Childless Homemaker: It's more than the housework

[Penguin Army]

I'm a childless housewife, and I see how people can think it's an easy job. The housework and cooking really only takes a few hours a day, but there can be so much more that just doesn't have a clear, tangible marker to show the work that has been done.

Both my husband and I have mental health issues, the stress of working makes things a lot worse. When we were both working, we were spending several hundred dollars a month on therapy, we were both having mental breakdowns regularly, and we both had several incidents which in retrospect really warranted a trip to a psychiatric hospital. We were both barely holding on to our jobs and our sanity.

I lost my job about a year and a half ago because of a really bad, really long breakdown that kept me from working. When it happened, we decided to do a test run of me just being a housewife because what we were doing clearly was not sustainable long term.

Now, we're both stable enough that we don't need therapy. Our house is actually clean most of the time and we're not spending half our money eating out. My husband's work perfomance got drastically better- he's been promoted and is now on the fast track for another promotion.

My job isn't just cooking and cleaning. I also make sure that his mental health stays stable enough to hold down a job and keep moving up the ladder. An outsider looking in, especially one who didn't know us before, only sees the housework. They don't see the work I put into keep us both stable enough to maintain our quality of life. It's working to keep depression and anxiety at bay. It's providing comfort when PTSD decides to rear it's ugly head. It's solving budgetary and household problems before they can cause the stress that'll send us both back down into the deep dark hole of mental illness.

Being a housewife, at least a good one, takes so much more work than just cooking and cleaning. Not being able to see physical evidence of the work being done isn't enough to assume that it isn't happening.

[Soul-shards]

You do not owe anyone any explanation about your domestic roles and occupation. Even if you were siting on a couch all day long looking at a wall, you'd still not have to justify your occupation as long as you are able to provide for yourselves as a couple. No, you don't need children to be a housewife. A childless housewife has can do many more things for the house, the garden, her marriage (including mental health), extended family, community, volunteering, etc. than a housewife with children (SAHM). She can also pursue her hobbies, which is wonderful. 

Focus on what is important to you and your H, and most of all, don't feel like you have to be employed outside the home. Thank you for the reduce carbon print as we do with one less car on the road at peak traffic hours, and less print paper and energy wasted in an office, often for useless work.