Maybe it’s just me and my own passel of neurotic (read: socially awkward) tendencies, but when I meet someone and they inevitably ask what I do for a living, I find myself suddenly sweating and fumbling for an answer.

This is not because I am ashamed, mind you. It’s just that I truly don’t know what to say.

Do I reply that I’m a mother? Or just that I don’t have, and have never had, a career? Do I get specific and say I’m a stay-at-home mom (SAHM), or simply a very basic, “I’m home?” I suppose I could mention that I write, but the truth is that I’m less a writer than a hobbyist with perpetual writer’s block. Plus, does how I respond really matter anyway?

I recently read a fascinating essay titled “The Job for Which All Others Exist,” in which the writer Ivana Greco made a strong case for reclaiming the word “homemaker.” Her thoughts on the subject were quite compelling — and not just because I was comforted and gratified to know that I am not the only woman prone to panicking when someone asks, “What do you do?”

Greco does an excellent job outlining the long history of what domestic work has been called and how it has been conceptualized throughout the centuries. From the Middle Ages to Abigail Adams to the present day, words like homemaker, housewife, goodwife and stay-at-home mom have found their way into the cultural lexicon.

I loved that Greco articulated some of my own concerns about the expression “stay-at-home mom”: namely, that it undersells the many and varied things we do, and is innately exclusive. (What about a woman whose children have grown and moved out? Or a woman who does not have children at all, but chooses to stay home and fill her time with other things?)

I would also add to these criticisms my own view that “stay-at-home mom” just feels too kitschy, and seems reminiscent of some sort of vague and impersonal dystopic, government-issued classification. (Would there be an acronym for it if it weren’t kitschy?) Conversely, it also potentially connotes some sort of luxurious or lazy “kept wife” situation: you may be working hard at a career, while I merely “stay at home” and watch soap operas. (Do those even still exist?)

It seems the expressions “housewife” and “homemaker” have generally been used in a mostly derogatory sense since Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique. Before Friedan’s groundbreaking treatise on “the problem that has no name,” married women filling out forms oftentimes listed “housewife” or “homemaker” as their occupation in a completely unironic way. Somehow, though, Friedan managed to convince no small number of women that such a role is inherently degrading and limiting, and so both “housewife” and “homemaker” seem to have largely fallen out of use among women.

One could ask, I suppose, whether the language we use matters at all. What difference does it make if I self-identify as a stay-at-home mom or homemaker? Surely they both point to more or less the same reality: I am not engaged in full-time work for wages outside of my home. But am I communicating something meaningful both to myself and to others when I choose to embrace one particular title while rejecting another? If I simply answer in the negative — that I don’t have a career — and allow my interlocutor to fill in the blanks, am I sending a particular message?

As a writer (mere hobbyist though I may be), of course I believe that language does indeed matter! Not only does the written word have the potential to reflect both what is in our hearts and minds and the cultural moment in which we live, it also has the mysterious and active power to shape, transform and restore. The way I speak about my children or my duty to my neighbor, or the way I announce my pregnancy or describe my relationship with God, will subtly inform my own thoughts and feelings, and those of the people on the receiving end of my words. Do I capitulate to the culture in how I express my views of marriage and motherhood, focusing on the drudgery and limitations? Or do I commit myself to finding beauty and fulfillment in my vocation?

It matters how I speak and write about the meaningful things of life.

So what, then, is to be gained by taking Greco’s suggestion and reclaiming the word “homemaker?” Why might it best encapsulate what comprises my life? And what does it look like for a woman to make a home?

Housework and meal preparation excepted, one could certainly make the case that many of the notions behind the word “homemaking” are largely superfluous in the grind of day-to-day life. The idea of creating, seeking and cultivating beauty in the home, for example, sounds at first more like a privileged luxury than a need. And it’s true that if the children are all at school during the day, or if they’ve grown up and left the home altogether, a woman’s physical presence in the home is not necessary in the way it was when there was a baby or small toddler underfoot.

But we need not reduce everything in life to a utilitarian, practical reality. If we want to be thoroughly and authentically human, we must take great care not to reduce homemaking to a mere list of necessary physical tasks. It’s possible to appreciate the concrete, essential things we need to do and at the same time make space for the pursuit of beauty and excellence. Shopping for and preparing a delicious meal, organizing a well-appointed pantry or clothes closet, and curating lovely tableware to enliven and elevate even the simplest weeknight dinner are examples of things that aren’t wholly necessary, but certainly contribute to making a beautiful and loving home.

Of course, our very tendency to call these things superfluous reflects the fact that the culture has lost its appreciation for the dignity of not only the homemaker, but more broadly of the home itself. And this was no accident. The denigration of the domestic sphere of the home and the life of the homemaker was calculated and intentional. As leader of the movement that became known as second-wave feminism, the aforementioned Betty Friedan sought to reframe homemakers as “parasitical,” and the home as a “comfortable concentration camp,” a dehumanizing limitation on a woman’s potential for self-actualization.

Clearly Friedan, too, saw that the language we use matters.

To the famous feminist’s credit, she very clearly recognized and enumerated the grand scope of a homemaker’s duties, which, when taken together, obviate the need for a broad and varied skill set. Friedan is certainly not wrong, then, in pointing out the all-consuming nature of homemaking — really, what mother today would say that the vocation to marriage and motherhood isn’t demanding?

“When a woman tries to put the problem into words, she often merely describes the daily life she leads,” wrote Friedan. “What is there in this recital of comfortable domestic detail that could possibly cause such a feeling of desperation? Is she trapped simply by the enormous demands of her role as modern housewife: wife, mistress, mother, nurse, consumer, cook, chauffeur; expert on interior decoration, child care, appliance repair, furniture refinishing, nutrition and education?”

But where Friedan goes wrong is in her reduction of homemaking to this series of tasks, implying that they are on a lower plane than wage work and failing to consider that there may be a bigger, more robust and expansive picture of domestic life that she may be missing.

Friedan takes for granted that homemaking is inherently incapable of being fulfilling. She ignores the beauty, mission and purpose of vocation, the dignity of womanhood, and the power in a woman’s fiat, or yes, to God. She trivializes the relational nature of womanhood and, in so doing, minimizes the capacity for and importance of love: the domestic sphere is hidden and its work ultimately unquantifiable, and so, in her view, little that happens there is worthy of a woman’s attention.

What, though, of the stunning achievements of a mother’s love, of nurture and formation, of the sacrifices and encouragements and prayers poured out? What of the cultivating of manners and of hospitality? What of the myriad ways in which women care for and look to the needs of those around them? What do the family, the Church and the culture at large lose when such pursuits are diminished and denigrated until home and hearth are finally abandoned?

Women would do well to consider Greco’s idea of reclaiming the role and title of “homemaker.” To make a home is to pursue goodness, beauty and truth in our mission to love our families and friends well. It will certainly involve some duties that are mundane and unpleasant, and it will absolutely demand flexibility, sacrifice, the practice of a generous and radical hospitality, and hard work.

But then, what good, worthy and important pursuit doesn’t?