Thoughts about women, history, homes...

One of the things I always loved most about women, and that I enjoyed about being one myself, is the nesting instinct. Throughout human existence, just until very recently, women through all ages and in all settings around the world always tried to have "a nice home." It does not matter if it was a rich home (rare) or poor home (most of humanity throughout human history have been poor), a cave or a hut, women have always had the instinctive desire to make it "a home." It was not just their "evolutionary role," as so many demented libs try to make it sound like since the 1960's. It was their beauty and their grace too, and their choice. Women everywhere through all times have wanted to make a nice home. Here are two examples.



Women who lived in dirt floor huts often stamped down the dirt until it was a hard and smooth floor, almost like poor linoleum! It was a point of pride for them to make it as smooth, hard and dry as possible so that the hut would be comfortable but also because it was a way of being a perfectionist when you had almost nothing but the dirt to work with. African women brought that knowledge to America during the slave trade, and they did the same thing in America with one exception. Slave quarters here in America did tend to be built of wood, with wooden floor boards. So the women did the creation of a hard dirt "floor" in their front yards. Remember that in those times only the very wealthy had "lawns." So the early Afro American women translated the "home proud" knowledge that they had into a new setting.



My second example also involved Afro American men and women during the time of slavery. Even in the harsh conditions and poverty of slavery, they sought to make their homes nice. So one of the things they would do is take cuttings or seeds from the master's ornamental plants and shrubs. For example, they often took cuttings from roses and planted rose bushes around their slave quarters. So a very common motif of a house proud slave family was the tamped and stamped down front yard of dirt with beautiful roses cultivated around the hut or building. People often think of their slave ancestors as being just forced to harvest crops, but they were talented horticulturalists too, as they were involved in the growing of the crops and also in the growing and maintenance of flowers and other ornamentals. If you ever read about the history of old cultivars of roses, you will learn that roses that have been thought to have become extinct in modern times are sometimes found around where slave quarters used to stand.

When I was young, my dad died and my mother and I were poor, though we managed to stay in our house. One of our "famous" family stories is how my mom cut up large cardboard boxes so that we could make "paneling" for the garage. Yes, we used cardboard to "panel" the garage. She almost plunged off the ladder and down the steps to the cellar, but was able to grab onto a ceiling beam! That's another part of the famous story. But anyway, she covered the wall that needed it the most with these large pieces of cardboard, using masking tape to cover the seams. It actually looked decent for many years! That is a personal example of what I mean, where women wanted their home to look nice even if they had to use what other people would look down their noses regarding. We decorated the garage wall with "paint by number" pictures that we had made and also with pennants we had bought when we went on local trips.

What has made me sad, among many things, is how the instinct to be nesting and house proud has been distorted, mocked and even stamped out among many women of the past several decades. It was one of the first things that "libbies" attacked. Sloppy hippie chic was "liberated," while if a woman tried to make due in have a neat, old fashioned or conventional place she was mocked. So as a result a lot of women fell away from their own instincts about having a "homey" home, even if it is very poor. Women were cruel to each other; it was not the men who mocked "crochet tissue holders" and other cliches of homemaking art. So as a result women did not pass on to their daughters skills that they had in their family, like sewing, gardening and other classic home decorating skills, and daughters under pressure of the libbies rejected it as "oppressive dumb old fashioned stuff." For example, knitting, crocheting and so forth became rare for a while.



A while ago they became popular, but in a distorted way. It was, now OK to do these things if they were part of "chic." So women got interested in knitting again, but in a very kind of self satisfied way, mostly related to fashion or "spirituality" (hold over of the loom weaving hippies). The same is true of making a home nice, where it stopped being nesting and became "interior design." Also, as women have had to go to work (again, be careful what you wish for, because we all got it alright, thanks a bunch libbies) just to make ends meet, poor women in particular just gave up, and nesting is hard when you are poor. The continuity of house proud that survived even slavery has been broken, and now it is an affectation of the rich and a time and resource luxury item for the poor. It's only a hundred years ago that women of all social class spent much of their day not laboring at the butter churn but poring over magazines that gave them ideas of how to "nest" in their house, and men admired that and appreciated it.



Anyway, that is one of the things I enjoyed in female friends and relatives, but I can't tell you the last time I've observed it in action anywhere. It's a sad loss. It's been a challenge for me to sustain it. I've had too many nests torn down, having to start at a lower and lower level to have my heart in it anymore, though my instinct continues. Hm. Well, I hope you find this useful in having a different and more accurate view of the whole "gender" topic.