So i finally finished my law school exams and the writing competition, so i had two days to just do nothing. it was great to give my brain a break and not have to use it 24/7 at 100% capacity. so i went food-shopping, and then cleaned the house all day yesterday.

then yesterday evening, my bf and i went out to dinner. and i noticed that instead of talking about this or that case or soemthing interesting, i started talking about vacuuming behind the couch and what kind of chutney i bought at the store.

men, don't let your wives stay at home -- they will turn into people who can only talk about boring home stuff instead of interesting stuff like what they did during the day while using their brains intensively, or what they read in the news, or funny things that happened to them at work, etc.

i definitely don't want to become a homemaker. two days of it scared the shit out of me.

>> men, don't let your wives stay at home -- they will turn into people who can only talk about boring home stuff instead of interesting stuff like what they did during the day while using their brains intensively, or what they read in the news, or funny things that happened to them at work, etc.<<

All women are different, and those who "want to their brains intensively" are free to do so. But the comment above betrays an endearing ignorance about men's psyches. When we are married to a woman we love, we don't find home stuff boring or our wives insipid just because they're not an attache case-toting career gals. Yin and yang, Venus and Mars.

>> I definitely don't want to become a homemaker. two days of it scared the shit out of me <<

That might change when you fall in love and meet the man you definitely want to marry. And when you get tired of working. Or when/if you feel the desirte to have a child.

The commenter below is probably a young girl, maybe a grad student. Real life tip: most people don't "use their brains intensively" for a living. Very few do. Even those in exciting jobs typically deal with day-to-day drudgery (not that they mind beinbg employed and thus having a stable life).

Cheers!

Sorry, I copied and pasted just the passages I cited in my previous post, and forgot/missed the part about law school. And of course, my original point still stands.

All women are different, and those who "want to their brains intensively" are free to do so. But the comment above betrays an endearing ignorance about men's psyches. When we are married to a woman we love, we don't find home stuff boring or our wives insipid just because they're not an attache case-toting career gals. Yin and yang, Venus and Mars.

Honestly, i think the "home stuff" gets boring coming from a man or a woman. I'm assuming you're a man, do you talk about home stuff with your male friends and colleagues? Frankly, if my boyfriend became a homemaker, i would find the home stuff boring coming from him, even though i'm a woman, and he's a man. There's some thing very strange about your tone -- like a condescending indulgence of "home stuff" when coming from a doting wife.

That might change when you fall in love and meet the man you definitely want to marry.

What an odd thing to say. I guess for starters it assumes that my bf is not the man i want to marry. Secondly, it assumes that being in love can make home stuff not boring, even after many years of marriage. I live with my boyfriend now, it's very much like being married, and home stuff is really boring, imho.

And when you get tired of working. Or when/if you feel the desirte to have a child.

Well, i guess it assumes that having children = staying at home. And that women can just "stop working" when they tire of it, the poor little dears, overtaxing their limited capacities. Do men get to just "go home" when they tire of working?

The commenter below is probably a young girl, maybe a grad student. Real life tip: most people don't "use their brains intensively" for a living. Very few do. Even those in exciting jobs typically deal with day-to-day drudgery (not that they mind beinbg employed and thus having a stable life).

Well, my friend, trust me, law school is more than full of its day to day drugery, and it makes me use my brain very intensively for very long periods of time to decipher very boring things. Which is what i imagine working as a lawyer is going to be like. But it's better, imho, than becoming a person whose most important concerns are diapers and vacuuming.

I wish you all the best at lawyering. However, understand that your point of vierw might be a-typical, partly on account of your youth and inexperience in the work force. Most women (or men) aren't lawyers, and they balance, to this or that degree, their home and professional lives.

Is vacuuming insipid? Actually, my wife and I make it fun: every Saturday moring she charges forth with the vacuum cleaner while I move stuff out of the way before she can catch me, and put it nback in place when she passes through. We always get a good laugh out of it. She works, but we both hope that our material situation allows her to stay home once we have our first child.

One thing old foilks tell me: the older you get, the less you give a sh*t about work, and the more you seek the satisfaction of home life, family , friends, etc.

Staying home, taking care of the kids.... someone's got to do it. Unless we stop having children. Or unless you think that legions of Mestizo women are ready-made to nanny our ninos and vacuum our carpets...that seems to be GWB,'s view in any case.

You can have your point of view, that's great. what comes out of your post is that it's either work or home stuff. but there's other stuff to do. you can just enjoy each other's company at home, or at a movie, or at a restaurant, or a restaurant in beijing or rome. or you can pursue your own interests, like politics or literature or advanced degrees or learning french.

all that being said, taking 2 specific things you can do with your time, lawyering or diapering, i would rather lawyer. granted, i would rather drink coffee and smoke cigarettes in paris than lawyer. and i would rather drink coffee and smoke cigarettes in rome than paris. and so on.

I would rather analyze databases than change a poopy diaper.

But I would rather lie in bed in the morning snuggling a breast-feeding baby to my chest than get up and drive to work.

I would rather write specifications for a program than wash the dishes.

But I would rather vacuum the carpet than sit through a meeting about HIPAA.

And I would much rather take my children to the playground and watch them have fun than sit through a meeting about *anything*.

I would rather be testing code than dealing with a baby with a temper tantrum.

But the same baby and the same temper tantrum are far, far easier to deal with than the smarmy woman on the conference call who won't listen to any of our sensible concerns about problems with the new platform because she doesn't want to succumb to "analysis paralysis".

And dealing with a boss having a temper tantrum is a lot harder than dealing with a baby having one. The baby can't fire you.

I'd rather be reading a book to a baby than reading the manual for the "new", except it's actually much older and more obsolete than the stuff we *were* using, software we're migrating to.

And I'd rather be organizing and sorting the mail than running twenty zillion iterations of the same test program trying to identify a really elusive bug.

So the thing about whether work is better than child care/housewifing? Both have aspects that really, really suck, and both have aspects that can be rewarding. I suspect there are a *lot* of parts about being a lawyer that are going to make you wish you were at home washing dishes. (Well, maybe not washing dishes. Very little sucks as bad as washing dishes. But vacuuming, certainly.) There are certainly a lot of parts about working in a corporate IT department that make one long to be home, but then, there are many parts of being home with a baby that make one long to go to a nice clean office and work uninterrupted.

I have been home since I was laid off at the end of 2003, and since I'm having another baby it will probably be another two years before I go back to a real job. I do have a small home business I work at, so I'm not completely letting my work skills rot while I change diapers, but yes, it is frustrating sometimes to have most of my "work" be such incredibly boring, mundane stuff as cooking and cleaning and filling sippy cups with juice. And it's very frustrating to be making so little of the household's money. On the other hand, it's wonderful to have no commute, to be able to sit around working in my pajamas, to sleep as late as the baby lets me instead of as late as my boss will put up with, and to work only when I feel my brain is at its peak capacity and not when I'm an exhausted zombie.

And yes, I think men should have every right to do this too, if they want to.