Why I Hate the Dinner Dilemma

So, I’m totally down with the fact I’m not the June Cleaver or even the Claire Huxtable of motherhood.  In fact, I’ve made it my life goal not to be. And, I’m in a little bit of trouble with The Sha over it.  I don’t care.  I hope she learns something from what I did. 

In the last week, I’ve had people tell me to get over feminism, and one that accused me of hating my people and wanting to change people’s way of life because I had the vagina to point out we need an Equal Rights Amendment because there is much case law over the years pointing to how equal protection under the constitution isn’t the dream some envision.

A LOT of my thinking in this regard has been ingrained in my head since before I can remember.  My great-grandmother was a proud first-wave feminist.  Except even our family, no one used that word.  It was women’s lib.  

Her stories are personal to me.  When she was told she didn’t need the same pay as her male peers at her teaching job, because she had a husband, she fought. Marching herself to the state capitol, and she got what she was after.  

I’m a Title IX baby.  I was always able to play little league, and lived for sports in school.  In fact, sports is one of the reason I’m not straddled with student loan debt. My great-aunt came to all of my games.  She would tell me how much she loved playing basketball, but half-way through high school, they quit letting girls play, because they thought it would make them unable to have babies.

When I was told by a boss his wife never worked when their kids were young, and maybe I should think about that, I quit and found a new job.  Shocked that being the third generation after my great-grandmother’s fight, here I was looking at someone who claimed to be a social progressive questioning my motherhood, because I worked.  

I’ve stood toe-to-toe with my husband, demanding he help clean house without being asked while I worked and finished my degree (thank God I had only had one semester after we got married, or the ship might have sank).  “I do more than most!” he would say.

“Who is ‘Most’?”  I would demand.  “Tell me who?  And he better not have a housewife!”  I would yell while throwing dishes into the sink in a snit because the house was a disaster. I worked hard to be able to contribute to my families economic well-being,  be able to stand on my own feet if I have to, and I’ll be damned if that means I have to do everything around the house, too.

My great-grandfather always told me, “Never let a man tell you what to do,” and when he met B-Rye, he looked me in the eye and said, “You don’t let him boss you around do you?” Brian laughed at the little white-haired, VERY spiritual Mormon man who was 99 at the time. 

We got in the car and he was still laughing.  I said, “I hope you know, he’s dead serious.” 

And, let me tell you how much we’ve fought over him trying to tell me what to do. :-) 

My point being, its been ingrained in my head since before I can remember that women’s equality is serious, important business.  From my own struggles with mommy guilt to wanting to raise my daughters to be strong women, I take sexist shit personally.  If you really want to piss me off, tell me how much it doesn’t matter.

A major debate in feminist circles these days centers around a conflict between second and third wave feminists.  Mothers who don’t think their daughters appreciate the struggle, don’t fight enough, don’t realize the world they live in and take for granted, was shaped and formed by serious battles.   

And, that is how I got in trouble with The Sha on Wednesday.

I came home from work, and was sitting at the table and asked how her day went.  She laughed and told me I would have come unglued in her health class. She knows these things because she thinks I’m on par with some woman who doesn’t shave her armpits and barks at the moon…well, I wouldn’t put it past me.  BUT, she knows this because I HAVE pointed out she could tell the DARE officer to “suck a fatty.  Girls don’t have to wear dresses to be professional, and when he wears one when its ten below, he can dictate you do,” and I did kind of go on a tirade on a test her history teacher sent home for me to fill out—there was a spot to write in your gender, and I wrote “gender is a social construct that needs to be squashed like the patriarchy” and some other things regarding colonialism and hegemony that were probably pretty radical.  He got a kick out of it though, and told me so at P-T conference. 

I get it I’m radical.  There was a time I really thought everybody just knew and accepted this stuff.  That time passed a long time ago.

But, at least I’ve gotten one thing across to Sha—I’m not gonna stand in silence about this stuff.

See, it’s the start of a new trimester and she is telling me about her health class.  The teacher is lecturing on fast food and asks if anyone in class knows why the consumption of fast food and its horrible health effects have become such an epidemic in America.  No one answered, and the teacher apparently said it happened when women started working, so no one is home to make dinner anymore.

My jaw hit the table.  “She said THAT?  IN CLASS!?”  Sha started laughing, a huge belly laugh.  “Did you tell her men are perfectly capable of making fucking dinner?!”  And she laughed harder.

I got up and started pacing the kitchen, determined I wasn’t making dinner just to prove a damn point.  She kept laughing at me, and told me how she loves my reactions. 

I’m pretty much myself around my kids.  I can be professional and lady-like, but if anyone knows how I really am, its my girls.  Mostly, because I want them to know its ok to be loud and have an opinion and take up space.  They deserve that.  They’re entitled to a voice, and I hope they find it.

“Well, did you say anything, Sheridan?!”  I asked.

“No!”  She laughed. “But I knew you would have.”

I guess a little part of me is glad she even noticed the sexism, even if she was too afraid to say anything.  I told her, “You really should point out that stuff.  By not, you’re letting people think its alright to think those things.  You don’t have to call it ‘bullshit’ like I would, you can say it in a nice way.”

She just laughed again as I finally sat back down, and she pushed some papers in front of me.  She explained to me I needed to read the curriculum for this health class, talk it over with her, and sign a paper agreeing she could learn about sex and STDs.  “She going to teach you about birth control?” I asked.

“No. She said that’s too touchy around here.”

“Figures,” I said and left it at that.  I’d been on my soapbox enough.  “I’ll sign them before I go to bed.  I want to look over them a little more.”

So, later, I signed and dated the paper, and left a P.S. at the bottom.  It said “Please don’t blame the fast food epidemic on women.  Blame it on the still unequal division of domestic labor.” And left a nice little smiley face.

Sha’s embarrassed, and told me yesterday “I’ll just have dad sign my papers from now on!”

“Fine.”  I said.  Dad can sign those papers, because we agreed a long time ago to split chores and share parenting. I kept my mouth shut about how that still doesn’t happen at some houses.

This morning, as Brian was getting Schmoo ready for school, like he has every single day since she was two and I quit working from home, while he was warming up her clothes in the dryer like he does every day so they are warm for her, I asked her if I could fix her hair today.

“I want Daddy to do it.” She said.  “He does it better.”

I sipped my coffee, and watched them get ready for the day (picture above).  In the past, the mommy guilt over this has almost killed me.  As I watched, I’m thankful he’s as involved in her life and every aspect of it as he is.  There’s no way in hell I’d have ever thought to warm up her clothes every day.

I’m lucky.  He IS better than most I know.  I work with women who do everything and have to do it.  Some don’t have anyone to help. Some don’t stand up and demand help.

I was outside the building the other day, and a lady said to me, “You’re a good mom.  You do awesome things with your kids, especially with the hours you put in here.”

I was a little embarrassed, but it was probably one of the best compliments anyone could give me.  “Thank you.  I have a great husband,” I said.  “He helps me a lot.”  And, its true.

He shakes his head at me a lot, just like The Sha does.  “Think about where we live.  You think a lot different than most people,” he likes to tell me.

Well, that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t change.  So, I won’t fight with my daughter over how I think she should handle things or where she should take women in her generation, and I'll do my best not to be an embarassment to her.   

After all, the point behind it all is I just want her to have choices and opportunities in her life and not be limited by something as trivial as being “just a girl.”

I don’t want her to feel guilty for not making dinner by following her dreams. So, every time someone says something to make her think she's "just a girl" or that dinner is her job, I'm going to say something.  For her.