I'm not dead yet.
(Also: Happy New Year! Merry Christmas! Klassy Kwanzaa! Hip Hanukkah!)
Well, maybe my brain is dead. I have the drafts of four or five blog posts saved, but none of them are suitable for eyes other than mine.
In other words: pathetic doesn't even begin to describe it.
To move on....
Two weeks ago, I was again watching educational programming - Millionaire Matchmaker - and a guy came on the show asking for a woman who would be willing to be by his side, and possibly leave any career she was pursuing. As a pretty constant world traveler, he assumed that it would be too hard for her to work and be with him as much as he would like. Plus, he wanted any children they would have to be with him as well.
The Matchmaker called him a chauvinistic bastard. Any woman worth anything would not give up her career just to travel with him and take care of his children.
He looked at her like she had three heads. "Why not? That's what a marriage is. You stick together and spend as much time together as possible. I will give her everything she needs - why would she need to work?"
"Because any self respecting woman would!"
In the scouting interviews, the Matchmaker interviewed potential woman and said something along the lines of "He might want you to give up your job so that you could travel with him and your kids..."
Each and every time, the woman's eyes would light up and she would pipe up with "Oh....well...TOTALLY not a problem."
The Matchmaker would shake her head in despair: "Where are all the strong women?" True - most of them might have been gold diggers (...They are on a show called Millionaire Matchmaker...), betting on the fact that they could float along with a few nannies. BUT - there is, I believe, a deeper truth here.
I don't think it's necessarily a weak thing to devote oneself to the raising of children and the care of one's husband. It might even be rather courageous. Anyone who has spent any time with kids knows how demanding they are. And what is that saying about "behind every great man, there is a great woman"? Statistically, happily married men advance faster in the workplace and earn more than their non-married counterparts. Could it be that having someone support them gives an extra edge?
SOMEONE needs to take care of the house. SOMEONE needs to do the laundry. SOMEONE needs to shuttle kids around. SOMEONE needs to cook nutritious meals. Since when did all of those things become not a worthy, fulfilling way of spending one's day, but rather something to be shoved off on recent immigrants who can barely speak one's language, and who are willing to work for a small pittance?
Why is the cultivation of one's marriage and the raising of one's children considered something that can be done in the hour before work, and in the three hours - at best - you have together before everyone crashes into bed?
To end: here you go, the column that sparked this post.
As the author says:
It turns out that the "traditional" marriage, which we've all been so happy to annihilate, had some pretty good provisions for many of today's most stubborn marital problems, such as how to combine work and parenthood, and how to keep the springs of the marriage bed in good working order.
And then:
When I asked her about what I had been hearing, she told me that she has seen many married couples who have gone without sex for periods of time ranging from six months to six years. Why? "Marriage has changed," she told me. "In the old days the husband was the breadwinner. The wife had the expectation of raising the children and pleasing him. Now they're both working and both taking care of the children, and they're too exhausted and resentful to have sex." I asked Greer the obvious question: If a couple is not having sex because of job pressures and one partner quits working, does the couple have more sex? The answer was immediate and unequivocal: "Absolutely!"
So.....let me get this straight......one person to take care of the money side of things, and one person to take care of the domestic side of things actually works better than both people trying to do both jobs at once? They might actually be happier? Life might run smoother?
Who. Would. Have. Thought?
Not that - inundated as I am with attractive visions of the career mother who "has it all" - I don't struggle with this idea. I do. However, if it came down to the reality of what could potentially further my happiness and the happiness of those around me, I would hope to be able to abandon the T.V. sitcom in my head, if need be.
After all:
Sex > Job (one would hope), and if it is true that the loss of the latter - for one person - improves the former -for both people - what is there to lose?
Better sit on that one for a while.
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