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• Tuesday, January 17, 2006 11:17 AM

  I never wanted to have kids...

  I was born in 1970. By the time I reached high school, it had become apparant that my father was the ONLY father doing any housework or childcare.

  My father was a middle school history teacher while my mom was a math professor at a community college. He had all the same vacations we did and worked set hours while my mom sometimes had night classes and worked all summer. He sacrificed being a high school coach to raise my sister and I because my mom made twice as much as he did. Together they decided he would be the primary parent because my mom wouldn't be happy staying home (neither would he) but someone had to be home in the evenings for us and during vacations and his job was the best suited for that (sans coaching of course). I let him know all the time how much I appreciated what he did.

  My parent's marriage taught me that if I didn't want to stay home with the kids, I had to find a man who would. Looking at my prospects in high school and college, I wasn't holding out much hope. So, I always said I would never have kids.

  At 28 I met my husband. He's from The Netherlands and despite his mom never working, he was raised to pull his own weight in the household. I think this is the biggest problem with society now. Not enough families are teaching their kids that everyone contributes to the household and when they get married it's an equal partnership. Too many woman get in the rut of doing everything for everyone in their family because it makes them feel good and validates their existance. This does a disservice to their kids (male and female).

  We are trying to get pregnant now and he will be staying home with the baby because he wants to and he knows he will love it. He does half the housework and all the finances (he's better at it despite me being an accountant :-) right now. To say only women are suited to stay home with the kids is to not acknowledge the diversity of personalities and talents among both men and women.

  Each couple has to work out their own rules for their marriage but any woman who has a husband who expects her to work full time, do all the housework and the majority of the child care needs to take a hard look at what kind of person her husband is and what kind of marriage she wants to have. If she's okay with it, that's her choice but no one should perpetuate a myth that men can't contribute equally to the household. They can. I refused to accept that when I got married I would be in charge of all the housework and all the childcare. If that meant I never got married, so be it. Luckily I found a great guy who wanted an equal partnership in marriage.

  Sorry this was so long.

  —kaysong Read kaysong's other letters
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