One of my good friends who is very traditional in her marriage and general outlook on life (she is a willing!! supporter of ‘benevolent patriarchy’ but that is another post) tells me to consider how it may look from my husband’s viewpoint: He has to work full-time to support our family (where for me as a married woman it’s a choice) and to be with me, he has to do some housework and childcare, whereas I don’t have to work outside the home to support our family and I get to ask him to do additional work at home on top of his working outside the home. He can’t ask me to work outside the home without feeling like he’s looking like a heel or like a man who won’t willingly support his wife and children (and this was true; he said as much in marriage counseling how very hard it was for him to ask me to contribute more financially to our family).

That was really helpful for me to consider…it made me ‘nag’ him less and to be appreciative and encouraging of all the time he spends with the kids and the work he does around the house. My husband works 40 hours a week teaching, spends roughly 25 hours a week doing prep work, lesson plans, grading papers, transportation time, and on top of that spends, by my estimate, about 25 hours a week doing actual child care and housework. That’s 90 hours a week working. That’s 2 full-time jobs…He is actually working just as much and as hard as I am, except where time spent in what jobs are reversed, is all.

So I try to keep this in mind when it seems to be he’s just lazing about on a Sunday afternoon watching football when I have lots of work to do and the kids are in my face and he’s not helping out. He needs his downtime and relaxing time just as much as I do, you know? The difference between us is, and I attribute this to how we were both influenced by sexism, is that he takes his down time, whereas I still feel sorta that I have to ask for my down-time or to schedule it or whatever. I need to just start giving myself permission to just chill out and ignore the housework and even (gasp! my hands are shaking as I type this, LOL) occasionally the kids.

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