Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing The New Domesticity
by Emily MatcharSimon & Schuster 2013Are homeschooling, home-birthing, home-canning modern women changing the face of domesticity on a wave of kombucha and oxytocin? Emily Matchar seems to think so. And in Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing The New Domesticity, Matchar explores the growing trend toward what she calls "New Domesticity.” A renewed interest in traditionally-female domestic pursuits isn’t new (let’s not forget the punk knitters of the late ’90s and Martha Stewart’s vast empire built on recipes, tablescapes, and 300-count sheets), but Matchar’s New Domesticity focuses more on millennial women opting to re-embrace the homemaking tasks their mothers and grandmothers cast off.Touring the kitchens, backyards, and knitting circles of Domesti-city, USA. Matchar, a journalist, talks to Mormon mommy bloggers, radical homemakers, and gender-studies professors to find out why the desire to reinvent the domestic arts has taken hold of the hearts and minds of young women. Each chapter examines an aspect of the movement: blogging, DIY food, Etsy and handmade goods, parenting, and more. Matchar's prose is snappy, with a style somewhere between dishy and academic. From the idea that feminism killed home cooking to an examination of the strange bedfellows of homeschooling Christians and stay-at-home lesbians, Matchar's razor-sharp analysis gets into all the corners of this burgeoning social phenomenon.The 260-page book is a true undertaking: part history, part cultural criticism, part feminist think piece. I appreciated Matchar's near-constant effort to situate New Domesticity within a feminist context and question why so many daughters of working mothers opt for a life of tending babies and organic gardens. For the women Matchar profiles, the desire to exert influence over home, children, and the environment evolves from a revaluing of women's work, as well as distrust of corporate culture and the commodification of everyday life. Does it also grow from a backlash against second-wave feminism? Lauren, a grad student quoted in the book, says “When I go to feminist theory class, I feel like we’re told getting married is an antifeminist thing. I…struggle with that. I love to take care of people…I love to sew. I love to clean my house.” Matchar doesn’t discount Lauren’s valid feelings, but she’s careful to assert that no, feminism isn’t responsible for a denigration of homemaking.Matchar also examines the movement's flaws, including rampant gender essentialism and male disenfranchisement. She says she was surprised to learn that New Domesticity is “distinctly a middle class phenomenon,” but also writes: “All this puts us in the weird and somewhat uncomfortable position of having privileged people proudly 'reclaiming' the work that poor people have long done out of necessity.” I would have liked to see a more comprehensive look at race and class in regards to this “back to the land, back to the kitchen” phenomenon: since Matchar spends much of her book explaining the motivations and the reasoning behind the trend, her actual analysis of it occasionally seems to fade into the background, at least until the very end of the book. It’s also worth mentioning that, interestingly, much of the press coverage of New Domesticity overestimates its actual effect on the home and work lives of women: census statistics continue to show a steady increase in women in the workplace.Matchar’s opinion on New Domesticity remains somewhat conflicted: interested but critical, admiring but not without reservations (she provides suggestions on how to "take the good and leave the bad"). As for me, the book provided much insight as to why I feel just as content baking gluten-free muffins as I do teaching community college classes. My muffin tin stays, but so does the healthy sense of feminist skepticism I got from Homeward Bound.___Carrie Murphy is a poet, freelance writer, and birth doula. Her collection of poems, Pretty Tilt, was released by Keyhole Press in 2012.
