If a woman has the ability to do high-level intellectual work, she should use it and nurture it. She should learn new skills all the time and always be “employable” in case something falls through and she has to rely on herself.

Bus drivers, cashiers, and personal shoppers aren’t to be devalued; however, with the continuous increase in automation it pays to work in a more cerebral field where you’re less easily replaced by technology. A lot of what housewives do - like driving kids around, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and laundry - could be done by a computer and/or by robots. People now have goods and even groceries delivered right to their doorsteps, and one day this may be done by drones. Cars and public transportation are likely to be autonomous and driven by artificial intelligence someday. While I don’t perceive it’s exactly on the horizon, I imagine that one day robots, like robot vacuum cleaners, will also perform jobs like scrubbing toilets and sinks, cleaning non-carpeted floors, and even cooking. In the “smart house” I imagine a housewife would be even more obsolete.

I believe that, assuming humanity survives long enough as a species and no major disasters set back our technological progress, the work of the future will be high-level intellectual and interpersonal work. I think the only job a homemaker/housewife does that’s “safe” from technological evolution/automation is raising children. If ectogenesis (gestation outside the human body) becomes widely available and a viable and safe way to bring new humans into the world, even childbearing could be threatened by technology - economically and transactionally speaking. If such a technology is affordable, effective, and safe, I predict commercial surrogates will be out of work, and I imagine women who want to bear children in exchange for being provided for will also have to find other ways to make money and secure resources.