Working Women Now Asking for Wives?
August 13, 2007
Have you read this article published by the NYT about how working women seem to be complaining more and more about needing “wives”? I might rankle some feathers here, but read this and let me ask some questions.
Okay, here are my questions. What does this say about the importance of having a spouse who manages the household? A research scientist who seems to say that having someone stay at home to manage all those critical domestic issues is valuable asset. Doesn’t that type of attitude fly in the face of women’s equality “proclaimers” who felt that women were considered second class citizens by being housewives?
One specialist in women’s studies dismissed wife envy as something women “are usually joking about” and another called it “a need for a second set of hands, regardless of gender.” But therapists who work with couples on equality issues say it is no joke. “I hear it all the time,” said Robin Stern, a psychotherapist in Manhattan and author of “The Gaslight Effect.” “It’s a real concern. Things that used to be routinely taken care of during the week are not anymore.”
What do women expect? You wanted equality, you got it. You wanted to vote, you got it. You wanted to compete with men in the corporate world, you got it. Now you start complaining about needing wives? Did you actually just want to switch places with us? You go to work, while we take care of the household? If that’s what you wanted, you could have at least been honest with us in the first place. Anyway, I’ll never quite understand women.
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Stumbled upon your blog during an image search. Interesting idea, but I think you’re missing the point. Women wanted the right to be equal and to be competitive in the corporate world, and also wanted their husbands to put in an equal effort around the house, which most of them do not. Husbands don’t seem to mind when their wives contribute to the household income, but wives are still expected to do all of the housework when they get home. So, wives have two jobs when husbands just have one. Doesn’t really look like equality to me. Also, if men want to work all day and then come home and do nothing, why wouldn’t women want the same thing? Of course women don’t want to have to work more when they come home, and just like men, most women would rather kick their feet up and sit on the couch. Women aren’t that hard to understand. You don’t want to do housework? Guess what - women don’t either!
Well, Sig. In my circle of married friends, I don’t know many men who come home and kick their heels up and don’t help around the house. These type of guys usually get the boot.
In fact, many of the guys I know don’t do house work inside the house. We work to reshingle the roof, replant the lawn, replace broken sprinklers, install batteries in fire alarms, replace those hard to reach light bulbs, replace the leaking faucets, kill those nasty spiders in the tub, move the trash bins to the curbs, change the oil in the cars, take the dogs for a walk when it’s 15 below, dump the dead gold fish while the kids are in tears, plus all those awful “man” type jobs around the house.