Somehow, though I shouldn’t be by now, I’m still sometimes surprised by the little things you guys pick up on. Sometimes I expect comments on the little things I slip in because I put them there purposely to get a reaction, but most of the time I let my word vomit spill out over the screen without giving much thought to how vastly different we all are and the ways I could never imagine you might react to the things I consider commonplace.

The latest example of this manifested in a comment left by one of my favorite e-friends, Cate, on my Thanksgiving post:

Also, gotta say, I found it weird how you put a smiley after the bit about how the women did the washing up while the men relaxed. Does this really make you smile? Did the women do most/all of the cooking too? (I’m not judging, I’m just interested. As I’ve said before, you and I have so much in common, but then some things about our lives and attitudes are so different, it makes me find those differences extra fascinating because of the similarities I think.)

I love Cate because she’s able to call me out on stuff without coming across as rude. I really believe her when she says she isn’t judging me. She acknowledges how different our backgrounds and beliefs are, and it’s true, we are very different. But then we also have lovely similarities that make me hope we can meet up for elevenses someday with our babies and compare notes.

But to answer her question…

This year for Thanksgiving TH and I were given three different assignments, to bring sparling cider, a dish made with green beans, and a pie. I went out shopping for all of the ingredients and bought the Martinelli’s all by myself*, came home and prepared them all without any help from TH (a process that took several hours), and washed all of the dishes after it was all over. Although I do not know for sure, I imagine the experience was similar for my cousin in regards to the amount of participation her husband had with dealing with the food and planning of a holiday meal for 12. Her husband did carve the turkey, but I don’t think that would satisfy many in a discussion like this about gender stereotypes and assumptions of female roles as that is a job typically deferred to the man of the house. (Presumably because it involves meat and knives(?)) The other two women in the group were single so they did not have husbands to ask for help. When the meal was finished the women gravitated toward the kitchen with handfuls of dishes and began rinsing and drying while the men made their way to the game room to watch football or the living room to sit and talk.

Source

When laid out in such a simplistic manner, life looks rather unjust for the women, does it not? If only life were so simple!

We stayed at my cousin’s house for about 5 hours on Thanksgiving day, and then we drove home and TH sat on the couch and began to work. He worked through the evening, through the night (first night of no sleep), through the next morning, through the afternoon, through the evening, through the night (second night of no sleep), got up and went and took the GMAT (scored 10 points better than his previous score!), came home and worked through the rest of the day, into the night, slept 4 hours or so, got up and went to church for 3 hours, came home and worked through the afternoon and late into the night once again. He stumbled into bed a few hour after midnight, the first time we had slept in the same bed for several days, even though we had been in each other’s presence the entire time. Periods of non-stop work like this present every few months, the rest of the time he pulls 60-80 hour work weeks on a regular basis.

What does my life consist of? I sleep in as long as I want. I spend hours and hours each week writing posts for That Wife and Jenna Cole. My “job” consists of doing something I absolutely love, creating photographs. I’ve made no money so far, only spent it at a very rapid pace.

So yes, I may seem oppressed because all of the household responsibilities are on me. I do the cooking, the cleaning**, the laundry, take out the trash, vacuum (sparingly), the grocery shopping, and all other typical housewife duties. But my husband works himself into the ground to put food on the table, a roof over our heads, clothes on our bodies, fancy cameras in my closet, and all of the other things we need/want in life. If not being the one who has to work for “the man” means I have to make a pumpkin pie from scratch all on my own and then clean up the dishes afterward please sign me up!

I have 6 aunts that I grew up seeing on a regular basis (we all lived in the same state for much of my childhood so getting together for many different occasions throughout the year wasn’t very difficult). Though things are a bit different now, as most of my cousins are out of the house or old enough to care for themselves, when I was younger I believe all of them were primarily SAHMs***. My mother worked outside the home when my parents were first married because they were dirt poor, but through much of my childhood she did not. I believe it was the same for most of my cousins. Most of these women are married to farmers, men who work themselves tremendously hard from March-October. During the busiest times at harvest/planting I was lucky to see my dad for 30 minutes in a day, as he would be up around 5 am, eat breakfast before I left, eat lunch on the tractor, and come home to scarf down dinner before heading back out again to work late into the night. My paternal grandfather is over 75 years old and still puts in many hours every week driving back and forth between central Washington and northern Oregon to care for his ranch. My maternal grandfather is over 70 and still works all day every day running his dairy. In my family, the men work hard, and the women can see that. Though caring for children, digging through mountains of laundry, endless rounds of putting food on the table and cleaning the mess up again can be exhausting and frustrating, the women are still the ones who manage household affairs, almost exclusively. When it comes time for Christmas celebrations, Thanksgiving dinner, or family reunion potlucks, they do the planning, the cooking, and usually the cleanup.

If you were to show up and look at Thanksgiving or Christmas as an isolated experience, you might see what the women do and how the men act, and judge the entire thing as unfair and in need of change. But when you back away and see my uncle baling hay all day and all night to get it in before the rain comes, my grandpa herding cattle in the oppressive heat and the biting cold, my dad bouncing back and forth between running his business and managing the harvest of acres of land from July-October, my own husband pulling back-to-back all nighters because his manager paged him once again with a request that has to be fulfilled by an early morning meeting, I think it’s a little bit easier to understand why we women aren’t complaining about our lot****.

With these experiential examples noted I must add my religious beliefs to the mix as well. The LDS Church is very clear in its declarations concerning the roles of men and women in the home. The importance of having children is well understood by members and so when one marries the usual assumptions concerning parenthood revolved around “when” not “if”. In a letter written by the Church leadership the roles of mother and father are clearly outlined:

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

Whether it is because of my own familial background or because of my religious belief system I watch each Thanksgiving go by with the women doing most of the work. And when I joined the world of adulthood I rolled up my sleeves and happily learned about the perfect mashed potatoes and what not to do when attempting to make one’s first batch of homemade rolls. I may grumble and slap a few pots on the counter with unnecessary force during the cleanup, but somewhere inside of me there will be the memory of 5-month pregnant Jenna, the night after the night after Thanksgiving 2009, stumbling to the bathroom for her 3 am visit to the porcelain throne to relieve her aching bladder. She’ll glance over and feel a pang of grief at the sight of her sleep-deprived husband on the couch for yet another night, scrambling to get his slides polished before the sun comes up and his boss comes a callin’. That Jenna, even with her swollen ankles and bursting bladder, with a body working so hard to grow their baby, knows that a few dishes and yet another load of laundry are the least she can do to try find the balance necessary to make a marriage work.

*It should be noted that TH has been walking with a cane for several days now, and was relying on it heavily around Thanksgiving so it’s possible I could have sent him out for stuff if he had been well, although I don’t think that would have been the case.

**TH was the last one to clean our bathroom though and he did a superb job. I love him.

***Stay At Home Moms

****I admit we do complain. My mom complained. I complain. It’s still hard not to feel under-appreciated, or get caught up in the “my role in this relationship is just as hard as yours game”. But I’m not fighting to switch places with him or lessen my workload by adding more to his (at the moment, things will change when the baby comes and he has been sufficiently warned). Our workloads are currently not even close to being balanced in their current state.

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