Maid to Order

Barbara Ehrenreich in her essay "Maid To Order" explains the unappreciated and vital work women produce everyday. She includes input from outside source such as Marxist feminists Maria Rosa Dallacosta and Selma James. Ehrenreich explains how both of these women agree that "the home was in fact an economically productive and significant workplace, an extension of the actual factory, since housework served to 'reproduce the labor power' of otheres, particularly men" (Ehrenreich 60). By taking the time to absorb what is being presented to the reader it is obvious that this statement has a lot of truth. It goes to explain that without a decent running house it will have a negative impact on the husband affecting the running function of the family economically.
I have to agree to this statement because it is evident within my own family back at home. My mother is thbiggest reason why my family runs smoothly always making sure there is food on the table and she has where we are suppose to be at the right time. It is work people may see as degrading but for my mother she enjoys it knowing all of my brothers are good students. She might have to get on her knees in a degrading posture but it is what she produces from this position that makes her happy. Maids should get the saem respect we show to our own mother because their work helps a lot of people run there own "factories."

I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich when she says that, "Housework was not only a relationship between a woman and a dust bunny or an unmade bed; but also defined as a relationship between human beings, typically husbands and wives" (60). I think that in the past husbands have typically worked outside of the home bringing home paychecks, and women had the responsibility of taking care of the children and housework. More recently, women have been taking up jobs in addition to their husbands, in some cases instead of their husbands, and this has caused a shift in responsibilities. When both a husband and wife work outside of the home, sometimes it's hard to divide up the work at home, and since traditionally the role has been that of the woman, sometimes she ends up taking control of that as well. This unbalanced share of the work due to a new situation has caused rifts in many relationships. I understand what the owner of Merry Maids meant when she said, "We even save marriages." Having a housekeeper has, in my opinion, always been very understandable.

However, "The sudden emergence of a servant class" seems a bit extreme, is there really a society where there isn't one? 

I'd also like to address the claim that "upper-middle-class children... are bound to grow up as domestically incompetent" (69), by saying that it's possible to have maids and still know how to clean up after yourself. The theory is there, but in practice, I'm sorry; there isn't much technique to cleaning. People can pick it up pretty easily when they have to. 

Also,what was interesting was the bit about parenting: "instructing children in necessary chores; today it's more likely to center on one-sided conversations beginning with 'So how was school today?'...relationships with children are often strained" (70). Personally, I have to say that I'm glad my mom has enough time to sit down with me and talk instead of showing me how to do chores. I don't think this is bad parenting. Ehrenreich says that low-quality time doing chores can make a child feel more comfortable about sharing with their parents...I think there's a larger underlying problem if  child needs to have an excuse to feel comfortable with their parents...that doesn't sound like a housekeeper's fault. 

On a side note, I was very disturbed by the revelation that some housekeepers' responsibility is to make things only appear clean...

Response to "Maid to Order"

In her essay "Maid to Order," writer Barbara Ehrenreich analyzes the growing trend of outsourcing domestic work. She finds it curious that over the last 20 or 30 years, more and more people (and not just the ultra-wealthy) are seeking professional help for the cleaning of their own homes. Ehrenreich offers a summary of the "independent" and "corporate" cleaning industries as well as her own experiences working for one of these cleaning companies.

What I found most interesting about this piece was that although the opening of the essay and the title and subtitle both suggest that it will focus on gender inequalities, Ehrenreich's final conclusions about the impact on society of hiring maids has little to do with gender and much more to do with class. Ehrenreich even stresses that although professional cleaners are called "cleaning ladies," they can often be men as well (65). Thus, although it seems that Ehrenreich starts by stressing the importance of gender issues and feminism as it relates to her topic, it ends up playing out as an almost trivial issue. Rather, Ehrenreich concludes by warning readers that by hiring maids and other household helpers, the wealthier half of society is perpetuating the need for a "servant class" and that children are being raised with the callous attitude that there are "lower" people out there who exist to clean up after them. I agree with Ehrenreich's analysis and found it interesting how she developed this theme throughout the essay.

Maid to Order

In the essay "Maid to Order" barbara Ehrenreich provided many examples and opinions that I had never even thought about until reading her essay. Being a maid herself, she can provide factual information. I thought that the idea of cleaning around the house as a reflection of a relationship was interesting. However, I do not think that the male in the relationship leaves dishes out for his female counterpart to clean as a way to show authority; I think that it has a lot to do with laziness and forgetfulness.  The maid service that claimed to "save marriages was a funny source, I thought. Ehrenreich introduced cleaning services later in the essay. I noticed that wages for maids of the service were paid very poorly. On page 65, I did not understand how the services partially paid the maids with public money. I never thought about how cleaning services never actually clean, they just provide the image of being clean. After reading this, I'm not sure that I will ever hire a maid service. I like my home clean!

Response

Who would have thought something that seems as simple as housecleaning could cause such disruption in the lives of so many?  Growing up the only problems I saw with it was debating with my parents over who should have to do what, my brother or me.  The housework is actually fairly evenly split between my parents and if there was someone doing more work it would probably be my father.  I never saw a power dominance either way because it all seemed pretty fair.  "Maid to Order" by Barbara Ehrenreich opened my eyes to the problems caused by homeowners paying, or often times not paying, others to do the domestic work for them.

Its interesting once one realizes that by teaching younger generations that it is ok to hire someone else to clean will only increase the "domestically incompetent," and encourage the use of money to pay for any other tasks needed.  Housework seems like only a small, even non-existent, problem in the day to day life of Americans, however Ehrenreich has shown that it is just a fraction of the whole problem of people relying on others to clean up their messes, and not just in the cleaning sense.  It seems like the world would be a much better place if everyone just cleaned up after him or herself or took care of what ever he or she caused.

Response to "Maid to Order"

In her essay “Maid to Order: The politics of other women’s work,” Barbara Ehrenreich undescores the “gender oppression” (60) that is often yielded as a consequence of housework. She accordingly comments on the equalizing force of housekeeping, in the sense that all women (excluding an upper class minority) must come home to a task list of cleaning regardless of their differences in professions. As Ehrenreich bluntly states, “whatever else women did… we also did housework” (60). Men are not generally confronted with these domestic and social expectations to fulfill cleaning responsibilities, but women are seemingly obliged to satisfy housework requirements even when faced with “jobs, school, [and] child care” (60). While Ehrenreich illustrates both the potentially oppressive and equalizing qualities of housework, she does not explicitly mention the admirable fortitude and ability that are necessary ingredients for women to accomplish these housekeeping duties. The fact that females are capable of successfully balancing their outside lives alongside their burdens of housework is an extraordinary measure of endurance at the very least. Being a writer with a somewhat feminist bent, it was surprising that Ehrenreich did not further expand her descriptions to include this praiseworthy angle of the feminine characterization. The author provides valid arguments in acknowledgement of the exploitation and standardization of women via housework, but she does not extensively develop the perspective of housework as a possible means to showcase the remarkable strength and skill of women in this context.

"Maid to Order" Response

In essayist Barbara Ehrenreich’s thought-provoking “Maid to Order”, Ehrenreich explores the underlying ideology of housework to finally argue that the act of leaving a mess for someone else leads to an eventual “callousness and solipsism” (Ehrenreich 70). While many sociologists and feminists have explored the relationships between women and men and argued continuously about gender power struggles in the household, Ehrenreich takes the discussion one step further by exploring the emergence of the cleaning lady. Having someone clean for you, she argues, is essentially a manifestation of dominance. The emergence of a ‘servant class’ who’s purpose is to “[wipe] up the drippings of the affluent” (59), Ehrenreich argues, says much about our new values. One of her most interesting points, I believe, is the one she makes about the actual physical cleaning. The cleaning, she argues, is not true cleaning but rather to create “the appearance of having been cleaned” (67). The maids in maid businesses such as the one in which Ehrenriech worked are not there to make the house sanitary, but rather to create a set: an appearance of cleanliness and order in which the family can then operate. I found this to be a very thought-provoking argument: this causes us to reconsider the point of cleaning. While we originally would think to clean to sanitize and disinfect, this has become a secondary effect in our primary goal of creating an illusion of order. All in all, I found Ehrenreich’s close examination of the sociological underpinnings of household cleaning to be well-thought out and executed nicely.