I read this really funny and fun blog by a single mother lawyer. She is smart, a good writer, and rocking the single mother thing. I’m not sure how she ended up a single mom in law school – whether it was a purposeful choice or a happy (exhausting) accident, but I love reading about her life in law, and she has the most preshuss babeee girl that a hot mama could hope for. The Easter picture of said infant brightened my Monday morning.
One of her recent posts ended up with a lot of husband bashing in the comments. She has a lot of single mom followers, and some married followers, and she mentioned something about husbands and that occasionally in weak parenting moments she wishes for one, but then changes her mind, and ha ha ha so funny. It was a mild joke, no big deal, but it released a round of husband bashing which made me roll my eyes.
Gah. If your husband doesn’t help with dishes and doesn’t pack the diaper bag and needs cleaning up after and never lifts a finger, then . . . I don’t know. I hesitate to say you didn’t train him right, because husbands are not puppies. But, it’s kind of true! If you run around after people washing their socks and cutting their meat and combing their hair, they will never wash their own socks. They will grow to expect you to wash their socks, and then become entitled about the sock washing, and get angry if the socks don’t get washed, and then you will complain "He never washes his own damn socks, I have to do everything around here, and he gets furious if I don’t keep on top of the sock washing, what am I, a slave??" Aaaaaaand, martydom here we come.
I’m sure these women were just joking around, ha ha, men are untrained slobs, hee heee. But, eh. I don’t dig this kind of joking. It leads to a general feeling in society that men are less capable than women at keeping up with a household, and therefore if we want it done right, the woman had better do it. And if her husband does help around the house and carry his share of the housework load, then he is a saint, or a catch, or a dream. The man-as-contributor should not be a unique situation. It should be the norm. And if it’s not – DEMAND NO LESS, girlfriends!
Patrick and I, we are each not foible-free. He is incapable of scrubbing a pot (he is of the "soak it til the pot-scrubbing faires come and deal with it" school of dirty pots.) I have issues with getting bills in the mail on time. He drapes his wet towel in really inappropriate places (under the comforter? don’t deny it, husband, I have seen you do it.) I leave trails of drink glasses wherever I go (ants love me.) But we both have our chores, and we do them. So I smugly commented something about "I’d never loan you my husband, because you’d never want to give him back! But you’d better like frozen pizza or hot dogs, is all I’m sayin’."
Now they all hate me, I’m sure. But, it’s one little step for equality of the sexes. Sigh. It’s hard work being this vigilant, but somebody’s gotta do it.