I do think that men and women don’t see the same projects and messes. I know my husband and I start in very different places when it comes to cleaning. I understand that when both people are working, figuring out the housework is difficult. I also understand that being at home, but being at work, makes this even more complicated. It may not mean that the person at home can do all of what needs to be done, but it does make sense that more of it would go to that person.

Jeff

This may be another example of male/female communicative differences. According to Tannen and others, finding flaws or inaccuracies in a narrative, whether germane to the main point or not, is a generally acceptable back-and-forth style among men, and very likely related to the problem-solving dynamic that drives many men-only conversations. So you probably felt that your first comment was simply an interesting addendum to the issue. Women, on the other hand, tend to view this kind of interaction as confrontational, inappropriate and lacking in empathy and/or comprehension, which is precisely how I saw it.

The funny part is that in spite of all the problems these different expectations cause, look what a mess it became when I tried to adopt what I thought was a more traditionally “male” style to explain my traditionally “female” interpretation. You immediately switched registers, too.

Oh, what a tangled web… but don’t worry, Ubertramp. I think we all have our big girl panties firmly in place. And I don’t drink beer.

Why oh why can’t men do 50% of the work? An even fair 50%?

First, let’s take a look at stay-at-home dads (having been one when my son was three months to two and a half). As I always say, women take to the workplace a lot better than men take to the home. Women see work as a challenge or a quest, whereas most men seem incapable of viewing childcare and home maintenance in that light.

Men might be able to match or surpass their wives in childrearing. But it’s almost impossible to get them to care as much about keeping up the home.

I’m pretty sure that my wife will agree that I do 50% of the work at home. (Right, dear? Right?) But my sole motivation is to spare her the trouble, not pride in how the place looks.

Glad to have you back, Wendi, especially with a post this powerful.

Just 20 that I know. I assume there are others. Or are you assuming I know every kid in Boulder?

Let’s let Wendy comment on her meaning. I wasn’t attacking her, you know, so you needn’t defend her. I was just pointing out that this shouldn’t be about Boulder kids.

Although perhaps not entirely relevant to the original post, your comment was certainly interesting, and perhaps a bit more revealing than intended.

Well, I agree with you, mostly. But my take on what Wendy said was that she was putting all of what she said about kids in the context of Boulder, because she led off with Boulder. While she mentioned Boulder only once, it was at the beginning of her take on “kids these days.”

As for cherry picking, I left out another 20 Boulder kids I know who are doing wonderful stuff. I just used examples. So, I really don’t think it was as much cherry picking as you assert.

Lauri, unless you were holding a gun to your head or walking out the door with suitcases, your requests probably haven’t yet made it to the top of his to-do list. You know how you can deal with hungry kids, dirty dishes, a doctor on the phone and a sudden dog crap emergency? He can deal with all those things, too – but not in the same way, and it will drive you crazy to watch. Not better or worse, probably, but different. Linear. Think linear.

JS, let’s be honest: you’ve gone from a broad brush to cherry-picking in one fell swoop. I’m sure a false sense of entitlement is not limited to the progeny of Boulderites. Neither is new money, an obsession with material goods as status markers and the substitution of possessions for parenting limited to the parents of Boulder. I live in a roughly equivalent community; I certainly grew up in one, and if the natural developmental state of adolescence (self-absorption) is reinforced by the permanent attitude of a bevy of immature adults, you get a population like Wendy described, no matter where it’s located. In fact, she mentioned her location exactly once. Talk about hot buttons.

This was a wonderful post, and I’ve spent some time trying to digest it to formulate a response. I’m just going to check in here briefly to defend the children of Boulder a bit. CU admits about 10% of its students from the Boulder Valley School District, which means maybe 5% are from Boulder, proper. So, only about 1 in 20 of your students is likely to be from Boulder, and I think we have a mutual acquaintance, a young lady from Boulder and one of your students, who really doesn’t fit the profile you gave, don’t we? As I recall, she’s holding down a 30-hour-a-week job while maintaining a straight A average.

Yes, I know Boulder children who are raving narcissists, but I also know a young lady from Boulder who is foregoing admission to a prestigious medical school in order to become a midwife so that she can more quickly begin a career in the third world reducing infant and childbirth mortality. I know a young Boulder man who is building a hydroelectric facility for a third-world village so that whole families no longer have to freeze to death in the winter. I know another young lady from Boulder (22 years old) who is producing her first musical off-Broadway (I just contributed to the production’s cost).

So, I really believe you’re painting with a very broad brush, here.

But…there’s no glamor in that. It is, essentially, the role of educator and this site has spent a fair amount of time discussing how low education is on the importance scale in America. Our common definition of success is one that prompts parents to put their efforts into careers and shower the children with the material benefits of any success. (And it doesn’t help that we are an incredibly self-absorbed society.)

Raising children isn’t about doing everything for them or what you give them…well, it is, but not superficial stuff. My mom was something of an hard-ass when it came to things like table manners and our responsibilities. I’m sure it helped her sanity to hand off, for example, the lunch packing duties to those who were actually going to eat the lunch. But in the bigger picture it was an important piece in raising three boys who all knew how to cook, clean, etc. by the time they left the house. More importantly, they knew that it was expected of them.

Ann- You are absolutely right- we must communicate. I have repeated my needs so many times at so many decibel levels I’m thinking of recording it on a CD just to give me some relief.

As for parenting, I think in many instances modern educated parents (esp. Americans- I have American sisters) are ruining their children by giving them everything, just as Wendy has said. You are doing your kids no favours by making them believe that that situation even tangentially resembles the real world. Kids gain more by seeing their mothers as people, not robots programmed to their own personal remote controllers.

My experience is this: I had one parent who withdrew almost completely and another who, on seeing society’s expectations of her as a single, working mom, turned the tables and expected her kids to be the ones to make every sacrifice possible (including family and friends) so she could be “more than just a mom” and chase into the ground and beyond a dream that had long since kicked her, with a giant bag of obligations and multiple mouths to feed, out the door and driven off laughing and flipping her the bird.

Wendy, given your obvious involvement in your children’s lives and the very inner struggle that prompted you to make this post in the first place, it was irresponsible of me to even allude to similarities between your situation and those of the self-centered pieces of Boomer trash that I got stuck with my parental units. I guess I am the walking, talking example of a person in turn chewed up and spit out by people who were chewed up and spit out by the America that for them once was, while the well-meaning and fecund such as yourself and Ann help keep it on life support, and could even help revive it with children that end up as educated, productive members of society as opposed to bitter, wayward curmudgeons who type 90 words per minute. God, I hate those guys.

To add my two cents, I have come to the realization that women are always right. I can’t name one time that my late wife was wrong about the big things, Women are higher evolved emotionally than men, and are much tougher while they silently pick up the pieces that men leave undone. Women are the rock. My new friend loves the fact that I feel that women are always right, and she finds if flattering. I leave many decisions such as ordering wine, picking out furniture, etc to her. Women are better than men in so many things. Their only downfall is that they let men believe that we are better. Most traumatic monetary losses in a relationship are caused by men who get emotional about an investment, take their savings, and blow it in the market, against the woman’s advice. Personally, except for money(which I’m a pro) I defer to women in everything from ordering wine to the clothes I buy. I salute women and put them on a pedestal as they have to put up with all our BS.

Jeff

I agree that people who are incapable of adequate nurture and who are unwilling to change their lives should not have children. I have never yet seen a parent who was capable of fully comprehending the extent of that change before it happened – although some of us test ourselves for a long, long time before we even consider the idea, there’s just no vicariously experiencing the reality. Then there are those who just get knocked up because hey, things happen or isn’t that what most people do or… who knows. I imagine it’s rather like dying or killing or giving birth; you have to do it to really get it, and once you get it, you’re already there. No prep course, no do-over. And no excuse for neglect or selfishness, just an observation: even the most brilliant, loving, dedicated people can get the crap knocked out of them by parenting.

I used to see and talk to the “.5 parent” all the time. They occur in a dizzying array of manifestations, and of course you’re right. It shouldn’t happen. They are one end of a spectrum, however, and as in most things, the opposite extreme is unacceptable as well. I know, from formal education and practical experience, that losing all sense of self in one’s role as a parent is very, very bad for the person, for the partnership and most importantly for the child in that parent’s care.

Your child does not become your life; what a horrifying burden to inflict on anyone so open and fragile. Your child becomes (perhaps, I can’t speak for everyone) the most important part of your life. There is a balance to struggle toward that is best for all concerned.

At least, I think so. Ask me in forty years.

ETA: We must have been simultaneously posting. I won’t allow reality or spousal bias to destroy my idea of the Redal husband as a studmuffin.

I agree with the implication in Ann’s comments that it is NOT wrong to want to find a middle ground — a chance to be something in addition to a parent without causing harm to one’s children in the process. No one told me I would be expected to entirely jettison other dimensions of myself when I opted to have children. I just never expected how hard the trade-offs would be. I guess it’s that that has concerned me most, and that prompted my admittedly provocative — though honest, I think — title: women still do not get how difficult it is to try to ‘do both.’

Re: Smithee’s 6/26 reply, I take issue with the suggestion that my kids are experiencing distress because they perceive themselves as obstacles to my dreams. What they do perceive, at times, is that the universe revolves around them, and I don’t think that’s a healthy perception to cultivate in any human being. We live in a culture –and very much so in the privileged community of Boulder, Colorado, where I reside — that gives kids such a sense of entitlement for very little expected of them. I see this rampant among the university students I teach: easy As are expected, even demanded, with little investment of time or effort. I don’t think it’s a moral transgression, or even selfish, to ask my children to be partners in the upkeep of our home or to undergo the inconvenience of riding their bike occasionally in lieu of a ride, because “Mom is working.” On the contrary, it’s important to instill an awareness of what it takes to keep four busy lives, two pets and a house going; to cultivate a sense of mutual partnership; and to encourage sensitivity to others’ commitments alongside one’s own needs and interests. My kids are 14 and 11; they are old enough to start recognizing these things.

And finally, I have to add that I chuckled at the notion of my husband as a Studmuffin Ladderclimber with a glam career… He is the most humble, earnest, non-fashionable, hard-working, devoted, old-school family doctor you could ever want to meet. He struggles to keep his practice financially stable in an era where big insurance companies steadily reduce what primary care physicians are paid. He is vexed at how to pay his own employees’ health insurance, when premiums keep mounting for small business owners. He’s a lousy typist, so ends up bringing home two hours’ worth of charts to dictate for electronic data entry. He’s not a jerk — just too busy, not very efficient (his patients love that he spends 30-40 minutes with them!), and very singularly focused. It’s the latter that grates on me most — he simply does not think about domestic details much, because he doesn’t have to. He “helps” when I ask him to. But I get stuck managing everything. What’s tough for me, vis-a-vis Ranee’s comments, is that I am also working full-time, or close to it, and yet 95% of the domestic load is on my plate, because I work at home with a ‘flexible schedule.’ How we address such a situation remains a puzzle to me when one partner is out of the home 10 hours a day. The only situations I see in which both working parents share domestic duties and also enjoy roughly equivalent careers are those in which each has a flexible schedule. That’s perhaps a segueway into a follow-up post on what we need to create, in terms of a social structure, to make work and parenting more compatible for women and men both.

And Lauri, I’m entirely sympathetic (although perhaps not as hygienic), but I have to believe that half the responsibility for any situation created by two adults lies with each partner. If your contract, explicit or implicit, has been negotiated a certain way and you want to change it… you can probably expect chaos and arguing and rats in the laundry room for a while. You may even find out that there is no negotiation which will end with the same two people married to each other – but that’s a last-ditch conclusion.

Without blathering into a dissertation or ten, I guess I’m saying that if someone doesn’t know what you need, he or she can’t supply it.