I am a stay-at-home wife. I have a job, but the hours are not guaranteed and the work is from home. With the recent move and lack of connection I have, much of my being can simply be described as the “wife.” I have infinite respect for those mothers who take on the mantle of a full-time job loving and raising their children. And I do believe the world is better off with parents living and working closer to their children. However, I am not a mother so I cannot share in this respect I offer others. Of course, I tend to the house and sit at my computer waiting for a tutoring appointment to occupy my time; I struggle to see the good I contribute. I excelled in college and easily defined my value by how well I wrote my papers or how effortlessly I could engage with my peers. I no longer have excess to this instant gratification for my talents, so I stay at home and hope I can manufacture some kind of satisfaction with how well I fold my shirts.

By no means do I intend to dismiss the effort of keeping house or shame those who do, but society and myself are much more eager to recognize the housework when their is a baby involved. At the moment, I feel mush closer to an incel living in the basement than an accomplished mother and homemaker. Nothing prevents me from getting a job besides industries preferring work experience over a college degree, so I can hardly feel oppressed while at home. Living on a budget, we make enough money that I don’t need a job, and the only jobs I’d really like to have are ones everyone in New York City is already trying to get. I am left to wish I had a job I could be proud of while also feeling content with the washing, cooking, and cleaning. Thus, I have been tasked with recognizing my value in who I am and not what I do, which goes against the fundamentals of how I was raised and all value I have seen up until this point.

Logically I know the value exists, but it’s much harder to experience that value and convert it into satisfaction with my day. I can’t even say that I write this having found the answer or developing my ideas beyond a stream of consciousness (writing even I don’t enjoy). But perhaps I can at least come to a resolution as I write, no “so what”, no grand purpose, no crafted essay. This is simply an explanation of my thoughts in the effort to see how silly they might be spoken out loud.

Of course, what I am is valuable. My husband comes home to a clean house, clean clothes, cooked meals, and domestic affairs sorted. I don’t do this because I am inferior to him but because work demands him away from the home at least sixty hours a week. I experience no stress of looking for a job or planning my day so I can catch the morning train. I don’t have to spend an hour unraveling my nerves after a long day. Instead, I get to bake bread and watch a steam cleaner blast the grime from the grout in my bathroom. So perhaps the value can be found in simply doing good work. Far from a revolutionary concept, I can find satisfaction if I simply spend time on what I do. I know I am extremely privileged to have the life I do, and if I preform that life carefully and dutifully, I can find pride in the home I create, not because this is what I ought to do but because this is something worth doing.