The “About Marriage” series continues …
** Is The Kitchen the Woman’s Place? **
I know a couple that recently got into a bit of a tiff. For the majority of their 30+ years of marriage, they shared the chore of preparing dinner. He cooked on weekends and at least once during the week, and she cooked the other four or less days. All was well until a few years ago when he just stopped cooking altogether, unless he was throwing a dinner party for family and friends.
The wife was bothered by this, but not enough to make a fuss about it, and so she carried on. Until last week when he had a day off work and she didn’t. She came home after a long day and went to her bedroom, thinking she could relax for a little while. Her husband came in and asked him when she was going to cook dinner.
Now mind you, this man is a WONDERFUL cook. And he was off work, had been home most of the day, and was in the other room watching television when she arrived.
So the wife blows up. She asks why he couldn’t cook dinner himself? She’d had a big lunch and wasn’t even hungry. His response?
“You’re the woman. Anything that is done inside the house is your job, and anything that is done outside of the house is mine.”
Now here’s the thing. I’m a modern kind of gal. Self-sufficient. Educated. Holds down a job in the corporate world. But I also still hold onto a few traditional values myself. Although I don’t completely subscribe to the idea of gender specific roles, I can understand them (to a certain degree) and have no issues with either men nor women who do.
But if this man truly believes that everything done inside the house is women’s work and outside the home men’s, why does his wife go to a job she can’t stand 5 days a week to help pay the bills? She has told me before that overtime at his job is available, but he doesn’t take it. They don’t have any young children, so he could also pick up a part-time job or look for a position with higher pay so his wife wouldn’t have to work and could fully embrace this “woman’s role” he wants her to take on. It is not fair to ask her to adhere to old-fashioned rules if he’s not willing to work harder to do the same.
He says:
“Well since I shovel the snow and mow the lawn, she should be the one doing the cooking and cleaning.”
But she says:
“He mows the lawn once, maybe twice a month, and it only snows a few weeks out of the year. But meals need to prepared and dishes need to be washed every day! Floors and toilets need to be cleaned weekly. He doesn’t help with any of that.”
It is my belief that in a healthy marriage, the husband and the wife function as a team. There should be little fretting over which sex is supposed to be the one doing what. If there are things to be done, they should simply be done by whichever partner is able and available to do it. If this means relying on traditional gender roles, then so be it. If this means completely reversing them, then so be it that way. So long as somehow, some way, it results in both parties applying close to equal effort (or at least their best efforts), then all is well. In a healthy relationship, the husband would feel masculine, needed and respected even if he bakes a casserole and vacuums the living room. The wife would feel feminine, appreciated and taken care of even if she’s the one painting the fence or making sure the bills are getting paid.
** Does The Man Wear The Pants? **
Maybe. Maybe not. I think that a good man who knows what needs to be taken care of and how to get things done should be in charge … right along with his good woman. I think it’s less about gender and more about the individuals and their relationship.
A married couple should be a team, a dynamic duo! A healthy one wouldn’t have gender-based power struggles. Let whichever one of you is best equipped to handle a specific aspect of your lives manage it, while respecting the input and wishes of the other. Simple. That just might result in one person being more vocal than the other. It could also lead to completely equal levels of this perceived “power”.
But either way, it should be about what makes the most sense for that couple to get things taken care of properly, and not about gender or being in “control”. In my marriage, I manage our budget and my husband manages the yard and landscaping, but still we always consult each other. I can’t think of anything we don’t collaborate on to some degree. It works great for us.
I say save the superior/subordinate roles for work. And maybe for some role-playing in the bedroom.
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