#alternate The Stigma of Being a Housewife (BUTTON) -- Today’s Paper Europe|The Stigma of Being a Housewife https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/world/europe/21iht-LETTER.html * (BUTTON) Give this articleGive this articleGive this article -- The Female Factor The Stigma of Being a Housewife * Send any friend a story -- STOCKHOLM — When the Swedish journalist Peter Letmark tried to track down a housewife for a series on 21st-century parents in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter recently, he failed. “Housewives,” he explained, “are a near-extinct species in Sweden. And the few who still do exist don’t really dare to go public with it.” In neighboring Norway, the Housewives’ Association changed its name to the Women and Family Association as its membership plummeted to 5,000 from 60,000. “The reference to housewife was just too embarrassing,” said the feminist economist Charlotte Koren of the Norwegian Institute of Social Research, a former member and mother of two. When it is no longer socially acceptable to be a housewife — or homemaker, in modern American parlance — has feminism overshot its objective? -- under 3 are scarce. Yet in this generation of young mothers you are more likely to find women saying they are on extended maternity leave or between jobs than admitting they are housewives. Only among the wealthy is it seen as class status when the highly -- “It’s hard to find a balance between not romanticizing and not stigmatizing housewives,” said Nancy Folbre, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Even though a number of women still stay at home, a cultural shift has put them on the -- social norms work: They put pressure on people to conform.” In Sweden the demise of the housewife is striking. Fathers share parental leave, kindergartens are heavily subsidized, and the universal breadwinner model is quite deeply entrenched — from the workplace to -- consultant at The Brand Union, a Swedish brand design company. From time to time international ads have to be re-dubbed to remove offensive mentions of a “housewife,” he said. Mr. Andersson and his colleagues focus on what he calls the “women short of time” segment. -- Jorun Lindell, a mother of three and the wife of a Swedish entrepreneur, tried being a housewife and could not make it work. “Sneered at,” she said, for her conviction that her children should have their mother at home, she learned that she also could not put them -- Some measures, like the home care allowance Sweden and Norway pay stay-at-home parents who opt out of the day care system, have often only reinforced the stigma attached to housewives: concerns that this allowance, popular with working-class and immigrant families, hampers social mobility by keeping children of poor and foreign backgrounds out -- A cheaper and possibly more effective way might be to finally and formally recognize the contribution housewives make to the economy, said Hélène Périvier, an economist at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. “It’s not about being paid,” said Ms. Périvier, noting that the economic value housewives create remains within their home, “it’s about being valued.”