I think this is so fascinating and completely relate (except to the part where you actually try to clean, I never do - although I do the laundry and sometimes make the beds). It’s really interesting because my maternal grandmother was famous for being a terrible cook, but was also uneducated and had no marketable skills. She was primarily just attractive, and so when my grandfather left her when the last kid left the house, she sort of lost her purpose and gradually faded away.
Then my mother stopped working when she was pregnant with me, but when she got divorced, she went back to law school at night and the clear goal she passed to me and my sister was to either earn enough to pay someone to cook and clean or marry someone who could pay. Neither of us ever learned to cook or clean and we basically are incompetent in that regard - but that was okay because we were over educated so as to never be housewives.
I’ve worked my whole life and now I have a husband who cooks and cleans but this still seems very fraught for me. Especially since I became a wife and mother in my 40s and was previously okay living in squalor and subsisting on take out on my own. In some ways I’m relieved I have a son and not a daughter, because I’m not even sure what messages about this I even want to pass on at all...but I’m annoyed at the #$&*&$# patriarchy as well.
Gillian, your family's stories are fascinating to me as well! The idea of paying someone to cook and clean was never on the table in my upbringing, but I have wound up at a place where my husband does most of that (I'm realizing I have erased his labor from this piece, which I regret), so, hooray. Part of what was gnawing at me when I sat down to write this piece was, why can't I just be happy with that and accept that this isn't my lane? I'm sure part of it is the content that I expose myself to, which almost never (if at all) features women celebrating their professional accomplishments, but more often features women in their homes, doing domestic shit or just existing in their decorated spaces. And I look at it all like ?@?!??!?!??
I totally get it! I like to think of it as a diversity of talents. We need people who are good at different stuff. Not everyone can do what we do. But I do wish I liked to cook or was good at it.
I just wish I didn't suck at the stuff that society tells me I need to be good at in order to be valued as a woman ... but I'm going to choose to be mad at society rather than, you know, learn how to clean lmao
I think this is so fascinating and completely relate (except to the part where you actually try to clean, I never do - although I do the laundry and sometimes make the beds). It’s really interesting because my maternal grandmother was famous for being a terrible cook, but was also uneducated and had no marketable skills. She was primarily just attractive, and so when my grandfather left her when the last kid left the house, she sort of lost her purpose and gradually faded away.
Then my mother stopped working when she was pregnant with me, but when she got divorced, she went back to law school at night and the clear goal she passed to me and my sister was to either earn enough to pay someone to cook and clean or marry someone who could pay. Neither of us ever learned to cook or clean and we basically are incompetent in that regard - but that was okay because we were over educated so as to never be housewives.
I’ve worked my whole life and now I have a husband who cooks and cleans but this still seems very fraught for me. Especially since I became a wife and mother in my 40s and was previously okay living in squalor and subsisting on take out on my own. In some ways I’m relieved I have a son and not a daughter, because I’m not even sure what messages about this I even want to pass on at all...but I’m annoyed at the #$&*&$# patriarchy as well.
Gillian, your family's stories are fascinating to me as well! The idea of paying someone to cook and clean was never on the table in my upbringing, but I have wound up at a place where my husband does most of that (I'm realizing I have erased his labor from this piece, which I regret), so, hooray. Part of what was gnawing at me when I sat down to write this piece was, why can't I just be happy with that and accept that this isn't my lane? I'm sure part of it is the content that I expose myself to, which almost never (if at all) features women celebrating their professional accomplishments, but more often features women in their homes, doing domestic shit or just existing in their decorated spaces. And I look at it all like ?@?!??!?!??
I totally get it! I like to think of it as a diversity of talents. We need people who are good at different stuff. Not everyone can do what we do. But I do wish I liked to cook or was good at it.
I just wish I didn't suck at the stuff that society tells me I need to be good at in order to be valued as a woman ... but I'm going to choose to be mad at society rather than, you know, learn how to clean lmao