Please share with us! What a woman! It is rare in the US for relatives to step in and help with the kids and that is indeed something very nice about Italy. I cannot see, nor does anyone I read predict, that the world will return to one-wage households. This is the rule of all Italian grand-mothers, mothers, and pediatricians. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Here’s the evidence—documentation of at least 200 years of revering the impossibly perfectly idealized wo-man. Posted by Trisha Thomas in Being Mamma | 16 Comments. All this is to say perhaps my kids figured out what it took me longer to realize: I cannot have it all and cannot be it all. And love, which is good parenting, is not predictable by life-style, which defeats our longing to have rules that always work. Our mothers were the first feminists, breaking out of the 1950s role of mother at home and working “Father Knows Best”. I know this statistic does not apply to your family Nico is living away from home so clearly has to do laundry) Jumping from the bed and putting on her shoes, she stamped on the floor, and shouted, “Get out of here, you bears! I don’t think my very own husband has ever turned on our washing machine. I have admired your family, Trisha, for the affirmation given to work and home, and the model you have given your children of a mamma who works. My grandmother — who lost her husband when she was only 32, with two young children at home, drilled that lesson into my head from a very young age. The back yard had to be as pretty as the front yard. (N.B. In the US, there can be stigma for a stay at home mother (SAHM) often expressed in the common question for SAHM’s of “What do you do all day?”. He said that there is greater freedom of choice now, but new constraints are limiting peoples options. And lest you think I Googled the wording of these songs, think again. Trisha is a TV journalist working for AP TV News in Rome. As far as Tata’s are concerned, one thing I don’t like about many Italian mothers is their constant need to criticize on the Tata’s for not doing things properly. Granny Rhoda: She Can Bring Home the Bacon and Fry It Up in a Pan October 3, 2015 By Maryanne Datesman Meet Granny Rhoda, who could be the “poster child” for the self-reliant frontier woman. Link to Enjoli commercial, Don’t miss this wonderful blog by a journalist who reacts to the Enjoli commercial above and tells about her own journey down this path, Filed Under: American West, Cultural Values, Gender Roles, Home and Family, Lifestyle Leisure and Sports, Nature, Religion, Short Stories, Six Basic American Values Tagged With: Accomplishments, Adventure, Audio Recording, Equality of Opportunity, Family, Gender Roles, Hard Work, Lesson Plan, Nature & Science, Parenting, Self-Reliance, Women, Youth’s Companion 1914, © 2020 Vintage American Ways - Digital Marketing By Jason Hobbs LLC - Log in, http://vintageamericanways.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/GrannyRhoda.mp3. I still didn’t want to give up on the idea and when my son was just five months old I travelled to Sierra Leone when it was in the midst of a brutal civil war just to prove I was as tough as all the other journalists. BREAKING NEWS! Also, I totally agree with you on the national and state-level systems not making it any easier — whether it is education, healthcare or daycare. I think our family has moved around a lot and as such we all live far from family support. This is all pouring out of me in its pure memory state (so I suppose some of the words aren’t exact matches for the original advertisement). (Give her Enjoli, the 8-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman) I can work till five o’clock Come home and read you Tickety Tock (Tonight I’m going to cook for the kids!) Here is a post on that topic: I feel there is also a lot of pressure on women in Italy to be beautiful, sexy and young looking– this became particularly bad (and degrading) during the years that Berlusconi was in power– I have also written about that on my blog: There is not very much of an “ideal” of a “working mamma” — societal expectations and everything from TV shows to advertising (in my opinion) do not glamourize or even sympathize with the idea of being a working Mamma.