The office was damp with unresolved arguments. The radiator clicked occasionally, like it was laughing quietly to itself. The light flickered once, almost twice, like it had considered, briefly, letting me in on the joke.
As the printer coughed like a teenager pulling on his first cigarette, out the window I could see an old man shuffling down the street with nothing but tinned peaches, his face set in the grim determination of someone who has never trusted fresh fruit.
I looked back to my desk, computer still frozen, like it was busy arguing with someone that wasn’t there. I think of home, of the cat – how freeing it must be, to eat the same thing everyday, without the delusion of choice.
“I want to be free” he said.
“You’re free to want that” she said.
Once, the housewife’s day was a sentence without parole. A cold-water baptism in a tin tub, sleeves rolled, knuckles raw, steam rising from boiled shirts and socks like a public sauna in Bristol. Washing a family’s clothes took the whole day, in the way that being mauled by a bear can ruin your afternoon. Bread was kneaded, vegetables peeled, potatoes mashed like a cat playing with a moth. And then, one by one, the miracles arrived.
From sliced bread to ready meals, washing machines to the hoover, even one-stop-shop supermarkets housing everything except a personality. Microwaves that could do in minutes what an oven once took hours to achieve. Dinner stopped being a drum solo of clattering pots and became a beep, a ping, a steaming plate. The endless climb became a gentle slope, and suddenly there were hours left over – spare hours!
And spare hours are seductive things.
A thought crept in, I could get a job. Not for survival, but for extra money. A second car, maybe a bigger house, and so, the housewife – or househusband, for I’m not writing a eulogy for female servitude, stepped out into the workforce. Equality, choice, autonomy. All good things, apparently, like a free whisky from a stranger.
But economics is a Weeble Wobble and the house never loses. They adjust. What was once “extra” becomes “necessary.” The two incomes that funded holidays and nicer furniture now barely cover the bills. No longer was it a question of should both parents work – it was a question of how will they eat if they don’t?
And the neighbourhood bled out like a stabbed drunk in an alleyway.
Once, every house on the street was a node in a living network. People knew each other’s names, children’s names, and secrets. As a child, if you swore in the park, your mother knew before you reached the gate – and the slap waiting for you was not subject to appeal. For the parents, the fear of your neighbour’s disapproval kept your families shoes clean and your child’s manners cleaner.
Now, the streets are empty by day. Parents are clocked in at work. Kids are home with a screen in place of an adult’s voice. The front door has become a drawbridge pulled tight, and the only knocks come from delivery drivers who don’t wait for an answer.
We call it progress, and in some ways, it is. Men and women can choose their work, their path, their life. But somewhere between the supermarket aisle and the office cubicle, we swapped presence for productivity. We confused convenience for connection, and now we live beside strangers we wouldn’t recognise unless they mugged us.
Children no longer grow up under the watch of a village; they grow up under the half-dead gaze of a phone. They don’t know their neighbours, and in some homes, they barely know their parents.
And no machine, not even the most miraculous, as seen on tv, smart-home enabled, automated, fat free, high protein, dentist recommended, buy now pay later, super machine of tomorrow, will ever wash that stain out.
:: REFERENCES ::
- Stanford Census Study – The Two-Income Trap
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