How to be the perfect housewife.

After watching nothing but Mad Men this weekend I can't stop thinking about "the housewife". Do I have so many nasty feelings about the whole idea because I was born in this time and was taught to fight for what I think or would I think that way then as well? I'm all about being a mom one day and staying home with the kids if I have to but the idea that there would be such crazy guidelines to being a "homemaker" seems so outlandish.

The Good Wife's Guide

From Housekeeping Monthly, 13 May, 1955

http://j-walk.com/other/goodwife/index.htm

This was an actual article published in 1955 telling housewives how to be the perfect servant. Things like:

"Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first - remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours."

"Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him."

I mean this stuff sounds eerily similar to Willie Lynch's "The Making of a Slave". These Housewives really only left the house alone to shop or take their kids to school so they read magazines, talked to other wives on the phone and listened to what was expected of them. I look at old ads and laugh. I would never take that malarkey from my husband. Would I have known any better? But then that prompts me to think, well isn't there just as much of that today? "How to" columns in Cosmopolitan and an ad around every corner telling us what to buy. I bet someone my age years from now is probably going to look at us and laugh.