Mishnah Ketubot, 5:5:
These are the tasks which the wife must perform for her husband: grinding and baking and laundry and cooking and nursing her son and making his bed and working in wool. If she brings in for him (ie out of her own money) one maidservant, she does not [have to] grind and she does not bake and she does not do laundry. Two, she doesn’t cook and she doesn’t nurse her son. Three, she doesn’t make his bed and she doesn’t work in wool. Four, she may sit in a chair [and not work at all.]….
Miriam Peskowitz in The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars:
The ideal worker can be old or young but is essentially childless, and has no elderly parents to care for. The ideal worker, or breadwinner, is supported by the domestic caregiver. If there are children, someone else takes them to school and packs their lunches and makes sure their homework’s done. If there are household chores, someone else ticks them off the list. Someone at home relieves the worker of these duties. Someone else keeps the home clean, watches the kids, prepares dinner, and does the myriad tasks to keep a family together. This expectation for workers holds for most decent jobs, whether blue-collar jobs that pay decently or white-collar professional-track positions. The breadwinner must be free to earn the bread. The fact that the breadwinner’s child is sick and has a doctor’s appointment cannot be allowed to stop production.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own:
…It is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry….even allowing for a generous margin for symbolism, that five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, that a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself….
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