All work at home has the difficulty of the segregation, the isolation of the home.  Man, the social animal who needs at least some one to quarrel with, has deliberately isolated his household, somewhat as a squirrel hides nuts,—­on a property basis.  There has grown up a definite, aesthetic need of privacy; all of modesty and the essential family feeling demand it.

This is good for the man, and perhaps for the children, but not for the woman.  Her work is done alone, and at the time her husband comes home and wants to stay there, she would like to get out.  Work that is in the main lonely, and work that on the whole leaves the mind free, leads almost inevitably to daydreaming and introspection.  These are essentials, in the housework,—­monotony, daydreaming, and introspection.

Let us consider monotony and its effects.  The need of new stimuli is a paramount need of the human being.  Solitary confinement is the worst punishment, so cruel that it is prohibited in some communities.  We need the cheerful noises of the world, we need as releasers of our energies the sights, sounds, smells of the earth; we must have the voices and the presence of our fellows, not for education, but for the maintenance of interest in living.  For the mind to turn inward on itself is pleasurable only in rare snatches, for short periods of time or for rare and abnormal people.  Man’s mind loves the outside world but becomes uneasy when confronted by itself.

The human being, whether male or female, housewife or industrial worker, is a seeker of sensations.  Without new sensations man falls into boredom or a restless and unhappy state, from which the mind seeks freedom.  It is true that one may become a mere seeker of sensations, a restless and fickle pleasure lover who passes from the normal to the abnormal, exotic in his vain search for what is logically impossible,—­lasting novelty.  Variety however is not the mere spice of life; it is the basis of interest and concentrated purpose as well.

People of course vary greatly in what they regard as variety, and this is often a constitutional matter as well as a matter of education.  What is new, striking and interest-provoking to the child has not the same value to the adult; what is boredom to the city man might be of huge interest to the country man.  A person trained to a certain type of life, taught to expect certain things, may find no need of other newer things.  In other words people accustomed to a wide range of stimuli need a wide range, while people unaccustomed to such a range do not need it.

The most important stimuli are other persons, capable of setting into action new thoughts, new emotions, new conduct.  We need what Graham Wallas calls “face to face associations of ideas",—­ideas called into being by words, moods, and deeds of others.

It is this group of stimuli that the busy housewife conspicuously lacks.  “She has no one to talk to,” especially in the modern apartment life.  It is true she has her children to scold, to discipline, to teach, and to talk at; but contact with child minds is not satisfying, has not the flavor of companionship, is not reciprocal in the sense that adult minds are.  There therefore results introspection and daydreaming, both of which may be of slight importance to some women but which are distinctly disastrous to others.