The educated woman who stays home now may face not only the lack of fulfillment, but also the awkward silence at a cocktail party —the lack of interest when she says she is a stay-at-home mother. An article in The Economist referred to some women who stay home as “highly educated bankers’ wives who choose not to work because they don’ t need the money and would rather spend their time educating their toddlers so that they may one day get into Harvard.” 　　The flourishing of home-economics courses suggests that being a homemaker is a practice that matters. If you did it right, you could save the family unit money. You could contribute, without participating in the labor force for paid work, to the financial health and well-being of your household. In that sense, there was a certain respect for the housewife: Her husband couldn’ t do it without her.