I’m currently reading The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. If I’d picked this up pre-marriage, it would have made me puke and I probably would have lit the sucker on fire. Schlessinger advocates women being at home, looking nice when their husbands arrive home from work and faithfully tending to their husband’s sexual needs. Like I said, at one point this would have made me vomit. I wouldn’t be surprised if it still would make many of my readers gag.
My perspective has changed now that I actually have a husband to properly care for and feed. Schlessinger’s ideas have a lot of merit. She deals in reality and seems to be in tune with the things I’ve noticed about my own husband. For instance, Dan is happy to work. He takes great pride in taking care of his family. Because he works, I don’t have to work full time. But he doesn’t work hard away from home so that I can sit at home and watch 7th Heaven all day. (Which, yes, I’ve done.) He works hard at his job so that I am freed up to do hard work at home.
Surprisingly, I’ve begun to take great pride in the work I do at home. It pleases me to see the house half way tidy, to take care of the laundry and have a wholesome meal waiting for my husband and daughter when they get home. It’s not that my husband isn’t willing to do these things himself or demands that I do them, I enjoy doing them for him. If I take care of things at home he can spend more time with Ms. Thang and more quality time with me once she’s in bed.
Schlessinger doesn’t venture down the path of headship, but she does tackle the notion of what really makes a woman free and independent. In her eyes, the reality is that women are the axis on which the home turns – true whether the woman stays at home or works full time. She’d also venture that men and women are wired differently, giving each a different set of needs and gifts. Finally, she’d affirm the idea “when momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
The author’s take on reality was something I had a hard time stomaching at first, but when I used it as the lens to reflect on my parent’s marriage, on friends’ marriages and my own marriage, I decided there was a lot of truth to what she was saying. It must be said, Schlessinger would probably also say that “when daddy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Her reality is a two way street and it’s a street that makes a lot of sense. How could either adult be happy if they are both expected to work all day plus come home to all of the full time work of running a household? A stressed out person does not become less stressed by coming home to a stressful situation. Being stressed out = being tired = things don’t happen…like clean clothes, non-frozen dinners, sex. Those are pretty simple things that men AND women need, and when one of the adults – particularly the woman – is able to work in the home – those things can happen on a much more regular basis.
Not to say there aren’t wonder women out there who make it all happen – thriving at a job away from home and running a well-oiled machine of a home, but I know that the only way that can happen is with a ton of grace. If that wonder woman’s world contains resentment about having to work in the home as well as away from it, if that wonder woman believes her need for sleep is more important than her husband’s needs for intimacy – well, than that wonder woman’s well-oiled machine is probably a little bit of a sham.
Please note, neither I nor Schlessinger are saying that women who work away from the home are shams. All I am saying is that once upon a time, I thought the high value of women staying home was a sham. And now I don’t.
The most health paradigm for living that I was exposed to in seminary goes like this: personhood>partnering>parenting>pastoring (career). First things first. If I don’t take care of my life priorities in this order, things just aren’t going to work out. I need to be happy and healthy before I can tackle being a wife, a mother or career woman. If those priorities get out of order, I’m not going to be able to do any of them well. Can I really be happy at work if I know I’m coming home to a stressful literal and/or emotional mess? Can that mess possibly be avoided if my relationship with my husband or kids is fractured? Can the stress of work and less than ideal relationships at home contribute to me being healthy and happy?
I need to take care of me so that I can engage in a healthy, solid, loving relationship with my husband. Then together we can tackle parenting. Only then can/should my energies be spent on my career. This is a paradigm that works. And it’s glaringly obvious when men or women try to do life in any other order.
Overall, I’d recommend this book to any married women who are in a safe and relatively healthy relationship. As best I can tell, that is the assumed target audience. Schlessinger does not tackle the subject of abuse, but I don’t get the sense that she would advocate trying to change an abusive man’s behavior by being nicer to him. She’s not blatantly ignoring abuse, but you kind of have to shelve any ideas like “only in a perfect world” or “this is totally irrelevant to so many women’s experiences”. If you are in a safe and healthy relationship, the book is relevant and realistic to you. Many things she says may make us all brissle, but there are so many things to glean and so many challenges worth taking.
All good, but a shame that it’s directed at ‘wives’ why not write the same book directed at those who stay in the home, and those who go out to work? I know of many men in my sector that do have to do that as only one person’s career can take precedence (i.e: only one country at a time). I always feel frustrated for those guys because it is still deemed a feminine role. I agree with all the points, but as it is very likely that in my future career I will be the ‘going out’ person, and the other person will be the ‘following along’ person, I feel frustrated that the role is genderised. Enjoying reading your thoughtful stuff though Jen – you are a good (nearly) pastor!