I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about the roles of men and women in relationships, in families, in the world in general. It’s come up in a lot of my conversations with Pete, too, as we begin to think through what we want our future children to learn about being girls/women and boys/men. It’s too much to tackle both men and women in the same post so I’m going to start with women…
On Women…
I’m in my early 30s and I’m at that age where many of my friends are getting married and/or becoming parents. Since I’m getting married just 2 short months from now and, at some point, plan on becoming a parent, I’ve been thinking a lot about wives and mothers in particular. Growing up I was very much in a feminist environment. I learned early on from both my mother and my father that being a girl doesn’t equal being less than being a boy. I learned that I could do and be anything I wanted to. I remember at one point hearing someone say, “If it takes a penis, he does it. If it takes a vagina, I do it. Otherwise, we share.” That was kind of the gist of my family. Well, the spoken gist anyway. In practice, labor was divided a little more traditionally – Mom cooked, Dad fixed things. Not always (I hear that Dad did most of the diaper changing) but some things were divided along the traditional lines.
In college and in my 20s I really chafed when someone assumed that I could or should do something because I was a woman. Oh, that could get my ears to steamin’! I got defensive right away and did everything I could to prove them wrong. This created some issues for me – cognitive dissonance, I like to call it – especially in my relationship with Pete. The reality about me is that I’m relatively “domestic.” I like order and relative cleanliness; I’ve learned to enjoy cooking. Early in our time living together, I discovered that Pete just didn’t see the dirt and clutter around the house the same way I did. I was convinced for a while that he just didn’t want to clean and was assuming that I – as the woman – would take care of it. I’ve since learned that it’s nothing more complicated than I care about dust bunnies more so I’m more likely to see them. He’s a big picture guy; I’m a concrete, detail kind of woman. I’m looking at keeping the dishes stacked in the cabinets just so; he’s looking at arranging the kitchen in the most efficient way possible. That’s just how we work. I get that.
I had a HARD time getting there though. I was stuck in the whole penis-vagina-share thing that I mentioned above. “Why didn’t he initiate the cleaning half the time?!” I grumbled to myself, “That’s his share!” The problem with that equation is that it takes out of consideration our natural strengths and weaknesses. With the help of a few arguments with Pete and some convincing by a wonderful therapist I know, I came to see that, as the detail-oriented person, it would always be on me to initiate the cleaning. Not necessarily to DO it all, but to initiate it. That didn’t make me less of a woman; it didn’t put me into the role of “little wife.” That wasn’t an expectation because of my gender. That’s the way it was because of WHO I am not WHAT I am.
Clearing that hurdle started a string of thoughts about the traditional roles of men and women. Speaking in sweeping generalizations here – women multi-task better, men prefer to complete one task at a time. In the development of humankind, that makes sense. Men, most often the strongest physically, would go out to hunt the wolly mammoth or some other prehistoric beastie. Survival was predicated on focusing on what you were doing and not getting in the path of stampeding mammoths or charging tigers. Women would remain closer to the cave or tent to gather plants, tend the children, tan the hides of aforementioned beastie, etc. They multitasked. There’s an argument to be made that such an environment and similar environments over the centuries has had an impact on the brains of men and women.
Where we got into trouble, though, was when men HAD to do things because they were men and women HAD to do things because they were women. Prescribed behavior based on gender left a lot of folks out in the cold – the emotionally sensitive men, the women who couldn’t cook if their lives depended on it. The women in my mother’s generation worked hard to break those molds so they could be wives of equal standing not wives expected to solely and selflessly wait on their husbands and children. As she said at her last visit, my mother is the first of a generation of women who has worked their entire professional lives. In some ways, that became the expectation of her generation – that they would break the glass ceilings of the world. As kids they ran into the traditional gender expecations. Mom tells me stories about being forced to go to cotillions as a girl and all I can think is “Thank God I grew up when I did and not when she did!” My aunt tells me that she became a teacher because she had two choices for vocational training – secretary or teacher – and teaching sounded better. As young and middle aged adults, though, they blazed new trails into the work world and created a whole new set of expectations. My generation has definitely benefitted from the ways that our mothers lived their lives – their young adulthoods and their professional lives. When we get there, I’m sure we’ll benefit from the paths they lay through their retirement years.
One of the major benefits we’ve received is that we now have a choice – as mothers we can go into the work world or we can stay home and raise children. Either one is equally valid. It seems to me that individuals and some communities have strong feelings about what’s best but society at large doesn’t particularly care either way.
For me as an individual, I’ve slowly been coming to the realization that I want to be home with my children at least until they enter kindergarten. It took some mental gymnastics for me to admit that to myself. I felt that if I stayed home that I’d be letting down all the women who came before me that made it possible for women to have successful careers. I actually felt pressure (from the imagined legacy not from actual people) to stay in the work world and on a solid career path. I felt like I’d be a failure if I decided to stay home; I’d be “caving” to the expectations of women. It sounds harsh, I know, but that’s what was happening in my head. What changed my way of thinking, though, was all that I learned through my job about attachment, nurturing, brain development, and emotional health (that and the job I had in a past life at a daycare center). I realized that I wanted my children to be raised by either my husband or I the vast majority of the time. I didn’t want to use daycare or some other substitute care; I wanted it to be us. I was grateful when Pete said that he agreed.
Many of my friends are successful professionals, a lot of them are social workers. Many of them are powerful, incredibly gifted and intelligent women. I still worry a little that they’ll see my decision to be a stay-at-home mom as giving in or that they’ll judge me just a little for it. That they won’t understand. (Will it matter if they don’t?) I felt a little like I had to justify to my mom why I wanted to stay home when what she modeled for me was a mom that balanced both work and home. Those fears aren’t about my friends or my mom – they’re about me. I know that. It’s interesting for me to reflect on where they come from and why they’re there.
I have some very, very strong feelings about why staying home is right for me and our future family. I’m a little hesitant to give them full airing because I don’t want my mom to think I’m telling her that she “did it wrong” or my friends to think that I think they’re screwing up their kids because they’re working and parenting. (Co-dependent much??) That’s not it at all. What’s right for me and my family, isn’t what’s right for everyone. Each parent and each family is different; I don’t pretend to think that my way is best for everyone.
So what’s this all about? My own changing understanding of “wife” and “mother” and my gradual acceptance that maybe I’m a little more traditional than I thought. And that that’s okay – good even. Right for me. I want to be the stay-at-home mom with the milk and cookies after school (okay, maybe carrot sticks and apple slices). I want to change my name so that my husband, my children, and I all have the same name. Those are the things that I think builds the kind of family that I want. I want to claim the part of the legacy of my mother’s generation that says I have a choice about whether I work or stay home – and both are equally valid. Most of all, I want to not judge myself for recognizing that I’m more traditional than I’d been raised to be.
I know the readership of this blog isn’t exactly huge but if you have any thoughts on this subject, I’d love to hear them!
