Flying solo

I picture my mother in a poky kitchen, cooking dinner for six every night; boiling, straining, and mashing with a muttered, “Damn, blast, bugger” on high rotation. A product of her historical time, gender, race, and class, my mother’s assigned role was one of happy hetero-reproductive domesticity.

Myths are promulgated to uphold hegemonic social norms and interests. The happy housewife myth sustained, and still sustains, the gendered division of domestic labour, and the idea that happiness follows proximity to a social ideal - in this case, the sacralised nuclear family. As cultural theorist Sara Ahmed has observed, happiness is used to justify social norms as social goods. Happiness myths orient us in a particular direction. “The family… becomes a pressure