Men of My Father's Generation

When I think about the division of labor between husbands and wives of my parent's generation, I feel incensed on behalf of the women of that era. It was the norm for those men to simply excuse themselves from the drudgeries of housekeeping: the cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry. As for the care and feeding of babies and children -- well, they did none of that either! No feeding, diaper changing, or getting up in the night to soothe a crying infant. Both my mother and mother-in-law have said that fathers never changed diapers. It's just the way it was.

Why did women like my mother and mother-in-law let fathers get away with it? Sure, these men went to work five days a week to earn a paycheck, but I've worked a full time job for my entire adult life until I had my son and I know which job is harder! Raising a child, or children, is much harder than leaving the house each day to work an 8-hour job. Caring for babies and preschoolers is so, so much more demanding of your entire being; it's a 24/7 job. Back in the day when my parents' generation were raising children, I suppose women got a break once their kids went to school, but they deserved it! Ironically, however, most of my mother's generation went to work outside the house once their kids were in school, while STILL being responsible for all the housekeeping. What a crappy division of labor.

I find these angry thoughts towards men of my father's generation tend to lather up in my mind while doing the dishes after dinner and then shift over to my own father. I start thinking about my family when I was a child, about my father coming home from work moody and angry, arriving like some dark thunder cloud. On those nights it was best not to approach him but instead, let him settle in behind the bar in the den and sip a cocktail until dinner. Dinner would be a tense situation, requiring us kids to refrain from speaking too much or, God forbid, laugh or "be silly," while my mother pandered to my father, trying to have pleasant conversation only to be routinely shut down, especially if dinner was something other than beef. If she had cooked steak, it probably wasn't rare enough. He completed controlled all of us with his anger and when he wasn't happy, everybody else in my house better damn well tiptoe around him because he had a hard day. Even though I was raised in the 70's and 80's, my father's parenting style was a throwback to the 50's: strict, traditional. Childrearing for him was about control. A threat of physical punishment loomed in the air and although there was a joking irony when he said "children should be seen and not heard," I always thought it was actually a belief from which he operated.

Ultimately it makes me sad that my father distanced himself from us kids, choosing to be a feared authority figure rather than get his hands dirty. I wish my mother had been stronger and had stood up to my father, demanding that he pitch in more with us kids. It would have been good for him, softening him up and requiring that he be less self-absorbed. Plus my sister, brother and I would've probably had a closer relationship with him, something we've all expressed regret about since his death almost 10 years ago.