So my marriage is falling apart. In the course of a very serious discussion about this fact on Monday, Simon confessed that he resents, among other things related to my lack of housekeeping skills, the fact that he sometimes runs out of clean underwear.
This is a fair complaint. He is off to work 50 or 60 hours a week so that we can have a nice life and I don't have to work, and in return he expects to have clean underwear.
I am mortified. Not just that I haven't been doing his laundry, but that he has been silently judging me for this for years. In my defense, I do laundry almost daily. But most days, I am physically pushing down the kids' clothes and the towels and the dinner napkins to make it all fit. There is seldom room for my clothes, let alone Simon's clothes.
So I have to do his laundry more often. That's the deal, right? I take care of trivial tasks like underwear washing so he can have his brain free for running his company. It has been the division of labor between stay-at-home moms and their husbands for millennia.
I resent it ferociously. I am a smart woman, maybe smarter than Simon. And yet I wash his underwear. What I want to say is, "You're 42 years old. Wash your own goddamn underwear." But I don't, because I am a 34-year-old woman with no job.
In theory, we are a team, balancing family and work, child care and checkbooks. In actuality, he is the widely-applauded circus elephant, I am the guy with the shovel following him around.
I love being with my kids. But there is a mixed bag of financial dependence and underwear washing that goes with that privilege. I feel powerless and ashamed and very, very torn.
Sending you a hug. I think about this stuff a lot. I know it's a cliche to say that being with the kids IS work, but it's true, and so much more exhausting than any office job. I can speak from experience, since I work p/t. The work days are typically easier than the stay at home days. Credit where credit is due. (to you)
ReplyDeleteALSO - why does the housework necessarily go hand-in-hand with the parenting? So, sometimes kids nap or play independently or watch TV, but often the choice is between paying attention to them and say, getting the dishes or the underwear done. And frankly, are you at home to be with the kids or the underwear? On the days I stay with the kids, any housework that gets done is bonus.
ReplyDeleteAnd women will never have true equality until the parenting part of the equation gets taken seriously.
heh. Can you tell you've touched on a topic that I am passionate about? Sorry for the over-commenting.
Thank you!!! You know what else drives me crazy? The couple of stay-at-home dads I know feel no obligation to do housework, and there is no expectation that they will decorate or prepare dinner or anything. Yet they are lauded as complete heroes for watching the kids. Gah.
ReplyDeleteThis is SO big, this questioning of roles. And I have to say -- in case after case, it seems to always be the woman to take a less demanding/high profile job, or choose to stay home... and then follow her husband, and his job, across the country to bumf@#k Texas, or have HIM be the head of the company while she works part time to spend more time with her son. This age-old question I thought was more resolved, but in fact, it's not. The truth is, would any of these women trade their roles? Actually, no. But still...
ReplyDeleteThis is just the predictable result of one of the laws of the universe.. If you have nothing better to do, you will spend your time assisting someone else's goals.
ReplyDeleteYou have no excuse not to wash underwear unless you got something better going on. It's a fair law, the anguish you feel is the price for not pursuing your own dreams. Thank god it doesn't feel great to follow an elephant with a shovel, if it did you would never do anything else.
You are too smart to not try your hand against the world - I have no doubt you can do whatever you want.