Cooking, cleaning, and child rearing

Recently, there's a lot of talk about whether or not motherhood is a job or not.
I learned while as an undergrad in my modern American literature survey class that such a conversation is not well advised to pursue.
Keep in mind I wasn't much of a critical thinker at 19 and not a fan of American literature because I'm a male Medievalist that liked sagas and legends over fluffy prose.
Anyways, we read and covered Willa Cather's My Antonia.
With it being a survey class, we only spent one day discussing said novel. In hindsight, I'm not sure many in the class actually read the story, since the discussion was painfully quiet. Nonetheless, I had read the whole novel, so when the prof asked me of my opinion of the work, I replied that I was disappointed the title character ended up "just being a house wife" when she had so much potential to be something more dynamic.
Let's just say the professor wasn't receptive to my response, and I still cringe when I think of her.