Since when is it “help” when it’s your house and your children?
Of course you deserve a breather at the end of the work day. When do the cook and nanny arrive? No, no, Inigo, you can’t take the breather with them! They are to take care of dinner and the children for whichever spouse arrives home first so that he or she can prepare for the other’s homecoming.
You didn’t mentioned whether she had worked all day at home, had had the kids all day, or had another job.
Ah, Maribelle Morgan and The Total Woman. I owe her a debt of gratitude since that book provided me and my friends hours upon hours of stoned glee when I was in college.
Among other bits of incalculably bizarre advice, Morgan recommended that wives put on “theme nights” where the food at the dinner table was from a particular country, and the kids were dressed in outfits from the culture in question.
On hearing this, one of my stoner buddies from MIT launched into a spontaneous monologue: “But, that sounds EXPENSIVE. What if the family is poor, huh? Shouldn’t the wife still be able to please her husband? I know … she can do BIAFRA NIGHT! The kids won’t need much in the way of clothing, and there will hardly be any food, so…”
I suppose you had to be there.
What doesn’t ring true about that original article is that dishwashers were not common in the 1950s. The rest of it, I’ve read in old cookbooks and homemaking books passed down from my mother and grandmother, from the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. Many of the ones I have were put out by the ladies’ church group, or for some charity function.
I’m always amused by the hints in my books about how to keep my “favorite husband’s” pipe tobacco sweet by putting a slice of apple in with it, or how brewing the perfect pot of coffee will keep him in love with me. Or, he’ll have to loosen his belt after one of my terrific oven meals of meat loaf and baked potatoes.
Yes, she has. The whole of The Repository Of Lost Legends is fake. Alas. I really liked the Poseidon Adventure one.
But that’s my main point. The point at issue in determining truth or falsehood is not if *some * of these statements were included in an article in some publication, at some time in the last century. I’m almost certain that individual statements similar or identical to most of these were probably in some magazine or book at some time, somewhere, although I would dispute the “knows her place” line appearing in any general circulation mass media publication in the mid 20th century.
The point is whether all these were together in one article or whether someone cut and posted these together and added some extra spice of their own to make it seem especially oppressive and egregious. It’s an obvious cut and paste job as Milkkelson directly acknowledges.
Mikkleson’s standard of proof in this scenario seems to be that although the article is a pasted up fake, the purported magazine never existed, and the artwork is not associated with the article, you can’t prove absolutely that this list didn’t exist at some point, because well gosh darn it, it sounds so right for the mid 20th century oppressive patriarchal zeitgeist, and maybe… just maybe the list exists … somewhere. To slap “undetermined” on what is an obviously fake article is absurd.
That’s getting cross stitched! Thanks!
Yes, she does dispose of the fake magazine article, but that’s not the claim being examined, which is “A list of ten steps to a good marriage comes from a 1950s home economics textbook”. Not being able to check every such textbook published during the 1950s, she can’t categorically state whether the claim is true or false.
Moreover, the point she’s making is that – whether or not those exact words appeared in that exact order precisely as described – the ideas expressed are actually typical for the period, rather than being (as is often the case with emails of this type) a modern caricature of a historical mindset.
In other words, whether the list came from the source stated, or was cobbled together from other places, is largely irrrelevant to the message the email is sending: “look how much things have changed”.
It wasn’t so long ago that Mike Huckabee said that “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband”. Sure, he was made fun of for saying it, but he still said it. I don’t find it implausible at all that someone way back would publish something saying that “a wife should know her place.” I wouldn’t find it implausible for someone to publish something like that right now; the difference is, you’d find far fewer that would agree.
By the way, pieces over at snopes.com written by Barbara Mikkelson always bear her name (with an internym). The “How to Be a Good Wife” page is snopes’s creation (as is everything in the T.R.O.L.L. section).
– Tammi Terrell
But what if that “cut and paste job” was done by the writer of a still undiscovered 1950s home economics book? In that case it would qualify as true, wouldn’t it? And if that possibility cannot be proven but cannot be ruled out either, then I think it should be tagged as “undetermined.”
In that little SW Colorado town, in the 1950’s, all tortillas were homemade, and not by the women reading the book.
The recipe wasn’t specific as to type of tortilla – frankly, I’m a little surprised it was spelled correctly. They were to be stacked, with some scary ketchup and milk concoction for sauce. That little booklet was filled with such frights. I may have to go digging for it, just to share the horror.
Auntie Mary made the best flour tortillas in the world, so neener-neener. 
The site was started by a married couple, Barbara and David Mikkelson.
OMG, yes! That’s the one. I must have one to provide come company for my dusty copy of “The Rules”. 
Note the uncanny similarity between this cover illustration and the one for The Surrendered Wife (not that we should be surprised, given the uncanny similarity in the contents).
David being better known as snopes (note capitalization), who, along with a handful of minions, handles the actual running of the site. Barbara just writes some of the articles (which, as noted, she signs). Anything unsigned is the work of snopes himself.