Saturday, October 07, 2006

Assuming responsibility for domestic tasks

A young woman with a grad degree from Princeton University complains:
As young Army officers, my husband and I decided to put off starting a family until one of us was willing to stay home full time. When that time came, there was little discussion as to whose career was to be cut short, and I didn?t have much objection. However, after just six months of staying home with our son, I started to feel both restlessness about my own intellectual needs and personal ambition, and resentment about the fact that being a stay-at-home mom meant spending the day doing a literal laundry list of tasks that I hated.

I went back to work, but my husband?s career still takes precedence. ... Our society, including the educated, ambitious, female part of it, assumes that the responsibility for taking care of domestic tasks, whether actually doing it, or being the one to arrange for someone else to, falls on mothers.
So she is not complaining that she has to do the laundry. These are two-career yuppies who hire maids and nannies. No, her complaint is that her husband makes more money than she does, and she is expected to hire the maid and the nanny.

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