Pissed Off Wives-How Did We End Up Here Again?
Mostly- my clients are progressive, educated, pretty solid folks who got married with some sense that we were going to do things differently. We were going to create healthy, egalitarian marriages far from the ones we were raised in.
No matter how we define ourselves and our relationships, we were raised in a culture that defined marriage not only as one man, one woman but also defined marriage in a very traditional way- husband gets his identity from being a provider, mom gets her identity from her relationship to her family. Marriage is a monogamous financially driven contract about creating space to raise kids.
When I look back to progressive ideas about marriage, feminism, parenting from the 80s the goal was to push fiercely against gender roles. We talked about both parents working, which was going to be easier with technology making life more efficient, people were all going to be working shorter work weeks. We talked about moving away from mom/dad and towards parent. Couples were moving away from nursing so that both parents could feed equally.
Today, our ideas about birth, nursing, sleep, the attachment needs of young children have moved us to a highly mom dependent model of parenting, especially in the first years. This means women have increased the emotional and physical intensity and of their commitment to parenting. This means that even though dads are certainly doing more, moms are still mostly primary.
We also have an economic crisis in families where most families feel that two incomes are necessary to build any financial security and the work day only gets longer and longer. Technology didn’t free us but in fact bound us to our work identities 24 hours a day.
Like many women, I put my kids ahead of my career when they were young. I took more time off, managed more appointments, did the sick days and worked around daycare and school. I have always been a mom first, a therapist second. I even chose a career that gave me flexibility at the expense of benefits and income.
As we have prioritized parenting, many couples are finding that this has also meant that we have accidentally slid back into very traditional relationship, with all the same complaints our mothers had. There is something in the air. We as wives and mothers are identifying some pretty intense feelings about the price we have paid while taking care of the kids and building a home for them.
Wives are tired. We are all talking about emotional labor. But what’s the solution? How do we do less? How do we let things go? If the men in our lives have been raised to expect someone to take care of them, take care of the house and kids how can be raise their awareness of just how much they don’t know.
Wives are pissed. The media keeps telling us how lucky we are to have involved dads but the truth is that their idea of parenting has changed dramatically but the daily load has not. Read this one.
Wives are frustrated. We don’t want to be angry and resentful but we figure out how to change the tide of our lives. We want to talk about it without all the defensiveness. We aren’t blaming the men in our lives, well not always. We get that we created this mess together, that we slid back into patriarchy. We want better for our kids. We want to be heard and respected and have a full say in our world. But change is hard. Creating something wildly different is terrifying.
Wives are lonely. When we find a way to come together to have the conversation about what we want differently in our relationships it is wonderful! But how hard. How do we get past the defensiveness and blame to true intimacy about a system we must dismantle. We started our relationship talking about creating a beautiful future. We meant to do it differently.
I don’t have a lot of answers but we’re in this together. I see the struggle but I also I see what is possible. Let’s keep talking. Let’s keep struggling. We are in this together, as parents, as partners, as feminists.
Maureen