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Strollerderby
Does your husband do laundry? How about school lunches?
There are some things husband’s just can’t do, right? That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway. Your man may want to help out around the house, but he can’t be counted on to get it right. A few days ago, Scary Mommy over at The Stir about things her husband can’t seem to do. I feel for her. I’ve had those days when it seems like I’m talking to a brick wall, but I’m pretty sure that brick wall is my spouse.
And yet I think most men are capable of just about any household task. My sweetie certainly is.
In honor of my 8th wedding anniversary, and inspired by Scary Mommy’s post, here are 8 things my husband is completely awesome at.
Mom needs dad to clean, dad needs the opposite
One night a week, I work late. I get home long after dinner, PJ’s, stories, bed and all the other pieces of the end-of-day family routine. I’m exhausted from a marathon of writing and seeing psychotherapy clients.
I can go down two mental paths at this point: one, I imagine myself arriving home to disheveled chaos — crusty dinner plates and a war path of discarded clothes, wet face clothes, and toys. This makes me incredibly stressed, since I’m someone (and I know I’m not alone here) who can’t relax and probably wouldn’t go to bed when the house looks like a tornado came through.
Luckily, my husband knows this and after he washes, reads to, and tucks in my son, he also usually cleans and makes me one of his famous grilled cheese sandwiches timed to my arrival home.
My mood changes completely when I walk through the door. But it turns out what I’m experiencing is something common to couples who both work and have young kids. A recent study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that when the husband does housework at the end of the day, a mom’s cortisol levels (stress hormones that are supposed to naturally decline in the evening) go down. If he doesn’t, they stay up.
But there’s an unfortunate flip side to this: Continue reading »
Dads want to do more of this.
I grew up in what I consider to be a fairly stereotypical 1970′s family. My mother spent her days cooking, cleaning and caring for the kids. My father spent long hours in an office every day and returned home each evening to sit in front of the television with a cocktail in one hand and pipe in the other.
Even when my mother began working outside the home, the division of labor remained the same. Other than yard work and house repairs, mom was responsible for all things domestic.
But while my father used bourbon and tobacco to help him unwind each evening, a new study suggests that he might have been better off spending some time with us kids and giving mom a hand around the house. Continue reading »
Think washing the dishes after dinner is killing the mood in your marriage? Not so, says science. A new study in the Journal of Family Issues reveals that married folks who both work outside the home and do more household labor also get it on more often than those who work less or blow off chores.
The message, as one of the lead researchers put it, is that those who work hard play hard. Sweet.
So next time you’re looking to spice things up with your sweetie, consider an evening of vaccuming the family room, dusting the cabinets and finally settling in for some good old fashioned spoon polishing.
Being a stay-at-home mom is one thing. But a housewife? That’s practically a dirty word, at least in some circles.
In an interesting essay on Jezebel, the writers look at what it takes to walk away from a career and become a full-time housewife. Feminists have been debating this issue for decades, torn between the movement to free women from the drudgery of “women’s work” on the one hand and the need to respect and value housework on the other.
These things aren’t really in conflict of course. Domestic labor is valuable, skilled labor. It’s not work that women are universally, innately suited to. Most housekeeping and childcare is done by women, but not all. And by no means all women are skilled at these things, or fullfilled by doing them.
Some of us are, though. Plenty of women leave interesting careers to stay at home and raise kids, tend a garden, keep a house. According to a not-at-all scientific poll from the women’s site TresSugar (whose readership overlaps ours a lot, except for the whole having kids thing), 50% of women would be housewives if they could. Another 27% said they’d do it after they had kids. That’s a lot of dreamy domestic bliss.
Alert Hollywood: Angelina Jolie will never play Cinderella.
She’s not afraid of blonde wigs, she doesn’t mind dressing up. But the whole rags-to-riches theme doesn’t appeal to her. Knight in shining armor? Well, you’ve seen her movies. She’d rather save herself.
But the big problem with playing Cinderella is this: Continue reading »
While it has long been known that exercise is good for a pregnant woman and her unborn child, new research suggests that all exercise is not created equal. While a brisk walk or some laps in the pool may be just what the doctor ordered, the labor involved in keeping the house clean might best be avoided. For the sake of the baby, of course. Continue reading »
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