Letters to the Editor
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So...
...the obvious question is: why don't more women want to marry a husband who fulfills the role of an old-fashioned wife?
I mean, come on- wouldn't that kind of arrangement give you all the wonderful POWER that men supposedly have from keeping their wives "subordinate"? Or do you prefer to not follow-through on the rhetoric you don't really believe in anyway?
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Then get one!
And I'm not even talking about the apparently mythical househusband. (Not that guys who don't care that much about careers are that hard to find in my generation, leading me to wonder why more women aren't just hooking up with men who want to stay home, if they want to make a hundred grand a year. It's not a bad arrangement to be in.)
But honestly. Need to remember a birthday or your calendar for next week? Your computer can do that. Need a maid? An occasional going-over by a maid service is a heck of a lot less expensive than supporting another human being. Cooks have been made obsolete by the plethora of restaurants in even more remote areas, not to mention the dazzling wonder of the Dollar Menu. In the past couple days I've driven past at least four laundromats which advertise a drop-off service.
The wife, in those terms, is a bit obsolete. The only way the hardcore traditionalists can keep her going is to insist that she continue to do things the way that takes the longest--baking her own bread, homeschooling all her children no matter what other options are available, a degree of cleanliness around the house that nobody else expects in this day and age because modern tools have made cleaning too fast. If you have no time, you can pay someone else to do almost anything housekeeping-related you can think of to a livable standard. If you have time, you can learn to do it yourself, and quite possibly even enjoy it.
Yes, of course there are people who have neither time nor money, but they're also the ones who would never have been able to support a stay-at-home wife to do all those things, either, so what they're lacking isn't a wife, it's time or money. If you do have one or both, then a comfortable place to live and so on is not out of your grasp, it's just a matter of priorities.
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The real problem isn't the corporations, but the married working women who persist in not demanding their husbands handle a fair share of domestic duties
Things are not going to change from the outside - it's time to stop with the external locus of control. It would be great if large corporations changed their policies on part-time, and maternity leave, and installed day care centers....but it's probably not going to happen any time soon. The working married women who think the current state of affairs is unfair will find themselves, increasingly, competing with green card-bearing males from other cultures who have no problem placing 100% of the domestic obligations on their wives.
In other words, companies will only change when they are forced to change by MEN, and that will only happen when women make the lives of married working males as uncomfortable as the lives of married working females.
Much of the domestic duty imbalance is, in my view, wholly the fault of women. I have many friends who gripe and snipe at the way their husband puts away dishes or dresses the kids - that he's not doing it the 'right' way. Women have to give up the idea of perception - sharing responsibility means compromising on getting things done your way.
My husband and I went round and round on this - he simply refused to do anything domestic. He wouldn't SAY he was refusing, of course - he would just never get around to it. I worked 70 hours a week and travelled constantly and when I finally had enough I hired a) a lawn care company, b) a house cleaner and c) a pool care company. I just did it - it wasn't worth arguing about any more. My h bitched about the cost but in the end couldn't argue that I should spend MY precious few free hours doing chores he had refused for years to do. End of story, end of my lack o competitiveness with men in the workplace who had stay-at-home wives to tend to them (and yes, there is an easy-to-detect imbalance).
Working wives need solve this for themselves by negotiating change with their working husbands. Trust me, when they find themselves caught between the rock of the working wife and the hard place of the company policy, they'll be as eager to agitate the company for change as women have historically been. Then and only then will companies likely listen.
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Heh!
...the obvious question is: why don't more women want to marry a husband who fulfills the role of an old-fashioned wife?
Actually, it's the only condition under which I would consider remarrying.
Men are not lining up, however...
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Hah !
More upper class white woman angst. I am male, successful, have a wife, but she certainly doesn't keep my calender. I do the laundry for all, including the kids, take care of my family side's birthday's etc. Don't have to clean the house much, but do have to remind my wife to clean up HER stuff quite often. Point is, if your stuck in your marriage as an assistant, YOU made a bad choice. I am no modern day hero, just another maligned husband. And I hate this radical feminist BS.
Such stereotypical nonsense.
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Willing Husbands Shamed Wives
I am a divorce lawyer and have handled several divorces in which successful, powerful women are getting rid of very servicable and supportive house husbands(or less demanding job husbands) because their power broker coworkers or magazines or someone have convinced them that their loving, supportive and not very ambitious husband is a loser who must be dumped. The men are sad to lose her but ok to go on, but the women in these divorces seem to be ruining their lives and sending away the person who can help them, mostly to satisfy some stereotype, or in pursuit of some power couple fantasy that they will never achieve.Social pressure seems to be ruining marriages here.