My family was totally traditional roles, down to mom being a teacher and dad an engineer and when sis was born, mom quit. She says her only real options were teaching & nursing and she didn't like blood, so. However, mom was good at math and has always handled all the finances in addition to the cooking & cleaning stuff. Dad did the outside stuff (a lot of work, on twenty acres with orchard & garden & horse barn & woods & pond & stream) when I was growing up in Ohio.
But they always encouraged me to be independent, and Dad taught me as much stuff that stuck as Mom, like programming and nature stuff. I still use the oak bookshelves we built together. So I ended up all gender roles equality by the time I ended up with D.
We were always both working, and more often than not, working together at the same place. So there was no coming home to a hot meal for either of us. We did a lot of eating out until we lived in New Mexico an hour away from restaurants or grocery for that matter, where I learned to cook. And then when we moved into this house, with its lovely kitchen, he became enamored of it and does pretty much all the cooking now. I am complaining not one bit, because it's pretty excellent.
He cooks like you, Barb, and wants everything clean in the process. I am the opposite. I enter the kitchen, there's a cloud of ingredients and a flurry of pans, and food comes out when the dust settles. It drives him crazy, so we don't cook together often! Hee. Anyway, we share most roles, except, for some reason, the laundry.
Back to my parents: when they moved to Hawaii, they were farming Kona coffee, working the land, so mom became interested in agriculture. And now that they're back in Indiana with just a small lot, she's become the main one tending to the yard. She's also been the consummate caregiver, first us kids, then my grandmother, and now my dad. I have a lot of respect for her and the work she does, although she's always said that she wishes we got to see her as a working woman when we were kids, so that we had a different view of her. But I think they're both pretty spectacular.
Hee, Calli. My folks "retired" but it was to work the coffee fields. We tried to explain to them they didn't really get the concept of "retire" but they were having fun. Now they are really retired, but mom still does the mom stuff.
My parents were very traditional roles, as well. Still are for the most part. My dad helps out a lot more now, mostly because Mom went on strike for a bit. But his default is to order out if my mom is out of town or something.
Then, when I married Joe, who does a lot, A LOT, of cooking and cleaning and parenting, this sent him soaring to the top of my mom's alltime great guy list, which now means whenever he and I have an argument and I try to talkto my mom about it, she says, "Hey - you've got a guy that cleans and cooks and takes care of his kid. Shut it and be happy." Which makes me grumble.
Or you're being too manly.
Not the word I would use to describe Raq who has both the Va and the Voom.
Nor would I, silly.
I'm willing to accept a label of too manly, some days. Not recently, though. I haven't hit anyone in the head in forever.
Meara, it means uppity and poseury.
My dad and step mom retired early a few years back, but they're not very good at it. My dad still consults regularly for the World Bank, and other organizations, on bringing computers into classrooms in second and third world countries.
They're not super rich, though they were doing quite a bit better when they first retired -- they had a lot of San Francisco real estate property. They haven't had to go back to work, but they're feeling the bad economy as much as anybody.
which now means whenever he and I have an argument and I try to talkto my mom about it, she says, "Hey - you've got a guy that cleans and cooks and takes care of his kid. Shut it and be happy." Which makes me grumble.
I've got a lot of MiL support too.
Which, is awesome. I love that he's got lots of MiL support, but sometimes, I want her to be MY mom, not his supporter. Sometimes, I know that what I'm irritated about is stupid and petty, and I'll say that, but I still want to vent a little.
Just realized that this is the third day in a row that I've either left early or snuck out for a few hours in the middle of the day to run personal errands. I love summer!
