I was talking to a longtime friend the other evening at my grandson’s Little League game, and I couldn’t help but notice how tired she looked. Thinking she wasn’t feeling well or something, I finally decided to mention it to her. She looked over at me with a big smile and said, “No, I’m fine, Daryl, and thanks for asking. I’m afraid I always look like this on most work nights.”
“So, you’ve really been slaving away at the office lately?” I asked her.
“Yes, it’s always incredibly busy at work, but that’s not what’s really killing me. It’s trying to be a good 21st century wife and mother that’s going to probably end up being the death of me!”
As our conversation continued, my friend made a number of really interesting comments that I had never heard a woman make before, at least not in such logical detail. She said that there were actually times when she wished she could simply be one of those “Leave It To Beaver” mothers who stayed at home – at least while the children were young – and be responsible for nothing more than getting the kids off to school in the morning, cleaning the house in the afternoon, and having a hot meal on the table for everyone when her husband got home from work.
“In some ways, it must have been heaven,” said my friend, “even if all of today’s liberated women would throw rocks at me for even mentioning it. Now don’t get me wrong, I love being out in the world and being able to have my own job and bring home my own paycheck, but in today’s world, that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is expected of women. In the good old days, at least most women had a defined role to play, while in today’s world, women are expected to be everything to everyone.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Well, just think about a woman’s typical day,” she suggested. “I’m up earlier than everyone else because I’m the one who has to drag the kids out of bed and get them off to school. Most days I’m also the one who has to collect them after school and get them to all the activities they are enrolled in, and depending on which mother you are talking to, that can mean music lessons, dancing, karate, gymnastics, swimming lessons, Little League, soccer, and the list goes on and on. Back in the days of `Leave It to Beaver’, all a mother had to do after school was give her kids a good snack and shove them out the door to play with their friends until dinner time. Then outside of maybe helping them with their homework later that night, she could actually relax a little bit, watch her favorite TV show, or even read a good book. But you know what I do most days after I leave the office after a long day’s work?”
“No, what?”
“Well, after I drop off all the kids at whatever organized activity they’re doing that evening (this was Little League night), I race to the supermarket where I see the familiar faces of other exhausted working mothers who look like they are going to drop in their tracks as they fill up their shopping carts with the food they’re going to need to make dinner that night. And just like me, they’re all dreading going home to all the other chores that still await them, like cooking, doing the dishes, cleaning up the house enough so that it at least looks respectable, and getting a couple of loads of laundry going so that everyone will have something clean to wear the next day. Oh, and most of us also try to fit in going to the gym as often as we can so that our significant other doesn’t totally forget we are the love of his life. I literally don’t get to sit down until it’s finally time to go to the bathroom, and even then there is usually someone standing outside the door talking to me about something they need from me.”
“So,” I said, “I take it your husband isn’t very helpful around the house?”
“No, that’s not it at all,” she assured me. “His job is even more exhausting than mine and he works very hard at it, not to mention all the overtime he puts in. So I’m not one of those women who think everything would be better if I had a husband who helped out more, because I have one. No, the problem is that America has somehow turned into a place where it takes two people working fulltime to raise a family and live a respectable middle class life, and to make that possible, women are now being asked to be superhuman. Not only do we have to do all the traditional roles of being mother, housekeeper, cook and loving wife, but we are also expected to do the traditional male role of bringing home big chunks of the bacon.”
“So,” I said, “what you’re saying is that most women are now being asked to be both a man and a woman in today’s world?”
“Daryl,” said my friend with very tired eyes and plenty of conviction, “the only thing I don’t do that men do is stand up and pee, and I could do that, too, if I had to!”