Jay, guest posting at Feministe, just cross-posted something she wrote on her home blog, Two Women Blogging, back in 2007. It was good then, it’s good now. It begins (emphasis hers)...

“Aren’t you lucky! He helps around the house!”

Yup. He helps. Because picking up his laundry, cooking his meals, paying his bills, and raising his child is by rights my job. Of course, my laundry and bills and meals are my job, too. Along with the playdates and the grocery shopping and scheduling babysitters. But he helps! Wow!

“You must have trained him well”.

That’s it. Exactly. I held a chocolate chip cookie in front of his nose, and every time he washed a dish or put away a T-shirt I gave him the cookie, patted him on the head and said “good husband! Good boy!” until he wagged his, um, tail.

She said it here.

It gets better from there so go ahead and read the whole thing.

And here’s the tricky bit. For all the years I’ve been a stay-at-home dad, and for all the years I’ve heard people say similar things to my partner, I’ve never heard a man say them.

In fact in all these years I think the only man who wasn’t also a stay-at-home dad who’s really said anything about it that’s registered was my father who told me his biggest regret was that he didn’t have more time to spend with us when my siblings and I were little… that the courses for he and my mom had seemed foreordained… that I might never know how lucky I was. But I digress…

I don’t think there’s anything laudable about men never commenting on my “helping around the house.” Surveys suggest men either think they’re doing their part by bringing home the bacon, or else they think they’re contributing something closer to 50% of domestic tasks… even though the actual figures are closer to 25-33%.

But boy have I heard those “you’re so lucky” remarks from other women. And those “you must have trained him well.”

I don’t even think there’s anything particularly ominous about that either. Women, even professional women, even women who themselves have never done a day of housework but instead hire out housecleaners and nannies, perceive other women as primarily responsible for the domestic sphere. Even when their partners don’t hold them responsible for it other women do.

The point being that patriarchy is a co-ed affair. The point being that the establishment of privilege is too. The point being that it’s not enough to fighting stereotypes of women.

Jay concluded her post with

If [her partner] Sam were writing this, he’d rant about the people who think he’s “babysitting” when he takes care of his own child. He’d tell you that men who can’t be left alone with their infants should be ashamed of their incompetence. He’d repeat the story about our first post-adoption visit with the social worker, the one who asked him what parts of parenting he didn’t participate in. He always says that at first he didn’t even understand the question, and then he got angry at the suggestion that he wouldn’t be a full part of parenting our child. And he’s sincere about all of it. He accepts housework as part of his responsibility, just like it’s part of mine, and he loves to cook as much as he enjoys building fences. He’d also point out the flip side of this assumption – that he’s somehow less a man because he “helps”.

But all of that serious talk might make male privilege visible. It might make women actually think that they don’t have to do all the housework, that their male partners could participate and the world wouldn’t come to an end. And we can’t have that. No making the patriarchy uncomfortable; wouldn’t be prudent. Besides, I have to go set the table now. Sam made dinner, and emptied the dishwasher, and fed the dogs while I was writing this. And he went to the grocery store this afternoon so I could stay home and watch the baseball game. I am lucky; he’s kind and generous and he’s a damn good cook. But don’t tell me he’s helping.

It’s not just women who are “lucky” to have partners like Sam who’ll share the burden. First of all, it’s hard to even call it a burden when it’s shared — then it’s not about being a woman or being a man, it’s just about being alive in a world with entropy in it. Second, though, is that, as my father, said Sam’s lucky. I’m lucky. We get to do what we are good at, instead of what fairy tales say we’re supposed to be. Same with our partners.

The trick is that, sure, a lot of men don’t get that. But a lot of women, even women who ought to know better, don’t get it either.

That’s part of the work too.

Guerrilla tenured professor-blogger Historiann has a cool post busting the myth that anyone working the pressures and responsibilities of a tenure track job in academia will also have time in the day to find “balance” in his or, especially, her life.

A few years ago at a conference, I fell into a conversation with a senior scholar who is at the top of her field, with three very well-received books out plus three edited collections.  (I just checked–she’s published two more edited collections since then!)  At the time, she was in her mid-40s with two very young children and the Chair of her department, and she was just about to take over the editorship of a major journal.  I asked her how she did it all, and she said that 1) her husband’s career was part-time, and that he followed her career and did the majority of the kid stuff; 2) even then her kids ate a lot of McDonald’s food; and 3) she probably has a higher tolerance for chaos than most people.  She wasn’t pretending to be Martha Stewart or Groovy Earth Mother, on top of all of her professional accomplishments, and I appreciated that a lot.  Most people will be honest with you about the price they and their family members pay or have paid for their professional successes.  It only looks like glossy perfection from the outside.

She said it here.

Good for her not trying to emulate Martha Stewart of Groovy Earth Mother. Trying to emulate the first is like trying to emulate a superstar athlete: not only is Stewart extraordinarily smart, organized, fast, and capable she also spends many millions of dollars on nearly-as-capable support staff and infrastructure. Trying to emulate Groovy Earth Mother is like trying to emulate any other mythical embodiment of gender ideals.

On the other hand I’m not convinced by her disclaimer that it’s invalid to “only look[in] like glossy perfection from the outside,” nor that it’s a sign of imperfection to have a high tolerance for chaos. Nor is it imperfection, very obviously, to have a partner (male or female) who’s willing… as opposed to, say, culturally obliged… to back you up. Particularly if you’re then willing to turn around (say, once you’ve got tenure or are otherwise established) and give them their turn at establishing themselves. You ask me, glossy or not a willingness to handle chaos and help each other succeed would be… a pretty good definition of perfection.

One small fly in the ointment: I’d like to know a little more about what she meant by “tolerance for chaos.” Speaking as a stay-at-home dad I have to say I’m very aware of the pressure once put on women to manage, supervise, direct, and execute domestic perfection (speaking of Martha Stewart!) When I worked for a progressive Fortune-500 high-tech company it always struck me as a little unnerving how some of the seriously high-powered professional women in management and tech still spent their time fretting over how to allocate their spare time to get the decorating done, the house clean, the meals cooked, and so on. Actually it wasn’t so much that as how it seemed that despite their business success based sometimes on standard 80-hour weeks they still seemed defensive about what they couldn’t accomplish domestically. To the extent this still occurs I’m left wishing there could be some kind of happy medium in gender construction where women who aren’t the primary domestic managers weren’t so subject to scrutiny (self or otherwise.) And similarly I really really wish men who do it weren’t treated to that variation on “the amazing thing about a dancing pig isn’t how well it dances but that it dances at all.” The standards set by someone who isn’t haunted by past generations of domesticity-as-performance are going to be different than for someone who was. But they’re still standards. And just because Martha Stewart wouldn’t do it that way doesn’t make it chaotic. (Which reminds me, by the way, how very much I enjoyed how wonderfully chaos-tolerant Julia Child was in last year’s Julie and Julia.)

Well, you know how it is. It’s late. You have a few moments to yourself… a little intimate time… when you could snap a couple of elegantly-posed photos…

And then you look at the clock. Goodness, time’s flying and priorities get shifted.

I’m sure that’s never happened to you. :-)

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

More like this here.

One of the nice things about being a stay-at-home dad is you get days like (now) yesterday. I’m going to tell you a couple of possibly boring things and then a potentially salacious bit.

Yesterday, inspired a little by recently-stumbled-upon 30DayGourmet.com (“The Leader in Freezer Cooking” and also, unfortunately, some kind of pay site) I plopped down and made a couple of gallons of homemade chicken stock (2 pressure cookers, about ten pounds of free-range chicken backs and other cheeep parts) and then skimmed, clarified, and boiled down to four pints that, once frozen, I’ll divide further, pack into vacuum-sealed cubes, and deep freeze.

I also made three full recipes of scratch eggplant parmesan (my favorite-in-the-world dish, vegetarian or no) with a gallon and a half of scratch, simmered-for-hours tomato sauce with sweet red peppers, onions, celery, carrots, “wild” mushrooms, garlic, Mexican oregano and Italian herbs, with a bit of anchovy paste and balsamic vinegar for complexity. As an experiment I sliced the eggplants lengthwise into little planks instead of crosswise into circles. Then I breaded them in egg, fresh breadcrumbs and fresh-grated parmesan cheese, and then fried them before layering them up with a ton of mozzarella and my sauce and baking them up. Once those are frozen I’ll break them into individual vacuum packs as well.

I also took the car in to the shop, called around looking for someone who can do some “handy-person” work around the house, cleaned the kitchen, managed a couple of play-dates with other children, made breakfast, school lunches, and supper (surprise, the children don’t like eggplant parmesan so I made them quick macaroni and cheese.**) I also cleared some space in the converted garage that used to be my data center and is on its way to becoming a library, music room, detached guest bedroom. I read a ton of blog pages, read about the election, read about some of the divisiveness over whether gender loyalty ought to trump strong policy differences, and wrote a couple of posts in response to all that.

Now for the salacious bit. I think there’s a drinking game where you type random words into Google, add “porn” and then see whether there’s a porn site dedicated to that particular combination. If there’s a match everyone takes a drink. (If you played it the other way, where you drink if there’s no match, then teetotalers could play without anyone ever being the wiser.)

Anyway, as I was skimming chicken broth, and dividing it into containers for freezing, and as I was spreading tomato sauce over layer after layer of crusted eggplant and cheese, I became fascinated with the rhythm and sensuality of the ladles I was using to dip, pour, swirl, and pat everything into place. I became enamored with the polymorphous qualities — the phallically rounded wood and metal handle of my (Chinese) ladle, the breast-like/buttock-like curves of the cup. I reflected on the gorgeous flow of luxuriously thickened broth pouring forth as I divided it into containers (mmm, it would be lovely to be ladled like that with massage oil or warmed-just-right fresh water after a salt scrub. And as I spread sauce in widening circles with the rounded, polished underside of the ladle I fantasized about spinning similar circles over slippery naked flesh.

If I hadn’t been so busy I’d have taken photos.

When I Googled “ladle porn” I found no associated websites. I felt so proud! (Everyone gets a drink, though it it was up to me I’d suggest juice, tea, or coffee rather than booze. Use good judgment in any event.)

[** I use spaghetti noodles for my mac n cheese, boiling it for eight minutes in lightly salted water, then draining and immediately tossing it with a cup or so of freshly grated cheddar cheese, a tablespoon or so of butter, and a tablespoon or two of milk. You just keep tossing and the heat of the noodles takes care of the rest in a minute — it’s faster, much tastier, and even cheaper than Annie’s or other boxed versions. Oh, there’s nothing special about spaghetti noodles by the way — elbows or shells work just as well. —fl]