I huddle over my laptop for long periods of time and I have for years – even during my tenure as a traditional wife and mother. In those days, I did so in the small hours of the night. This is nothing new for a writer, or for those compelled to write, and naturally, if you make your living by the written word, the intensity of the experience can be extreme.
Where does that leave the household duties? Where does that leave relationship time? And what about energy?
Sometimes, all are languishing – and competing.
Personally, I find writing simultaneously energizing and fatiguing. While any job is tiring, I suspect living with writers can be dull dull dull – a challenge for those who love us, when they need to ease us out of our heads.
We lose track of time. We disappear, or seem to. We look up – and it’s mid afternoon or evening and we don’t realize we’ve missed meals, the window of time for critical phone calls, yet another day to attack the laundry, the stack of bills, the files that are screaming to be organized.
By the time I realize I’m hungry and it’s nearing night?
Even warming leftovers seems like too much trouble, though I’ve always made sure my kids were taken care of. As for cleaning, bill paying, errands – we do what we can, when we can.
But I’m quite certain I would benefit from having a wife.
The Benefits of a Traditional Wife
Last weekend, after a particularly exasperating stream of days and nights of domestic irritations (everything always breaks at once, doesn’t it?), online forms for critical parenting-related duties (yes, those drag-on dreaded financial aid tasks), and my own Checklists To Attend To, let’s just say – I was pooped.
The two days I couldn’t consume anything but soup (recall the Chipmunk Cheek?) – well, that added to the aggravation of the week.
A friend arrived at my door on Saturday with two bags of food, and while I continued to work, Said Friend prepared a Fabulous Meal, provided a 5-olive martini, cleaned up after aforementioned feast, and the following day (as I put in another 14 hours, some of which was spent screaming at my computer clogging over updates) – coffee magically appeared at regular intervals, along with kind words, and later, a divine dinner of salmon and salad.
When I looked up it was dark, and a kind face was sitting across from me with a little smile. I glanced around the kitchen – everything was rinsed and loaded in the dishwasher, leftovers slipped into the fridge, and Said Friend bid me a goodnight.
That’s when I thought about my marriage, and the sort of thing I did routinely, when my spouse was there, and particularly when I could tell he was pressed or preoccupied.
Coffee appeared, meals appeared, children were whisked in and out, dishes were stacked (I admit, I did leave dishes in the sink if I could get away with it).
What is a Caring and Attentive Partner Worth?
The bottom line?
I was the caring partner whose role was, among other things, to read the mood of the household – to anticipate, respond, facilitate – to the extent it was possible. I recognize that this behavior is old school, and it didn’t come without serious sleep deprivation on my part (I had my own corporate job I was juggling with parenting), but I was the wife in the traditional sense – there to support my husband.
As my Kindly Friend has shown me, the role of “wife” – or more precisely – partner who recognizes your needs and assists out of love, compassion, and fairness – is an admirable and essential role.
If you ask me, it’s a role that both in a relationship own and should willingly take turns at sharing, tuning in to their partner’s stresses or fatigue, and in so doing, strengthening the bond.
So I just may need to hire myself a wife.
Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee she’ll be happy with the job description. And besides, it isn’t in the budget. Still – if I could – I wonder what he or she might merit, in terms of salary?
- Do you need a wife? Are you the wife?
- Do you and your partner take turns in care and support of the other?
- Do you exchange traditional “gender roles” when circumstances warrant?
- Do you ignore the notion of gender roles, and fall naturally into habits that suit you?
- How much would you pay for a cook, housekeeper, babysitter, driver?
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I have had the same housekeeper for 20 years. She comes once a week whether I need it or not. ($50) for two hours as my house is very neat. I hate changing sheets and cleaning bathrooms the most but would do it if I had to but I don’t 🙂 I have gotten so comfortable with her that I watch TV, go out or get right back in my bed and write after she has changed the sheets. I also have facials and mani/pedi and massage as often as I can. I will sacrifice in other areas to take care of myself. I have a friend with benefits but he is not apt to come running if I need something so I have relied on myself to make myself happy.
I am SO the wife and I want one, too. It’s been interesting being sidelined by this surgery–it’s taking a village to run this household: hubs, stepson, my mom and my dad…
It’s kind of been an enlightening experience to realize how much there is to do.
I hope it’s been enlightening for the rest of the family! (And hope you’re feeling better, TKW!)
You should combine the salaries for housekeeper, chef, personal assistant, paid companion, and bookkeeper. Then add about 50% for the emotional enmeshment and that’s what a wife should earn.
As far as our household goes, I am the wife (clearly) in that I do most of the shopping, cleaning, and cooking. But childcare is split mostly evenly. If I cook, he cleans the kitchen. He manages finances and yard work. So I think we come out close to even. It’s something I’m immensely grateful for.
Thanks Madge and Gale for chiming in on this topic. It can be problematic to get help when we need it – from those we live with, or have the ability to pay.
And Gale – quite a list, when you think of all those we’d have to put on the payroll! 🙂
I would like to imagine a community in which those who don’t have access to resources to assist (family, friends, even minimal paid help) might jump in when they see a neighbor needs a hand. Perhaps in that way we could all play The Good Wife from time to time – to each other.
Not Wives/Husbands. Partners — with inter-twining strengths and weaknesses that somehow mesh. Yesterday Fran said that she wanted to walk from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh next week with EQAT (google if wish…save the environment from strip mining) and asked if this was Okay. Together we examined her clearness on this, and I said ‘Of course.” So I’ll be on my own at home, which is no sweat except that I’ll miss her. I’ve done it before Fran, and found it a relief compared to my previous marriage. Meanwhile, she will be busy and I will be busy. But as soon as my work is done here, I’ll take public transportation to meet up with with her and join in for the last three days of walking to Pittsburgh.
You two are a marvel, Paul.
I need a wife. Badly. The problem with marrying a man off a mountain is he expects a wife, even if he doesn’t know it. It’s hard being all things (and, yes, exhausting — as I’m running on 3 hours of sleep).
You read my mind! Just yesterday the same thoughts were running through me. I had someone come over to give an estimate on a couple of house projects, and I realized how much I “looked” like a housewife, and yet had so little to show for it. I’ve always had a lofty definition of “wife” and never felt I lived up to it.
My husband and I have been working from home for 7 years, and we have mainly slipped into complementary roles (he’s good about cooking dinner and laundry, I’m better with finances and childcare). I’ve always kind of prided ourselves on this and yet we still fall into arguments about who’s doing “more.” So last week he started getting up earlier to help make our son’s lunch – something I used to resent not getting help with – and suddenly I started feeling territorial! I don’t know if there’s any great solution…
Now that both My Guy and I are not working full time, he’s taken on the more traditional “breadwinner” role of the family with his new business and I “the wife” as I scale back on work and stay home to mind the child and be on top of “domestic duties”. It’s a little scary how the traditional roles are playing out because of the choices we made with our career, but while secretly, I really do enjoy this role (maybe because it has eluded me for so long), I do wish that I could feel more proud of my new role. I love it, so why do I find it so uncomfortable admitting out loud that I like to play “wife” and mom to my family above all else?
I hear you, Justine. But I note that the words coming out are “play” at wife.
You’re filling a role, and as Paul has said, you’re filling the role of “partner.” But there’s no question that the word “wife” implies more of the home-based duty, more of the heartfelt nurturing, more of the childcare – if there are children.
As one who is very much aware of the day-in-day-out work involved in raising kids and caring for a family and a home, and “representing” the family in all sorts of ways (your school, your building, your neighborhood, your larger communities, even your family presence to both sides of the family) – it’s a 24/7 set of activities and tasks, which may explain why we live by checklists or, constant distraction that we’ve forgotten something.
It doesn’t mean we don’t love it – or parts of it. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to say as much. If anything, this is valuable work that we ought to regard as such, which is the point of my posts these past few days.
For me, having earned a living one way or another since the age of 16, not being paid for work – even work I love – becomes debilitating and destabilizing. Our society no longer “pays” its wives and mothers (regardless of which gender fulfills the roles) – we aren’t paid with respect much less dollars.
You should be proud of what you and your guy have built, together. And over the years, you may switch in and out of the breadwinning and nurturing roles. You can’t build a family without both.
Strange at it may seem, I have tried my hand at being the wife. Let’s just say I dig nurturing, plus it used to be easier for me at a time when I was working from home.
So household duties, a great share of the kids and actual if minor share in the paperwork. I found out the perceptions of the roles of caretaker/breadwinner and by whom they should be taken are sometimes so ingrained that it is possible to lose consideration as a ‘man’ if you are too nurturing, even by your spouse. Very easy to be taken for granted, and as it happens gradually, the whole thing often goes unnoticed until it is to late.
Of course, you can’t generalize, but it is possible from my experience.
Interesting, Alain. You suggest that it is the role of nurturer that is eventually taken for granted – regardless of who occupies it.
Is that the case if the nurturer is paid? A nanny? An elder caretaker?
I wonder.
BLW, I think you have put your finger here on the genius of the Mormon church.
I think I put my finger on something we all need… but have ceased to value, with or without putting a dollar sign on it.