Cinnamon Rolls on International Women's Day

Confession: I didn’t wake up today realizing that it was International Women's Day. I knew it was my friend’s birthday, another friend’s almost birthday and the Third Sunday in Lent. That’s all.

Does it matter? Does it matter that the world has this observance called International Women’s Day? Or Women’s History Month? It’s so easy for me, a privileged white woman in to say we’ve reached women’s equality, but that is so far from the truth. We could come up with all kinds of examples, serious life and death examples: lack of equal pay for equal work, domestic violence against women, poor to non-existent family leave (which is a men’s issue, too), the greater incidence of poverty for women and more. But I want to spend a moment reflecting on an aspect of equality that seems seemingly simple: home economics.

When I say home economics, I’m not talking about the class I had to take in 7^th grade where I attempted to sew a blue and white duffel bag (it was a disaster, by the way). No, I’m talking about the home economy, the way work is distributed for a home to be a life-giving place: who does the cooking, shoveling, lunch packing, bill paying, errand running, floor mopping and toilet scrubbing? As much as we want to think our lives are way more important than these quotidian things, the fact is we have to do them. And how we do them can either encourage equality or discourage it.

This morning my children awoke to fresh cinnamon rolls. When my husband/their dad makes our bread each week, he sometimes doubles the recipe and the extra dough he reserves for cinnamon rolls. The kids love nibbling on bits of raw dough (no eggs, they’re safe). Before church, he whipped together a cinnamon coffee cake for fellowship hour. I might be the “Baker” in our family name, but in our house, the "Trinity" is quite the baker. I am so glad my kids get to help their dad in the kitchen. Whether it’s dishes or cooking, there are “mom nights” and “dad nights."Both of us spend a time working in the home as well as outside of it so that our home economy runs smoothly.

This may not seem that earth shattering in 2015; many men help with or do all the cooking. But in our home economic system, it’s not seen as a rarity; both of us cook, grocery shop and do dishes. Of course, the distribution of labor is not 50/50; it's always give and take. I pretty much always clean the bathroom and he pretty much always pays the bills. Still, we try.

Why does it matter that homemaking gets shared? It matters, I think, because children learn what they live. If we raise our children in homes where gender equality is valued, where there is no talk of “women’s work” or “men’s work,” they will have a more equitable view of the world. Feminism is simply the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities (For a recent interview on the need for feminism and men's vital role in it, check out this speech to the UN Conference by Emma Watson) We have come far, but we still have a long way to go. The kitchen is a good place to start.