I never planned on filling this role. When I met my husband I was pre-med and he was on track to becoming a starving actor bound for Chicago. Plans changed and he ended up being the one headed to med school, while I considered first speech pathology, then audiology. I actually earned a graduate degree in the latter. At the beginning of things I pictured myself as a full-time professional, building a strong career, picking up the kids from day care. Somewhere between then and having a baby two weeks after finishing my master's things changed, and I realized that I didn't want to split myself in one more direction, and at the beginning of 2003 my husband went back to his residency and I...stayed home.
When your family has one wage-earning spouse and one who is responsible for the majority of the child care while the other is out winning the bread, it forces you into more traditional gender roles than you would have otherwise had, no matter how liberal you started out. Even within the context of our relatively egalitarian marriage, I often feel like a cliche, especially when talking with friends about inane things like crumbs on the dining room floor. Would I still talk about those things if I had a career outside of my home and family? How much housework would my husband and I each do if neither of us were a stay-at-home parent? If I were earning a wage, would I feel less responsible for keeping all the domestic stuff together? How would our relationships with each other and with the kids be different? What would the impact on all of us be if I didn't spend so much of my time picking up marbles dumped by a two-year-old?
I feel nervous about what I'm teaching my sons about womanhood and family structure. What will they want for their own domestic futures, and why? What am I handing down?
Why can't it be as easy as this: one brother handing down his jeans to another. No worries. Just "here's what I have to offer, can you use it?" "Oh, yes, thanks!" Maybe there's a lesson there.
