MommaSaid holds a bi-weekly competition encouraging stay-at-home moms (though you can enter if you work part-time) to share their successes in the hopes of snagging a Housewife Award (she asks nominees to skip going into their daily juggle, since "we're all doing that" and instead offer up something original and hopefully humorous).  This week's awardee will receive "Babyproofing Your Marriage."

There is something wincingly difficult to digest about the word "housewife" for me unless it's preceded by "drunken" or "desperate."  Unless there's a word used or a wink or a nod to the fact that no one, really no one, hopefully wants to resurrect Donna Reed, I simply cannot get over the assumptions built into that laden word. Given that there are now plenty of stay at home dads, some of whom are probably also looking for some sort of award (though I'm thinking a book, unless it's about tantric sex, isn't what they're after), the concept of a Housewife Award seems dated.

I applaud the concept of recognizing the exhausting mind-numbingly repetitive tasks of childrearing.  But it remains no wonder to me that the chasm between stay-at-home moms and working moms persists, when awards like this exist.