Ok, this requires further discussion. Beware: total rant ahead.

Feminism in the 21st century is an interesting thing. I give my mother’s generation a whole heap of street cred for working so hard to get us out of the mud room and into the work-force. We grew up being told we could do it all, and so we’re trying. Here we are, earning our equal paycheck, trying to do it all and succeed, being desperate housewives. But I think we’re starting to learn that we can’t have our cake and eat it too. We can’t be corporate giants and still make it to every soccer game. And so inevitably the soccer games get dropped, because our solid paycheck can’t be. And this is where it all falls apart. Because we can only give 100%.

Before feminism, mom gave 100% to the home, and dad brought in 100% of the money. Now that mom and dad are each bringing in 50% of the cash, shouldn’t they both be responsible for 50% of the homelife?

Countless surveys and research point to the fact that while women are working as many hours as the men in their lives, and in some cases earning more than men, they still manage 70% of the duties in the home. Everything from grocery shopping to laundry to the conversation about the birds and bees, woman are doing it. If you don’t believe it, just turn on any primetime sitcom and you’ll hear endless jokes about lazy men watching tv and drinking beer after a long day at work… while the wives make dinner and run errands. They don’t make this crap up, people. And because of this, women are dealing with stress and emotional breakdowns left and right.

I almost wind up blaming my father (well, not literally) and the rest of the men who allowed it all to happen. I’ve been in the workforce for a solid decade now, and I suppose I’ve been in a constant stream of relationships with men since then. So I feel like I’ve been on the bus long enough to say out loud that everywhere I look I see a whole lot of weak men. Men who sat back and watched while women picked up the reins and fought for equality in the workplace. Even though a man’s financial expectations have lessened, he’s not picking up the expectations in the home that have increased.

And that is what I hate even more than the expectation of women to do everything while running on fumes. The sheer number of men I run into who have little to no motivation to do whatever it takes to provide for their families. It’s not pure laziness, it’s not even just a lack of direction, it’s the fact that they were never told that the single most important thing they needed to do in life was take care of their babies. And their babies’ mommas. And I’m not just talking about teenage dads in the ghetto. I’m talking about 30 something men in the burbs!

Before you go on and tell me I have some personal beef that I’m moaning about in the public arena, let me give you this brief history. When I first met and started dating Matt, I was stunned at how little vocational passion he had. I was a girl with more career ideas than I could hack away at in an entire lifetime, and here came this guy who didn’t know what he wanted to do when he grew up. He has since stumbled providentially into a career that he LOVES, and now that he has gained career-related traction he’s excited about taking care of me, of us, of our life. He can now encourage me to fulfill my career dreams because he understands what that’s all about. He actively assists with home related tasks because he truly understands that if we’re each bringing in 50% of the paycheck, then we each need to do 50% of the housework. That’s the only way that we’re both putting in 100%.

There are guys like Matt who accept their fate and work really hard to manage stuff in our home. But from what I see it’s kind of uncommon. We had to talk a LOT before we got married about our expectations of one another. He knew that he was marrying someone who didn’t really like kids that much and always envisioned herself working. This meant he was going to have a lot of help bringing home the bacon. And I married someone in Education knowing it would likely mean I’d always HAVE to work and that I’d never have a life of leisure. I like to cook, but I’m only cooking one meal a day, the rest he has to forage for. I love doing laundry, but he generally winds up ironing his own clothes. It’s the only way we can both stay sane.

I consider myself blessed to have found him, and it truly infuriates me when I look around and see so many of my friends who are working like maniacs, raising their kids expertly, keeping their Real Simple model homes immaculate and going to therapy 3 hours a week because that guy they married spends his evenings playing Halo with the boys. By my constitution, you can play all the Halo you want, if you’re drawing six figures and dropping diamonds in my chocolate cake mix.

Note: I had tons of links in here to good ole Penny Trunk’s website and then pulled them out at the last minute to spare you. Although I know I’m not the only one with a girl crush on her.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Marriage. You can subscribe to any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Don't be shy! Go ahead and leave a response, or trackback from your own site.