She begins her essay with an account of the second-wave feminism that caused male and female responsibility within the domestic sphere to be reassessed. Ehrenreich views this outsourcing of upper-class relationship issues as enabling the creation of a servant class. Over the course of the essay, she moves away from discussing the conflict of gender presented in housework and ceases to mention men as part of the equation.
Ehrenreich instead focuses on a class issueβone in which the female homeowner is the villain, laying the foundation for generations of negligent children, and the female maid is the underdog that earns our sympathy and nostalgic appreciation for the hard physical labor that was once the responsibility of our mothers. The role of the male in the maid relationship is entirely ignored, and instead we are presented with a female versus female power struggle.
These narrative tactics divide women into two groups: the employers and the employed. It polarizes women along lines of class and makes it difficult to see what makes her argument particularly feminist.
This parallels her argument from before, but this time she uses it to condemn inequality between two different classes of women. By dramatizing the female homeowner and placing more concern on the woman that is subjected to working for her, Ehrenreich makes it clear that there is nothing positive about the mistress-maid relationship However, she does not give a clear solution to the problem.
Ehrenreich disdains the helpless homemaker and praises the indestructible mother of the past who took seriously the job of thoroughly cleaning her own home. Ehrenreich presents the ideal of a woman whose home is her domain, where only she knows the best methods of making it appear the way it ought to be presented. The break in her discussion of maid services seems out of place, and it makes the reader wonder why she chose to bring up her mother at all. Ehrenreich would view their story as a cautionary tale: if a woman teaches her child that he or she is not responsible for cleaning up a mess, then she is giving that child a reason to feel superior.
