There is a gal I know who leads a very comfortable life. She’s a stay at home mother, with two children in late elementary school. Her husband works hard and has provided them with a nice home, two cars, fancy kitchen, nice furniture, a 52-inch HD television, etc., etc. She does not have a job other than keeping up the house, nor does she need to have one. During the week, the kids are off to school by eight in the morning, she spends a couple hours straightening up the house and doing menial chores and by her own account is done with all that by ten in the morning. After that she can sit down and watch her various television programs or head out for coffee with the girls. By three in the afternoon, the kids are home or soon to be home. By five, she’s making dinner. By seven the dishes are done, the kids are either doing homework, playing, or watching TV, her husband is probably in his man cave, and she’s sitting down to watch the evening celebrity gossip programs on the TV. Often there’s a little time on facebook thrown in for good measure. All in all, it doesn’t sound like a tough life, to me it sounds pretty comfortable.
Is it enough for her? We are dealing with a woman raised and steeped in misandrist messages. Messages which this woman has absorbed, fully internalized, and believes unquestionably. So what does she do? A couple of times a year she tells her family that she’s on strike. No cooking, cleaning, or laundry. Everyone must wait on her. She tells her girlfriends it’s because her family takes everything she does for granted. She says her children and her husband don’t appreciate all she does for them. There may be truth in that. But if that’s the case, then why does she feel that she needs to announce to all her friends on facebook that she’s punishing her family? Rhetorical question. It’s a ploy. She’s playing the victim.
Does the husband receive any appreciation for putting the food on the table, a roof over their heads, and filling the home with plenty of nice things too? Need you ask.
If this gal wasn’t a stay at home mother and homemaker, then I could see a sharing of the duties around the house as a necessary requirement to make the family run smoothly. The two children are old enough that they ought to be doing chores around the house. Simple things, like cleaning the whole house once a week and doing the dishes every night. However, she is a stay at home mother and wife. As such, it’s her responsibility to keep the house up. I understand people like to be appreciated for the things they do, but giving people kudos for doing something they should be doing anyway is just empty compliments. It’s like having graduation ceremonies for every grade in elementary school. It’s like giving medals and trophies to every team in a sporting tournament just for showing up. Utterly meaningless.
