Now that you've had a taste of this liberation thing, what a relief to go back to waxy yellow buildup

The "new woman" is a housewife, say writers for the Sunday Times, and this phenomenon has arrived across the pond from none other than the United States of America.

The writers make it clear that they are talking about middle-class families who can afford to have one parent stay home. These people--surprise!--just happen to all be women, and they perceive their major role as being motherhood, rather than housekeeper. This statement, of course, is an insult to all of our mothers who stayed home because they thought they were supposed to or because they wanted to. What? They didn't think their major role was raising children?

According to research by academics at the University of Virginia, 52% of modern housewives describe themselves as “very happy” with their marriages compared with 41% of working women.

First, this statement fails to make clear whether the "working women" were all married with children, or married at all. But let's give the University of Virginia the benefit of the doubt and assume the working women were also married with children. In the same Times article, the authors say that in most marriages, women do twice as much housework as their husbands. So think about it: If you go to an office all day and then come home exhausted and do twice as much housework as the other adult who goes to the office all day, isn't there a chance you might feel some dissatisfaction with your marriage? The solution, as always, isn't for men to do more housework, but for women to stay home.

I am not arguing against women staying home to take care of young children. Quite the contrary; I think it is a great idea for those who can afford to do it and who want to do it. It is a fallacy that all women want to, however, and we never hear about the men who want to. Nor are men encouraged to. No one ever asks men about how they balance home life and work life.