Hayes and her husband, Bob, like so many American couples, had no other choice but leave their home to find work. This meant breaking up the extended family and hoping for generous salaries that would pay for the babysitting and domestic help that caring relatives and neighbors would have offered at home.
Hayes’ family who practiced subsistence farming, food preservation, barter and frugal living, knew that the key to success wasn’t necessarily how much money one earned, but how much money one didn’t have to spend. So, before they decided to move away, they made their calculations and discovered that after they had subtracted out what they would pay for commuting, a new house, professional wardrobes, taxes, and buying rather than growing food, they would only make $10,000 in annual income, and they hadn’t even included the cost for child day care. Hayes and her husband then decided to join her parents on the family farm. There, she wrote cookbooks about sustainable food, and they had children and became homemakers.
“Radical homemakers are men and women who have chosen to make family, community, social justice and the health of the planet, the governing principles of their lives,” said Hayes.
They use lifeskills and relationships as a replacement for money. “The greater our domestic skills, be it knowing how to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide for own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest or care for our children and loved ones, the less dependent we are on the gold,” she said.
Radical homemakers do not follow the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions. Rebecca James, a homemaker who left a suburban neighborhood to live on three acres of land, complained of being told what she needs: “I’m so tired of being told by the radio, television and mass media what we need and then running like an idiot to get to it. I don’t think that’s sustainable, practical, or a good model either for us or for our neighbors overseas, in terms of having to deal with us as these people who just consume, consume and consume. Our actual need is so much larger emotionally and so much smaller materially than we have come to describe them in American society.”
Radical homemakers also questions women’s role in the market economy where she only gains respect if she has a good job. When women left their homes to work, processed foods and fast food replaced home cooking, and skills were substituted with products. Consumers are led to think that more money means a better life. That is because in a consumer society, success is symbolized by money and consequently, essential work and decisions of society are taken outside of the home.
“However, at this point in history, the work to heal our ecological wounds, bring a balance of power into our economy and ensure social equity starts with our choices about what to eat, what to buy, or more importantly, what not to buy, what to create and how to use our time and money. Indeed, the major work of society needs to happen inside our homes, putting the homemaker at the vanguard of social change,” said Hayes.
Radical homemakers pass through three stages: Renouncing, reclaiming and rebuilding. During the first stage, a radical homemaker questions the illusory happiness of the consumer society and the pressure to buy goods and services that they could provide for themselves. They also cast a critical look at the global economic principles, which are privileging corporations that have no legal and moral accountability to the public. It is interesting to know that 75 percent of the world’s food comes from twelve plants and six companies control 98 percent of the world’s seed sales. Furthermore, of the one hundred largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations and 49 are nations.
In the second stage, radical homemakers recover the skills that will help them build a life without a conventional income. Homemakers can dehydrate, can and freeze vegetables and fruits; make jams, jellies and of course bake and cook; keep honey bees; milk a cow or dairy goat; make cheese, yogurt and butter; make soap or other homemade nontoxic cleaning products; keep chickens; set up water recycling systems; make toys, invent games and educate their own children; make medicinal remedies; fix their houses and cars; sew, knit and mend their clothes; create art, literature, music and crafts; and build their own homes.
In the rebuilding phase, the homemakers contribute toward recreating a society reflecting the desire for a better world through artwork, writing, farming, handicraft, social work, teaching or a small business.
Homemakers criticize the disappearance of communities such as agricultural land, which was once farmed for local food production, but is now part of a global industrialized food system. Moreover, the increasing number of highways is accelerating the delocalization of the community. With local economies offering fewer jobs, people have no other choice but work in the global marketplace.
These ordinary people lead the same “normal” life described by the American columnist Ellen Goodman: “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.” The endless pursuit of more has increased the pace of life worldwide. Work never stops and with our smart phones, we are connected 24/7. Furthermore, the absence of parents due to the demands of their professional careers and the presence of nannies are affecting negatively on children’s development. The family structure at home is also shattered by the habit of all family members retreating to their respective bedrooms with a television and computer. This form of individualism kills the family spirit. Incidentally, some 75 percent of Americans acknowledge that they don’t even know their neighbors, and many people living in the world’s biggest cities feel the same way.
According to sociologist, Robert Putnam, refraining from social instincts takes a powerful toll on human society. He argues that people whose communities trust and support each other, are better able to cope with trauma, fight off illness, avoid depression and lead healthier, happier lives.
Radical homemakers refuse the pressures of the prevalent market economy. They drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy and eat locally and center their lives around family and community. They reinvent domesticity and show us a new way of life.
This book is a passionate plea to live in a just, peaceful and sustainable world. Hayes is a brilliant spokeswoman for radical homemakers. She forces us to rethink about the way we live and inspires us to follow in their footsteps.
