Sweden: The Stigma of Being a Housewife

By KATRIN BENNHOLD
July 20, 2010

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? the rest

Across the developed world, women who stay home are increasingly seen as old-fashioned and an economic burden to society. If their husbands are rich, they are frequently berated for being lazy; if they are immigrants, for keeping children from learning the language and ways of their host country.