I’ve been stewing on the idea of “ambitious homemaking.” I see it as overlapping with parenting, but a different discipline. When I was 18, I worked in various people’s households. The people I worked for that I admired the most were very intentional in pulling me into their household. They understood that this relationship was a good thing for me too; a two-way street, not just a financial transaction. They celebrated my birthday and talked through my life problems with me at the same time as they asked if I could possibly drive their 8-year-old to school.
They saw my need and recognized it. They understood that their household was a type of real wealth that, wielded correctly, was a landing place for so many people. A place of wisdom, comfort, and community. In turn, their household being a landing place for so many meant they also had extra hands around — to read to a child, to drive someone somewhere, to do all the constant one-off tasks that households need to survive.
Historically, it seems to me that we understood this about households much more instinctively. That investing in maintaining the social fabric around us, in our neighborhoods, our homes, our families, was an ambitious discipline worthy of cultivation and intellectual focus. I’m not sure where this went, but we are endeavoring to do all of these things in a uniquely challenging social and technological time.
