Men Are The New Women

            “Do you mind watching my laundry?” a man asked me. “I have to pick up my son from school.” With those words it struck me: how has the world gone from young girls reading, “How to be a Good House Wife” in school text books, to the husband taking on the classic “wife’s” role?

 

I was sitting in the Laundromat twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my comforters to dry, ankles crossed and head tilted. I rarely find myself in a Laundromat since I have my own washer and dryer at home. I was only there on this particular day because my mother was afraid that our machines wouldn’t handle the quilts. But it was here that the subject of a major role-change in less than half a century dawned on me.

 

According to a US Census press release in 2006, there was an estimated 143,000 Mr. Moms with children under the age of 15. Up to 32 percent of fathers in the U.S. stay home or work late hours to look after their children, whereas a stay-at-home dad was nowhere to be found in the 1950s.

 

Back in the 1950s, high schools would require teenage girls to take a Home Economics class while the boys would take Workshop.  The girls would read and study the requirements of becoming a good housewife. 

    According to an excerpt of a home-economics text book from 1954, the female duties would include a list of family essentials like preparing dinner, picking up the children and tidying up. In addition were some bizarre demands: “Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking,” just to please the husband, and “listen to him; you may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time; let him talk first.” Yes, it’d be nice to look attractive for your husband and not stress him out, but these requests are flat-out degrading.

 

It’s funny to see how the tables have turned. Mothers are now working to put food on the table while the fathers are obliged to accomplish all tasks of a “good housewife.”

 

So exactly who is wearing the pants in the modern relationship?

 

Good question. It really depends how the father takes on this “motherly” role. If he’s a stay-at-home daddybecause mommy can manage a steady job but daddy can’t, then shame on you, daddy! Well, unless there’s a case of having been laid-off. Being laid-off is a legitimate excuse to stay home—but only to a certain extent. 

    If daddy’s bending over backwards, like all those strenuous yoga positions, just to find a way to somehow provide for the family, I am proud of you, dad! However, if he’s wasting his life drinking and smoking away his problems and blaming everything around him for being jobless, he’s not going to get anywhere.

 

Some say to have some sympathy; I say I’ll give him sympathy if he deserves it. There is no such thing as trying, only doing. Now this is where people get confused. Trying is moping around,complaining about your past, or something along those lines, whereas doing is putting effort into supporting the family.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love Mr.Mommy! There’s nothing bad about daddy having to lug the stroller around or carpool or get dinner on the table. But only under one condition: do not try. Trying is nice, but it’s not enough for the family.