The Good and the Bad: Quotes About Homemaking

Quotes like these are why I started this blog.

"Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — "Is this all?" " ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

"Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework - an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life." ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

  

From The Big Bang Theory.  Bernadette states that she doesn’t like kids, and Howard replies…

“Don’t you think it will be different when the child is ours?” – Howard
“Right; when its our kid that’s ruined my body, and kept me up and night and I’ve got no career and no future and nothing to be happy about for the for the next twenty years; sure that will be completely different.” – Bernadette

"I know I should be accepting, but I cringe whenever I hear someone say that a smart/educated woman is a "happy homemaker." I can't get over what a waste it is." (unknown author, found on Quora)

And then there are quotes like these. . .

“No occupation in this world is more trying to soul and body than the care of young children. What patience and wisdom, skill and unlimited love it calls for. God gave the work to mothers and furnished them for it, and they cannot shirk it and be guiltless.”
            ― Isabella Macdonald Alden

“I'm only a housewife, I'm afraid." How often do we hear this shocking admission. I'm afraid when I hear it I feel very angry indeed. Only a housewife: only a practitioner of one of the two most noble professions (the other one is that of a farmer); only the mistress of a huge battery of high and varied skills and custodian of civilization itself. Only a typist, perhaps! Only a company director, or a nuclear physicist; only a barrister; only the President! When a woman says she is a housewife she should say it with the utmost pride, for there is nothing higher on this planet to which she could aspire.”
            ― John Seymour, Forgotten Household Crafts

“I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.”
            ― Jani Ortlund

“The career of motherhood and homemaking is beyond value and needs no justification. Its importance is incalculable.”
            ― Katherine Short