Listen to Jason Kelce on homemakers, not Harrison Butker

<p>What do you call a woman who holds no paying job, and who spends her days engaged in child care, domestic scheduling and general housekeeping?</p> <p>This isn’t a trick question or a bad joke. It’s an interesting cultural discussion for which we may thank, of all possible organizations, the NFL.</p> <p>A few weeks ago, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker said some loopy things in a commencement speech, which I didn’t bother to write about because the whole thing felt very fish/barrel. Butker was roundly excoriated for telling the graduating women of Benedictine College that they should forgo careers and “embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” The concept of women finding happiness in work, he said, is just one of the “diabolical lies” they’re told. Butker looked even more ridiculous when folks started pointing out that his own mother is a renowned medical physicist.</p> <p>Rich athlete says tiresome thing, blah, blah.</p> <p>But over Memorial Day weekend, the story continued. The famous footballing Kelce brothers, Jason (formerly of the Philadelphia Eagles) and Travis (currently of Taylor), delved into Butker’s remarks on their podcast. Jason, a father of three, said he would feel as though he “failed” his daughters if they paid attention to anyone telling them to be homemakers.</p> <p>One person went on X to post what they clearly thought was a gotcha: “Your wife is a homemaker,” the user wrote to Jason. “... Seems you’re a bit hypocritical.”</p> <p>“I don’t think of Kylie as a homemaker,” Jason replied, adding: “Our marriage is a partnership, we are equals who are figuring it out on the daily. The only expectation is that we love each other, support one another, and are committed to our family, that comes first. We both raise our kids, we both work, we both keep our home. It is both our faults it is messy, but such is life with 3 young children.”</p> <p>Jason Kelce did not get into the specifics of his domestic arrangement, but followers of his podcast, or viewers of a documentary made about his life and career, already have some insight: Kylie Kelce does participate in volunteer and advocacy work, but her primary tasks of unpaid child care, scheduling and making a “mean sandwich,” as Jason joked, are precisely the kinds of duties that one might argue encapsulate the definition of “homemaker.”</p> <p>So, what’s the distinction?</p> <p>The distinction that Jason seemed to be getting at wasn’t about the tasks that Kylie performs; it was about <i>why</i> she performs them. And it was about how the family values her contributions.</p> <p>Neither Jason nor Kylie expected that Kylie should stay home because it was her primary directive as a woman, he seemed to be saying. They mutually decided that she would stay home because it was the labor division that made sense for their partnership; he traveled a lot and was paid heaps of money, so she would be the one with the flexible schedule and the sandwich ingredients. The household tasks could be reassigned when it made sense. In one of my favorite scenes in “Kelce,” Jason ices his foot while putting his toddler down for a nap. He does so not in the way of a showoff looking to score points, but in the way of a competent, experienced parent looking to get a kid to sleep.</p> <p>Kylie wasn’t the homemaker, in other words.<i> They</i> were the homemakers. Household tasks - whether paying the mortgage or doing the laundry - had been thrown into a pile, and Jason and Kylie had divvied them up in a way that felt equal, and their joint contributions had made their home.</p> <p>Last month, I wrote a column about “tradwives,” a social media breed of women who live and love like it’s 1952: homemade bread, retro clothing and a belief that husbands should be the heads of households while wives should be the helpmeets.</p> <p>More than one woman wrote to me later, worried that “housewife” had been co-opted by the conservative movement. One told me that, although it was true that her husband brought in all of their income, they mutually decided how to budget it. And although it was also true that a sexist infrastructure (a history of women making lower salaries, a history of men not having paternity leave) may have informed their initial decision to have her stay home, they were now trying to live out their arrangement in a way that was as egalitarian as possible. At dinnertime, he cooks, she cleans.</p> <p>The act of staying home isn’t what makes someone a tradwife, after all, any more than the act of making a salary isn’t what makes someone a feminist. What defines either is the thought process that goes into the decision, and the conversations that follow if the decision needs to be renegotiated. What happens if someone gets sick, loses a job or just doesn’t feel like making a sandwich? Does the other partner say, “How about I make scrambled eggs?” Or do they hope their spouse - as Butker put it - “leans into her vocation” and drags herself to the kitchen?</p> <p>The trouble with Butker’s comments was not that he was telling women that satisfaction and joy could be found via marriage and motherhood - something that both stay-at-home parents and work-out-of-the-home parents can agree on. The trouble is that he seemed less interested in couples doing what’s best for their individual families and more interested in women doing what he thinks women should do.</p> <p>Jason Kelce gets it. Homemaking isn’t a role that women are born for. It’s a process that a family builds together.</p>