Cinderella's Housework

Paul Meinhardt

Description

STUNG BY THE ECONOMIC CRISIS? CINDERELLA'S HOUSEWORK TELLS HOW SECURE, HEALTHY, SUCCESSFUL FAMILIES CAN SAVE OUR ECONOMY. All that is precious and treasured is created by mothers, families, and households. And the real treasure is the creativity of the human mind to solve human problems and develop human ideas into wealth that will improve the condition of all people and the Earth.

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 12 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622870035
• Langue: English

Extrait

CINDERELL A ’S HOUSEWORK:

F AMILIES IN CRISIS, HOUSEHOLDS A T THE EDGE OF CHAOS!
Paul Meinhardt
Published by
First Edition Design Publishing
May 2012
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



Copyright © 2012 Paul Meinhardt

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including printed or electronic versions now known or hereinafter devised, without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews

Published by Turn the Page Publishing LLC (PRINT)
P. O. Box 3179
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
www.turnthepagepublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-62287-002-8 (PRINT)
ISBN: 978-1-62287-003-5 (EBOOK)

Library of Congress Control Number
2012935880
Cover Design by
Mark Delbridge, Delbridge Design LLC
Acknowledgments

Joan Alevras Meinhardt, my wife and muse and a tough one at that. Michael Minton and Jean Libman Bloch, authors of What Is a Wife Worth?
The Leading Expert Places a High Dollar Value on Homemaking, whose work was a major inspiration for Cinderella’s Housework.

Those who provided guidance: Roseann, Kirk, Eloise, Tony, Ken, Denise and Jim.

Family survivors permitting interviews and conversations about their families: Cindy, Mary Ann, Kim, Amanda, Aja, Donna, Heather, Eloise, Kelly, Anita, Christine and my family.

Most of all, a mountain of gratitude to my publisher and friend, Roseann S. Lentin.
Introduction

In the Beginning, Mother and Child!

Cinderella’s Housework offers family-centered solutions to the 21st Century Economic Crisis. Families are shaped to fit the mold of the global economy. Shrinking family income is the problem, the reason families exist in crisis mode … at the edge of chaos.
Families are the engines driving the global economy. Family-households are the core of endless human and environmental change. This book suggests a family-based analysis and solution for the global economic crisis.
The household is mother nature’s “factory,” producing humanity. This is the reality hiding in plain sight. The 21st Century political-economy needs to consider the human family in terms of income-consumption, as well as environmental change. Just as income and consumption are two sides of the same coin, human and environmental costs must be considered as part of any enterprise budget.
I suggest that Crisis Economics and shrinking family income are the result of shortsighted leadership, both in government and in corporations. Some suggest that economic crises result from surging testosterone. While hormonal imbalance may be part of the problem, I suspect the problem is far more complex than our body chemistry. The 21st Century question is: can humanity survive economic globalization, as well as cycles of environmental and economic crisis?
My wife asked, “Paul, what is this book about? Look at the goulash you are writing ... you put everything in your book but the kitchen sink. You have stories about moonshine ... commentaries about Cinderella and children stories. Along with serious economic analysis, you’ve shoved in speculative physics and philosophy. You weave in genetics, computer networking, DNA, food, auto and drug industries, health, global terrorism, cosmic energy, political economy, marriage and divorce, jobs and income. Did I miss anything? A better question is, did you miss anything? So with all the stuff you’ve crammed into the book, how do you connect the dots? You give the impression that everything is about family.”
I chuckled, “Yes, I know. That’s the point ... the connecting thread. Family is about everything and everything is ultimately about family ... because it’s about people ... and family is where it all begins.”
Essay 1
Housework Hell

The poor child was given all the rough housework. (Cinderella, Charles Perrault, 1697)
Cinderella was written to entertain and educate. Stories such as Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Tales of Mother Goose, Beauty and the Beast, and Red Riding Hood were more than bedtime stories. They were written to instruct children in the virtues of the society they were born into, namely the new market society.
Cinderella, in particular, is a parable of early market society. It is also an example of how market society transforms the extended cooperative family into a competitive corporate family. The death of Cinderella’s mother and the remarriage of her father, create the conditions for household struggle. The merchant father, away on business much of the time, leaves control of the household to the stepmother.

-1) Isolated Household: Cinderella is the household drudge. Prior to the step-family, Cinderella was the focus of her father’s attention. In the step- family, Cinderella is degraded from the family “trophy” to a servant in the household. She is a prisoner of housework inside her own home, while the step-family enjoys “stepping out in society.”
Cinderella bridges the isolated household and social life outside. The reality of the story is that Cinderella “produces” the household, while the step family “consumes” it. The story is as much a prophecy as a fairy tale.
If the Cinderella story seems oddly familiar, it’s because it brings to mind the 21st Century household. In fact, the nuclear family of parents and children, continue to reflect establishment priorities. Families increasingly become single parent households. The carefully watched servant of yesterday is transformed into the 21st Century homemaker, either male or female.
Deeply rooted conflicts are revealed in the “Cinderella” story. Cinderella represents family cohesiveness, while the step family represents household deconstruction. Cinderella is physically and personally beautiful. She represents the cooperative tribal family. The tribal family is the totality of all social and economic activity.
The stepsisters are ugly, despite their lavish clothes. Cinderella is beau- tiful, even in her rags and grime. The suggestion is that the new middle class family, in spite of its material trappings, needs a rebirth to the beauty of an extended, cooperative family, with family members and with community.
As we move through the essays, I will use the story of my family, a line of cattle breeders, to highlight the message of this text: how family members banding together for the good of all breeds success. The following is a short excerpt from Breeders, My Family Story:
In ancient Sumer lived a tribe of cattle breeders. Their skill at breeding livestock was widely known. Invited by neighboring tribes, the breeders traveled widely in the Middle East. In those times, wealth was reckoned in tribal increase of people and livestock, as well as trade goods. By those standards the breeders were a tribe of great wealth and importance.
The birth of children was of primary importance, and so women, mothers, wives and daughters were the decision-makers and planners. In my ancestry, women controlled the means of production by controlling the birth of children. Therefore, women were the true leaders, even as men held titles of chiefs and kings. Today women are still in household control.

-2) She Who Must Be Obeyed: Like prisoners of war, it is our duty to escape our income prison, if we can’t correct it. Many of us become impoverished as the economy disintegrates. We feel hopeless to change it. As with Cinderella, people begin to realize that a system of greed and mendacity is a dead end.
The death of Cinderella’s mother and remarriage of her father, create conditions of household struggle. The merchant father, away on business much of the time, leaves control of the household to the stepmother.
Cinderella’s fairy godmother is the household goddess. She is the spirit of household fertility. In extended families, the senior mother plays this part, often a grandmother. “She who must be obeyed” is the great African witch … the Good Woman, Woman of Wisdom, Healing Woman and Good Wife. She is the woman of power and wisdom in H. Rider Haggard’s novel She.
“She” is the: “woman of the house,” tribal matriarch … Great Goddess, Mother Nature, Gray Goddess of prehistoric Greece, Hestia of the hearth, household Goddess in ancient Crete, Healing Woman, Conjure Woman, Cosmic Mother, Hecate, Mary the Sea Mother, Goddess of All Waters, Matron Chief in tribal societies, and countless others.
Sea Mother transforms fetal sea water into infant blood, the miraculous water of life. In this regard, all mothers are Sea Mothers … literally and figuratively. Fetal water is similar to sea water. It contains the same proportions of ionized salts such as sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, iodine and most of the other trace metals found in sea water … primarily iron. Human blood is similar.
In ancient times, the household goddess was often the Water Spirit, widely known as the Virgin of the sea, later called Mary. ‘Mare’ is Latin for sea. “She” is the Virgin Spring, providing the water of life, breaking the water of birth. “She” creates life.
“She” washes away our sins, and drowns our sorrows in tears of grief and joy. In the household, “She” purifies everything and everyone. “She” transforms ordinary household chores into sacred hearth rituals.
“She” is midwife, household priestess, and purifier. She holds the power to create and transform life. She is the Water of Life, transforming, creating, growing, purifying, cleansing, and washing away the tears of loss.
“She” who purifies the household earns new respect, appreciation and awe. The “cleaning woman” not only washes away our sins and tears, but does the laundry, the dishes, and windows. “She” is the house- hold bread-winner. “She” is house-worker and wage-worker. “She” is the household deity.
Housework is an “action-prayer” performed by the family deity … who daily purifies and sanctifies the household. The family deity and muse- mother must receive offerings of attention and r