest gives me an inadequacy headache. lol. I *can* sew, but it takes for-EV-er and I don’t enjoy it. But you know what? I am uncanny at finding treasures at thrift-stores. And I’ve learned how to care for and repair the quality pieces we do buy, so that they last.
My daughters are QUEENS of coupon clipping and bold about negotiating with shopkeepers for discounts. Math lessons in homeschool were often calculating price-per-ounce, and “%” versus “$-off”.
I’m a horrible brown thumb. 🙁 But I buy locally, eat what’s in season, and use my freezer and dehydrator (don’t laugh–I’m scared of pressure cookers!) to take advantage of bargains and freebies. And I’ve made a real effort to cultivate wide and adventurous palates, as well as an attitude of gratitude. We donate to hunger relief, volunteer, and expect there to be very little waste. In fact, we all actually look forward to “Smorgasbord”s–we have a family movie night (checked out free at the library, thank you) and everyone gets VERY creative turning leftovers into delicious snack platters.
We take re-purposing to a whole other level, too–and not in a vaguely sad, ‘oh, you didn’t have money to buy that?’ sort of way. The things we DO, we have FUN with and the results are fantastic. It’s like Martha Stewart and MacGyver had a baby–LOL!
My point is–there are a million ways to be creative and thrifty. If you’re not great at DIY stuff, but you’re a SUPER organizer who’s great at making friends–maybe you’ll get your neighbors into a collaborative consumption group. There is no ‘right’ way to be a great mom or wife or homemaker or person, except to discover everything that’s best and wonderful about YOU–and then go do that!
Ditto to what Cari said, Kathleen! God didn’t make us all awesome decorators or crafty sewers (he certainly didn’t make me that way!). There are MANY ways to be a family that is centered around the home <3
I completely agree with your post. Both my husband and I work outside the home. We are lucky enough to live in a smaller city, so my work, his work, and our daycare provider are all within 5 to 15 minutes of our home. I think between the fact that we don’t spend a ton of time commuting and the fact that we are very intentional in our time as a family (we don’t have a TV, we don’t allow devices at the table, we eat dinner together every night and talk, even if it’s just at eating out, and our evenings revolve around walks and park visits and prayer and reading together as a family, and weekends are the same). It is a struggle to do housework later in the evening after the kid’s bedtime when all I really want to do is veg and to get everything done because I want the weekends to be fun and not centered on more work. But we have found working together, we can get things done. We don’t have a lot of pursuits outside our family, I would say that our hobby is family time because so much time can be taken up by working outside the home. But I am happy with the balance we created and I feel like it makes us much more intentional and careful to value our time as a family.
Wow! It sounds like you are doing an AMAZING job staying centered with the added challenge of balancing two full-time jobs. We were also really lucky about Daniel’s work, church, and so many of the places we needed to go being under 10 minutes away from our great centrally-located house. I think that makes a huge difference for sure!
Yes! Feminism the body and the machine is the best (well tied with unsettling of America, chapter the body and the earth).
I know, right?!
YES! I think the centrality of the home is the key point here. For all those other commenters, I don’t think you need to be growing vegetables or knitting or quilting (two activities that, if you enjoy, are great, but let’s face it, are not essential in this day and age!) to make home a productive and creative center of life. The key is that if you put home and human relations first, you ARE creating something — a family culture, a group of little humans (and bigger humans) that will go out into the world and hopefully imbue it with truth, beauty and goodness.
I do think we need to think of our little homes as little economies or little creative centers. We don’t have to produce “products” but we should make *something. The something doesn’t even have to have a physical instantiation in the world but it should be meaningful and, though it can’t be eternal in itself, be aligned towards the eternal good.
Obviously, it’s helpful to keep that end goal in mind if the *something you make is both central to home culture and central to your financial well-being, but really that’s a diversion. Our economic model is broken. That means many people will experience a stark disconnect between what is fruitful and productive for their families and what is deemed “productive” and valuable to the world at large. Almost all will have to make tradeoffs in time spent with their family for the good of their family. The point is to recognize that the home is the primary center to which good and effort should flow and from which value and meaning comes.
Not sure I’m making any sense but you really touch on something I think is important. Hope we can muddle our way to a better culture of both work and home.
Yes, Tia! Loved your comment.
Wendell Berry! His essays, fiction, and poetry have been life-changing for me since I “met” him in college. Place and home, creation and community, stewardship and steadfastness, local economy, wisdom and justice . . . I have so much yet to learn in understanding and living these out, but his work provides a compass.
So jealous! I’m wondering it if would or wouldn’t be ok to just…ya know…show up at his farm when we’re driving nearby. 😉
I’ve never seen a single episode of Mad Men, but I love me some Wendell Berry so had to high five this post anyway! 🙂 Loved it.
Thanks, Shannon 🙂
Yes, we agree! The other night my husband and I had a date night, and we had a hard time finding anything to do after dinner that didn’t involve us spending money — nowhere where we live that’s a park/people-watching area — my husband remarked that it’s intentional, we’re supposed to just consume . . . .
We (my husband and I) have been reading Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc (The Servile State) on Distributivism — i.e. where the means of production (land, in particular) is broadly owned, as opposed to socialism (means of production owned by the gov’t) or capitalism (owned by the few). Essentially, we’re not that far off from slaves working for masters, compared to most people in most times/places, b/c we (most of us) don’t control the means of production, unlike Little House (we read those stories with envy) and Wendell Berry’s vision.
Oooo! I’m fascinated by Distributivism but I haven’t read many of the crucial texts. I need to get on that!
This is awesome. I’m a fellow Mad Men fan and you hit these characters spot on. Of course Betty is going to get bored only shopping, and feeling like she’s not accomplishing anything, because she’s missing out on being a great mom! This show is a great little peek into life in the 60’s and I can’t imagine how different it would have been (or would be today!) if they stuck to the time-tested model of keeping the family at the center. This is a great reminder to make the most of time at home, with the hubby and with the littles. 🙂 Great read!
Thanks, Justine!
I didn’t run to read this post initially because I stopped watching “Mad Men” in the first season — it’s well done but I found it depressing, in part because of the treatment of the female characters! You hit on a theme my husband and I discussed recently, and I think you raised a great point about why more women may have gone into the job force at that time … that women who yearned to be creative and productive would feel like the workplace was where that could happen. It seems like there was some sort of gradual breakdown in societal respect for the importance of the mother as life became more “convenient,” and then a housewife’s role was more apt to be described in an inconsequential way. I work outside of the home but have a huge respect for mothers who don’t do that currently (or ever), and I wish it was portrayed much more positively in society. I have friends who have expressed embarrassment to be “just” a stay-at-home mom or not have an outside job anymore, and that is heartbreaking to me. They have a more challenging job than I do going to an office! I know that wasn’t the whole point of your post but I really appreciated your insights here.
I stopped watching Mad Men in season 1 when it first came out because I found it too depressing, too! So I totally get that. But then I picked it back up and fell in love with it 😉