|
Why Men Make Better Housewives Part 4
The fourth advantage men have over women as Chief
Household Officers is, for lack of a better word,
Man Time. Man Time is the time required to do the
man’s jobs around the house.
Don’t be fooled. Just because you fly in
the face of traditional family arrangements by
staying home, that does not mean you have traded
all conventional gender roles. In fact, all you
have done is traded ONE of “the
husband’s” responsibilities (having a job
that makes money) for a whole slew of “the
wife’s”. This means that you are still
expected to do all of the things you used to do as
the man of the house: change the oil in the car,
take out the garbage, empty used mousetraps, crawl
into the crawlspace and fix the leaky pipe,
etc.
Many of these “man jobs” remain in our
domain because we enjoy doing them. I enjoy working
on the lawn. My wife has no interest in it. I
garden, I weed, I landscape. She just better
appreciate it when she gets home.
We get some unpleasant jobs by default. Because
we—by the nature of being men—are more
comfortable being dirty and smelly, we are expected
to be better at the smelly and dirty jobs. We are
assigned cleaning the gutters, removing dead mice,
spraying hornets’ nests, and other jobs that
I, personally, would rather not do. However, if I
don’t do them, they won’t get done.
Man Time is important for any house to run
smoothly. Un-mowed lawns, un-clogged drains,
un-controlled rodents will eventually overrun any
home if someone doesn’t deal with them. You,
as a Stay-At-Home-Dad, have all day to accomplish
these goals. You do not need to rush home from your
job, change clothes, and mow the lawn at a sprint
before the sun goes down. You don’t have to
take time from your busy weekend to clean the
gutters or change the oil in your car (which is
probably a minivan). You have, more or less, all
day to do these things.
You have an entire day’s schedule to fit in
the manly chores you have to do. You could change
the oil during lunchtime, while the baby is
strapped into her highchair. You could clean the
gutters while the kids played in the backyard. (Be
sure to teach your oldest how to dial 911.)
With all of the time saved by doing your Man
Time chores during the weekdays, you have evenings
and weekend free to do whatever you want…which
will probably be catching up on the laundry and
dishes and cleaning that you didn’t get around
to because you were too busy doing man things.
©2008, Mark
Phillips
* * *
Women, it's true, make human beings, but
only men can make men. - Margaret Mead
Mark
Phillips is a Stay-At-Home-Dad and freelance
writer. Along with raising his four children, he is
developing a franchise called “The Vacuum IS a
Power Tool.” It is designed to help SAHDs
maintain that which makes us men, instead of hairy
Mom-substitutes. He earned a B.S. in
Communication/Theatre Arts and teaching
certificates in English, public speaking, and
psychology from Eastern Michigan University. After
six years as a high school English teacher and
Director of Dramatic Arts at Powers Catholic High
School in Flint, Michigan, he changed careers and
became a Stay-At-Home-Dad. www.TheVacuumIsAPowerTool.com
or E-Mail
Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|
