Socialization and Self-Concept
This chapter explores the connection between the socialization of women and their later performance of the housewife role. Many of the women made it clear in the interviews that their concern is not simply to get housework done in the most efficient way and the shortest possible time. Instead, they are bound up in the replication of previously set standards and routines which may actually frustrate the straightforward goal of simply getting housework done. To the extent that these ways of behaving are inherited from the mother, it can be hypothesized that they are not directly taught from mother to daughter: rather they are indirectly and unconsciously assimilated. The ‘nurturant’ child-caring relationship that exists between housewives and housewives-to-be serves to make this assimilation more likely than not. Subsequently, the learning lesson of domesticity sets up what is essentially a relationship between self (feminine) and role (housewife).