In defense of the inner housewife
Caitlin Flanagan, a staff writer for The New Yorker, has provoked outrage and applause with her commentaries on the often frantic life and bizarre social customs of the modern American woman.
Outlandish weddings, sexless marriages, nannies, Martha Stewart. In ''To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife" (Little, Brown, $22.95), Flanagan revisits not only these subjects but also her own childhood, the birth of her twin sons, the fog of motherhood, and her experience with breast cancer.
Flanagan spoke from her home in Los Angeles.
Q: Did this book come out of your illness?
A: The book didn't because a lot of it was written before that. And I swore when I was going through cancer that I wouldn't become one of those people who's ''changed by cancer" and turns into a complete ding-dong or knucklehead. But to lose both parents and get cancer in a short space of time alters everything. It really forced me to confront, not the whole of my life, but every day of my life.
Q: Do you still consider your mother's life to have been more worthwhile than yours?
A: Definitely, in the sense that every minute of her life was lived in service; it's just who she was.
Q: You write about your ambition to be a wife and mother. What about your ambition to be a writer?
A: I never wanted to be a writer growing up. My father's [novelist Thomas Flanagan] office was a very scary place. I remember I used to climb the big tree outside his office window and wave in at him and he would happily wave back but I remember thinking, ''Who would do that to themselves?"
I did have this verbal acuity, though. In my 30s I felt I was the best dinner-party guest in the world, I could make people laugh, tell stories, I was up on everything.
Q: Are you antifeminist?
A: I feel the earliest kind of feminism demanded rights for all women. But I associate feminism now with women who are like me: white, educated, middle to upper-middle class, and who feel they are still getting the shaft. But, for heaven's sake, if anything, we have the privileges now; we are now the men of the '50s.
Q: You write that many contemporary feminists are hypocrites. Do you include yourself?
A: No. In the first place I'm not a feminist, so my hypocrisy is along other lines. I'm very grateful to all the women who fought for these rights before me, and I'm very disgusted by women who say ''But now I can't be a good mom and be partner in a law firm." That's just tough. Another thing about feminists: They're all unhappy.
I'm writing a piece now called ''The Attack of the Unhappy Women." The great thing for me is that they've been writing these stupid memoirs and essays all along -- ''I don't have sex with my husband. I drink too much." And I'm saying that one of the reasons I don't want to be like you is you don't want to be you.
Q: What are your current pet peeves?
A: Well, I still hate feminism. I'm a Christian, a Presbyterian, but I've become very interested in the evangelical movement. (I'm also a cradle Catholic and a yellow dog Democrat.) Anyway, I was writing about this [sexual] culture we give our girls and a feminist agenda that says you have the right to be as aggressive sexually as any boy.
Suddenly I got it that the evangelical Christians are saying no to that. They're saying we're going to build a separate culture for our girls and protect our kids from the larger culture. Then I logged on to one of their websites and it said homosexuals can't be members so that was the end of that. To the left, I hate feminism, I think it's really stupid. To the right, I think it's just wrong to say this about homosexuals. God made 'em.
Another pet peeve is working mothers unable to admit that something is lost when they work.
Q: Are you still a Martha fan?
A: When she came out of jail I thought she was going to take over the world. Then she did ''The Apprentice," which was really horrible, and that talk show. I don't want to see Martha interviewing Liza Minnelli, I want to see her ironing a shirt.
Q: Do you still have an aesthetic relationship to housework?
A: I won't lie that I do any cleaning. But I did want to find out what happens if I fully invest my life in my husband and my children. They flourish the more time I invest in them.
Q: Are you flourishing too?
A: I am because, you know, if you marry a really good man. . . .My family doesn't take me for granted at all.
Q: How's the clutter?
A: Mmm. Well, I do have a professional organizer on retainer so I would have to say clutter is under control!
Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, is a correspondent for the Irish Times. She can be reached via e-mail at ama1668@hotmail.com. 
