Gender Roles

My fiancee, Katie, and I flew to my home for Thanksgiving break. This was the first opportunity we've had for her to meet some of my high school friends and extended family. It was also our first run in with gender roles, and I felt like I was in E.S. Maduro's essay from The Bitch in the House.

In that essay, the author thinks she's met this wonderful guy who is all about dividing up domestic work equally and doesn't expect her to spend her time on "woman's work." But then they go to visit his family over a holiday, and what happens? He turns into the stereotypical man. His mother does all of the cleaning and food making, and he doesn't even offer to help! And then she finds that she's invited to help clean up and make food, and anyway, she feels like she ought to be helping out anyway. Or at least, I think this is what happened in the essay. It's a little confusing because it's almost exactly what happened when we went home.

My mom (and my dad, actually) made all of the meals (including Thanksgiving dinner) and I never offered to help. I set the table once. They did most of the cleanup too. I emptied the dishwasher occasionally, and always cleaned up my own dishes (most of the time), but I wasn't making an effort to clean up after everyone. And I don't really know how to feel about this. My parents didn't expect me to do more than I did, and it certainly didn't annoy them that they were doing most of the work. I know how much I need to do to keep them happy, and it's not a lot. And the amount I do now, and that I do without whining, probably makes it seem like I've come a long way.

But there were other times when I cleaned up when I didn't want to, when I felt like I got suckered into it. These were the times when Katie offered to do the dishes, and I couldn't just abandon her. So the two of us ended up doing more than we needed to, and Katie felt like she didn't do enough.

And then there was the one time I did abandon her to play basketball with my friends. I left after dinner while several relatives were still there. My parents had no problem with that, as I had planned the basketball first, but Katie was displeased. Never, in her family, do you leave a gathering of relatives to hang out with your friends. This seems misguided to me. Relatives will always be relatives, but friends can fall out of touch and cease being friends.

Anyway, when I returned two and a half hours later, Katie was washing the dishes and was obviously pissed (which is awkward with parents around because we have to suppress this tension). How come I got to go out and have fun, and she got stuck doing dishes? She said she still had a lot of fun with my relatives after I left, but still, I left! She got stuck with the woman's work!

There was another incident where I went upstairs to do some work on my computer and my mom asked Katie if she wanted to help make a pie. Katie said sure, because she's unfailingly polite, and helped. We both know that something like this is also an opportunity for my mom to spend time with her, which is of course nice, but still - I was allowed to go off and do my own important work, and she got stuck in the kitchen.

There were more examples as well, one of the larger ones being that Katie kept feeling like she was doing stuff wrong, so that my mom kept subtly (and nicely) correcting her. I think the worst part is that we don't know how to fix this. We decided it would get better in time as she gets more comfortable in my house. But one of the biggest problems is that Katie likes cooking, doesn't mind doing dishes, etc. Yet when she's doing this because she feels like she's supposed to (because she's the girl), it makes her miserable.

Other than that, and that it took 11 hours to get home from Philadelphia (which means I'm posting this today, instead of as last week's entry, which it is), Thanksgiving was fun.