This morning I got an email from my wise-woman mother about my Jam post (she emailed me because – in her words – she wasn’t sure she ‘should be dominating the Comments on D&Z’. Bless her for her humble sensitivity. But on the other hand, I’m neither unaware nor ashamed that you make up a goodly portion of our daily hits, Mum – please comment! Others – please comment!)
She said that in contrast to my impressions of Jam‘s Castle household (in my bit I thoroughly lauded Mr Castle for being an ‘excellent house-father’ while Mrs Castle was off finding a cure for sun-spots) she’d always found Mr Castle’s ‘uncomplaining servitude’ creepy. She cited this article that’s been doing the rounds on the current dynamic between women who work and their male partners (hard to sum it up: I do recommend reading the whole piece; there’s a lot in it).
Just noticed that this older edition touts Jam as a true story – I’d be interested to know just how true …
The article, which I read after doing my review, made me think … but it didn’t change my view of Mr Castle.
Mr Castle is not creepy to me at all – the vision Jam presents of someone who is not the mother taking care of everything in the household, PLUS keeping an eye on the family’s emotional welfare, PLUS taking on beyond-the-call of duty projects like planting cabbages and making pots of jam is to me rosy and beautiful.
Currently, I work. I am the sole family income-earner. Somehow I also am solely in charge of washing, drying and putting away the clothes, and making sure that Maja’s wardrobe is adequately stocked and looked after. I buy the groceries. I do most of the cleaning and most of the cooking (without exception, it’s me who cleans the toilet). I usually make the beds in the morning, and it’s always me who changes the sheets. Mostly, I tend the garden. I put the kid to bed. I do the dishes about 80 percent of the time. I put them away 100 percent of the time. Yesterday, I vacuumed and cleaned out the inside of the car. (This was the only time it has ever been cleaned since we bought it the middle of last year.) I make the jam. How can the Castle household not look like a utopia to me?
But Mum got me thinking – No, I would not like to marry Mr Castle – because he doesn’t really exist (the Atlantic article makes the point nicely), and on the whole I’d rather a real man than a fictional one.
The Castle household is a fantasy – a Pinterest for the intellect: it tricks me into thinking how beautiful that craft project/fashion trend/use for recycled pallets/husband would look in MY humdrum life.
But men aren’t wired that way. They don’t generally look for the dishes to be done, the clothes to be washed. Or if they do, then they’re not doing other stuff: trouble-shooting a problem with the car, or tiling a bathroom, or sourcing/chopping/stacking firewood, or shooting a deer and getting it into the freezer – all of which manly business Mr A does beautifully.
Yes, yes, I make jam and Mr A fixes the car; you heard it here first. My point is that if our hardwiring (if you’re going to argue hardwiring) means that we mothers come home from a day of income-earning and feel compelled to do the dishes we see accumulating on the bench, then the hard-wiring sucks. Or at least, the hard-wiring is not compatible with the way society’s organised right now. What’s the solution?
Well, surely my fantasy (even if that’s all it’s destined to be) of a Mr-Castle-type figure conscientiously daily pegging out the dishes to be dried is allowable, for a start?
Daisy
Well you asked for it…. 1) Don’t just read that Atlantic article which depresssed me hugely but get into the comments….much more real world and inspiring.
2) Get yourself a “maid-of- all- work” …decide what’s drudgery to you in your life (could be one of the reasons your man is avoiding it too!) and subcontract to a high school student or someone who could really use the income to do the routine stuff on a regular basis. Win-win-win.
3) Get to grips with the fact that men have different priorities in a house…ever flatted with men? If you are beating yourself up over the state of the house realise its your own standards you’re up against …probably not his. Try letting things go and see where his threshold is! And have a think about just where you own standards come from and are they rational?
4) Imagine the cheek of someone trying to re-establish your priorities or trying to sneak things onto your to-do list! …or indeed identifying four different types of women that together would make up an ideal partner….
5) Love him for the hardwired differences…you want to be responsible for keeping the car going, building the house, getting in firewood, child-minding 24/7? Above all don’t keep account …it’ll be skewed to your interests and will take you nowhere.
6) Not true…it’s likely to take you to life on your own – and this might be where you belong (refer comments on Article). It takes a hell of a lot of work living as a couple …as it does having babies and living with kids…which is probably why women are hardwired to do a lot of the work, adjustments, biting their tongues, trying to understand, negotiating, manipulating, surrendering, enduring … to keep households together. We probably do it for our kids first off but may reap the rewards personally later in life. What will the world look like if women learn to have high powered careers, become corrupted with all the money and power, and forget what is really important (like a lot of men in suits and like those women in the article).
7) And, hey, love him for the fact that men stop …something to do with their ability to focus on one job at a time. They stop, and they relax; they call an end to the day’s work; they tell themselves they have done enough! Women need to learn to do this both for their own sanity and for the sanity of those around them.
8) Focus on the big picture …decide to be happy….be grateful for every moment of your miraculous life. Half the world survives on $2 a day….. .
Hoooo-eee! I’ve opened the floodgates haven’t I??? Yes, yes. Yes to all. Randomly, re (6) (a total side-note) this occurred to me today: What if PMS is not women being abnormally bitchy/snarky/bad-tempered, but rather women for those five days in the month speaking the truth? NOT ‘biting their tongues, trying to understand, negotiating, manipulating, surrendering, enduring …’ Sigh.
Been in the place of working with a stay at home dad for 2 years now, and one thing that more than any other I found helpful in making it work for us more than any other was instead of focusing on what I did and what he did, to focus on making sure we both have the same amount of ‘me’ time instead, and making sure that got priority.
Aah, you’re so right! Sometimes I do look of it in terms of the amount of ‘me time’ each of us are enjoying … and then I start feeling bad that I’m totting up even that in my head like that – in the scheme of things does it really matter?? Sigh.
In the grand scheme of things, probably not, but be careful to look after yourself and not burn out!!! Trying to work full time, make sure your kid gets enough you time, and pick up any slack round the house is challenging, and can get too much sometimes! But, mainly for us that means checking we both don’t get burned out, and trying not to tally who’s doing what. Ooo, and developing a bit of dirt blindness does really help… I think I’m almost at the stage now where the shower only *really* gets cleaned when mothers or mothers-in-law are about to visit…
Take care of yourself!