Ughh. The Jon and Kate story has gotten so big that Vanity Fair is covering it. Their story has surpassed the gossip rags and gone to somewhat respectable magazines, which is just sad. As Jezebel notes, it’s probably smart of Vanity Fair to do a web-only version. This story keeps unraveling weekly, which is oddly timed with the printing of tabloids. Funny how that happens.

The Vanity Fair piece has some interesting points. Was the show successful because it was based on a traditional family with reversed marriage roles?

…this was another aspect of the show that seemed to whip up Zeitgeist-ian winds: in an era of confusion about gender roles in marriage—not to mention an era obsessed with mommy culture—Kate was unapologetically wearing the pants.

‘I think part of the intrigue was that Kate was behaving in a way you don’t expect mothers to behave,’ says Janice Min, the former editor of Us, who put Jon and Kate on the cover an unprecedented seven times in a row. ‘And yet part of the sick appeal is, I think, every single person who’s married can admit there’s a little bit of Kate Gosselin lurking in them.’

Before the two of them went nutty, people criticized Kate. I never did. Probably because one control freak recognizes and understands another. I always thought, “If I had 8 kids, a tight budget and a husband who is worthless and lazy, I’d yell like Kate does.” However, this article prompted an interesting question.

Is Vanity Fair and our pop psychology culture over-analyzing this? “Traditional family” no longer means “Father Knows Best,” even in the utmost conservative family. On 18 Kids and Counting, Michelle Duggar is pretty upfront. She and Jim Bob are portrayed as equals in the show. Perhaps it’s no longer the gender roles that need to change in “traditional families” but the stereotypes that feminists and the media cling to?

In the show’s fourth season, in 2008, Jon seemed to experience what Gail Collins has cleverly identified as the “feminine ‘problem that has no name’ that Betty Friedan wrote about in 1963.” He had been working again, this time as an I.T. analyst in the governor of Pennsylvania’s office in Harrisburg, but then he quit.

Now Jon and Kate are hardly examples of normal families, nor are extreme examples like the Duggars. Bear with me, but is there just the slightest chance that feminists and liberals have it all wrong? Society isn’t this “male patriarchal oppression conspiracy” that men have perpetrated against us beleagured women for thousands of years, but that staying at home with kids is incredibly damn hard regardless of whether it’s the man or the woman?

Childcare is hard. It’s hard when you do that for a living (I worked in childcare for three summers during college). When you are an actual parent, I can’t imagine the stress. Housewives never get a break. They don’t get to play grownup with a job and have conversations with other adults. They spend all day cooking and cleaning. While this is an incredibly important role (and one that I hope to do one day), it’s just difficult.

Furthermore, it’s one that has never had respect. It didn’t have respect before the radical women’s lib raised their collective consciences, and it doesn’t have respect now because said feminists look down on women who choose to stay at home. I’ve seen the judgmental looks that other women give my mother. I was surprised when I caught myself giving that look to fellow Junior League members who decided to be SAHMs.

Regardless of decisions that families chose to make, society needs to start respecting the full-time homemaker. It’s not the “feminine mystique,” it’s the stay-at-home mystique.