Week 4 – Women and the Family
The Victorian Ideal, Carrots and the Dream Home
This week’s lecture is on the effects of globalization on women and family. The core issue is that women having to take on a career to supplement a dual-income family, to survive in a society that is capitalist-driven. And the offside is that the family is often the sacrificial cow. Families are neglected, children grow up un-supported and turn into rebels, and marriages drift apart. As usual, the blame falls on globalization, for engineering the society and economy as such. Events like the two world wars, the Great Depression, and even the widespread ideal of the woman who is equal to man, all can be attributed to globalization.
First of all, lets trace back the ideals of the perfect woman. Right back up to the Victorian lady, family and home making have always supposedly been the primary domain of women. If the house is unkempt, it is the woman’s fault for not tidying it up. If the kids are unruly, it is the woman’s fault for not disciplining them. But this is not the Victorian ideal that I would like to discuss today.
I will want to talk about the other Victorian ideal. That Victorian gentlemen spent their days talking about politics, religion and important affairs of the world, spent their time wine tasting, galloping upon their finest stallions, and playing whatever it was that represented golf in that day. And Victorian ladies spent their time sipping the richest earl grey tea, gossiping over a table full of tasty pastries, and had all the time in the world to buy dresses that they could never finish wearing in all their lives.
This second Victorian ideal is actually what the people in the capitalist globalised metropolitan developed world desires and is working their arses off for. They fail to recognize that the above-mentioned Victorian gentlemen came from a special and very top-end group of people who had inheritance of such wealth that it would take generations of squandering to deplete. And similarly, the Victorian women had armies of maidservants, butlers and even governesses to see that their men’s castles do not fall apart while they went shopping.
Globalization can be indeed held responsible. But not in spreading capitalism, and causing the two world wars. Instead, it is responsible in spreading this Victorian ideal without including the fine print. It dangles the carrot of freedom from responsibility and the ability to dive into your indulges. It is this carrot that causes people to go for bigger houses, bigger cars, flashier clothes and the latest designer ankle toe-socks. It is this whole culture of consumerism that is consuming the families from the inside out. They simply want more than they need.
As a result, both husband and wife spend most of their waking hours at work, wanting to earn enough for the dream home they’ve always wanted, and the fifth honeymoon to spend Christmas on Christmas Island. When they reach home, they’re dead beat that they do nothing but sleep and rest so they can go to work and earn money the next day again. At the end, they get a beautiful house, and wonderful pictures of their holidays, but an empty marriage. Simply because they do so much for the marriage, but spend so little time together. It’s no wonder divorce rates skyrocket. And the next thing you know, being a divorce lawyer is a sure-thing to get your dream house.
The same goes for children who grow up, raised and educated by the televisions, PSPs, day-care centres and an empty house. Simply because mommy and daddy have to work overtime so that little kiddo can have the best ever education to be a divorce lawyer. And have his dream home.
Sound familar? Perhaps we too have bought into this Victorian ideals, and have chased this carrot that we can never have. Sometimes, when all we want is all that we need, things might just turn out a little better.
