I grew up with a dad who worked his butt off, especially after we came to the United States and he was trying to get his construction/carpentry business going. He was out the door at 6 a.m., home at 6 p.m. for dinner (which my mother always had on the table for him) and then out again at 7 p.m. for a side job. Workaholic men are what I am used to and my husband’s incredible work ethic was one of the things that attracted me most to him.

My husband is now in grad school and will graduate with a mortgage-sized loan. To pay this off and to rise in his field, he is prepared to work 80 hours a week his first few years out of school. While I am dreading not seeing him (especially because we want to start a family by then), it is OK for me because this is what I am used to. In my world, this is what men do.

So I can relate to Jenna in that I feel my role — even though I also work full time, outside the house — is to keep things in order, domestically, because my husband does/will do so many other things to keep us afloat and prepare us for the future. I do almost all the cooking because I am home from work/school first but he sets the table and does the dishes (we don’t have a dishwasher). He does the other “gross” jobs, too: changing the kitty litter and taking out the garbage and the recycling. I do all of the cleaning/picking up, but this is really not my strong suit and I work full time and look forward to the day we can hire someone to do a good job in this arena.

So while I can relate to the workaholic husband/father and the mom-holding-down-the-fort-at-home bit, I don’t believe that our gender roles are spelled out in the bible. It just seems to work out that way in my case (minus the good cleaning skills).

One of the reasons why I am uncomfortable with the idea of gender roles being spelled out in the bible is because I feel that this sometimes gives people the wrong impression that a woman’s education is not as important as her husband’s. I know that this wasn’t part of your post, Jenna, but you have said in the past about how the LDS faith really emphasizes family and child rearing. This emphasis seems
to give credence to the idea that it’s OK to to push a woman’s education goals aside because she will have a higher calling when she becomes a mother. I know this obviously isn’t the case with every single person who believes in biblical marriage roles, but it certainly is easier to justify than if you don’t have that biblical background.

In my background, although neither of my parents went college (they grew up very poor), education was always emphasized as the most important thing.

When my family immigrated to the U.S., my mother had to work outside the home just because there would have been no way for us to afford living in an apartment in NYC on just my dad’s income.

I was thinking a lot about an awesome book “The Way we Never Were” when reading the post and the comments. It’s about how most of our ideas and expectations of the “Angel of the Hearth” aka SAHM were born in the Industrial Revolution, when people moved to the cities and the men worked in factories instead of on the farm with their wives. For the first time on a broad scale, the men were getting paychecks for their contribution, and the women’s contribution was “unpaid”, although still a ton of labor. The women’s work was naturally still done in the home, as they had done on the farm. But even then if you were in the city with your industrial job your kids were doing backbreaking labor too, you weren’t cooing over their first steps, you were saying “cool, you can walk, grab a bucket and go milk that cow”. And in the upper classes things weren’t exactly nuclear peachy keen either-they even farmed out the tasks of breastfeeding to wet nurses, boarding schools, nannies, etc. In early America almost 50% of kids 13 years or younger had lost at least one parent, and marriages weren’t to love and cuddle with each other, but to run a farm and make as many babies to run it as possible. So I just think I’m inherently skeptical of the basic premise of the divine roles of men and women as outlined in the Proclamation, because that wasn’t the way things were for a very, very long time in America and in other countries, and I’m also inherently skeptical of the idea that women are the best and obvious choose for child care, and men are the best and obvious choice for economic endeavors. I feel as though the Proclamation on the Family was more of a Family Values/James Dobson/protect the “traditional” *1950′s on* family statement than something that I can agree as being inherent to both genders from creation. That long comment being said, the point is that those are my general, philosophical beliefs surrounding SAHM’s/SAHD’s/two full time working parents, and of course each individual family is going to have its own ways of working things out, just as you and TH have. My comment was macrolevel in response to your personal level post, my apologies in being clumsy

But on a more serious note, I decided early on, following my mom’s example, that if something bothers me, I will take care of that. No reason to nag – he could care less about it, he simply doesn’t even notice it! The funny thing is that into our 2nd year of living together, he became much more organized. When he has the energy and time to think about it, he will put his stuff away! And he takes pride in how clean and well put our house is, which is VERY important to me – at least I know I am not doing all this in vain

He has a lot more spare time too — different church calling, etc.

That’s our goal too–when I get out of school in 2 1/2 years, hopefully he will have figured out what he really wants to do (NOT work 80 hours a week!) so that he can get whatever training (school or whatever else) he needs to do. I just knew what I wanted to do before he did, which is why I went first.

We are just like that, too. My husband is unemployed and I work full time+school, so he picks up ALL the slack at home. He’d work if he could get a job (and we’d hire a housekeeper!) but we’re doing what we can with what’s been given to us. I think it humbles him (even though he grumbles) about doing household duties. I try to be sure I am extra thankful for the work he does around the house. It IS work, even if it’s not at a desk all day in a cubicle or in the field. I have to say, I am resentful he gets to sleep in and do work while listening to the tv! =]

The European offices of TH’s company work their employees much harder than most of the American offices, and they are much more family friendly in the states (especially in Dallas, which is why he chose to work there). Same with the Brazil office. Which obviously proves it’s a problem with the profession, not the country

I feel lucky as well to have a SO willing to work hard in part so I can pursue my dreams (starting a photo business costs a good amount of money as well!), and hopefully one day I can make enough money to give him a break so he can pursue some of his dreams as well.

We want lots of children. Many many many. We want to be able to provide those children with opportunities, help pay for their college educations, give the girls the kind of wedding I had, fly out to see them when they have babies, and so many other things. All of those can’t be done without money, and I’m not sure there is another path that provides us the opportunity to do those things. We’re saving like mad (I believe we live on $30,000/year currently) but the more kids we add the more money we need to make to sustain that savings rate. If TH wants to make more money every year he has to put in his time now to put himself in a position to climb later.

My dad worked hard, but he worked like a dog April-October and was able to achieve more balance the rest of the year. Now he has a successful business (currently expanding actually!), LOVES what he does with organic farming, and my mom is able to pursue her photography dreams. My mom was able to come down and help me when I had back surgery, has visited my sister, and she’ll come down to help with the baby after s/he’s born. My parents go on vacation. They’re coming to spend a few days with us this weekend on their way back up from a convention. I think their is something to be said about this freedom that my parents have to be a part of my life (and my sister’s life) after we’re grown. Working hard and likely sacrificing some face time when we were kids has provided them the opportunity to do things they couldn’t have otherwise. They’re fulfilled in their personal lives, and they are a part of our lives now, and I think that’s worth something as well.