Father's Day: Desperate Housewife or Daddy Dearest?

I can tell you the last straw: I stuffed my 12-year-old son's portion of chicken pot pie in the garbage disposal when my husband wasn't looking. The next thing the kids and I knew, Dad was raging like a '50's housewife about how he was done cooking dinner every night. Let them eat Cocoa Puffs, he said. In theory, that's a plus from the kids' POV, but we knew the man in the apron with spatula raised well enough to catch his dis: "Let their teeth rot."

We had set Dad off and it was my maternal duty to reel him back and tighten the apron strings around his middle. Granted, the old man had a point. He was tired of the kids rejecting his meals, of cooking multiple dinners, of my 8-year-old daughter's tears at the prospect of beef stew. He was ticked at not knowing if we'd be home for dinner, or at the last minute after soccer practice pull into the McDonald's, or join friends at the Fireside BBQ. The only apparent difference between him and our mothers was that he was dressed like Stanley Kowalski, not Donna Reed. He was the man with the Ivy League education who could still argue Hume. And he had been, until the kids arrived, a free spirit who had never, ever wanted to be confined to schedules and plans.

As Ranald said to me, anyone in that job had the same issues. It didn't have to suck, he explained, if people behaved. (Big if!) When he was growing up and his mother cooked, his family marched into dinner at a set time. The children sat down and ate what was on the table, or they didn't eat. There was none of this negotiation at the dinner table of why can't I have chicken nuggets instead of pork chops? that pervaded our house. His mother never had to put up with that. His little sister Jenny was fussy, but if she didn't like peas no one got up and made her string beans. But what was cooked was what was served - and eaten. Or not - and the kids went hungry that night if they didn't eat their supper.

I had to pick my battles. I couldn't afford to mount a resistance against my husband's food fascism, even to remind him that Jenny slipped her peas into the flower pot when nobody was looking. I was sunk if Ranald bailed on his kitchen responsibilities. Who cooked dinner was one domestic arena I'd finally nailed down. We needed Ran to roast the beef and buy the organic milk. He was good at it. And, since he was doing the cooking - for which I was the envy of all my working women friends -- I couldn't pull out my tired Feminist Oppression Handbook to see how to handle our current domestic divide.

As I tried to finesse my husband back into the kitchen with promises that I would help out more and the kids would eat whatever lima bean pie he dished out, it struck me how the grunt work of marriage came to define us. My mother always began arguments with Dad by saying he didn't take out the trash. My mother-in-law bristled in the kitchen when her retired officer husband gave her orders on her home turf.

In working couples with kids when we parse chores, partners end up in roles we never anticipated. And that includes husbands. Ranald gravitated toward the shopping/cooking, but then he got fed up with the daily grind just the way our mothers had. In contemporary households, we develop strange hybrids. My husband's tantrum with spatula in hand is Exhibit A. When forced to expand his household responsibilities, my otherwise butch husband came to mimic his mother. And that, well, was a very good thing. Maybe he doesn't have to go so far as buy glass canisters and hand-label them "rice," "sushi rice," "brown rice," "wild rice." But, the delicate balance of working marriages only succeeds if both sides are allowed to change organically - and it helps if we encourage our husbands to get in touch with their inner (or biological) mothers.

True, I think it's kind of cute when my husband gets mad about the cooking, or that this man who never seeks approval from anybody will ask me three times if his Chicken Country Captain is good, really good. It's every bit as good as his mother's, if not better.

Comments

[Hayne]

Thelma, Thelma, don't listen to Ilpostino, he's only boasting.
It's a larger set of issues than threatening Jr. with a steaming chicken pot pie or two.
If you absolutely, positively must put some restraints on how much of income goes into food, then some planning ahead of time, about what goes on the table and what gets eaten when, is required. Getting that done and hitting all the right parts of the Food Pyramid in some proper proportion is impossible if the little darlings are left entirely to whatever the tides of appetite wash up into their fore-brains at meal time.
It's also not such a bad idea to, early on, get a handle on moderating the entitlement to satsify the impulse of the moment. Maybe this will come in handy during that adolescence, when the appetites expand in new directions, and the consequences are arguably more dire than turning into a chubby pre-diabetic by middle school.

[Piratize]

As a child, my family mealtimes were as you describe in the grandparents' homes. I fed my unwanted food to the dog under the table, though that wasn't an option with sauerkraut. I was expected to eat what I got.

For reasons relating both to finances and temperament, my wife worked outside the home while I stayed with our four sons, working only intermittently, as logistics allowed. As the youngest child is now fifteen, I near the blessed end of my role as a short-order cook and chauffeur. I profoundly sympathize with your husband and it was an ambiguous pleasure to read such an apt description of my own frustrations. Since childhood I have loved cooking--but have almost been cured of that.

As for gender role-modeling--my sons regard cooking as servants' work.

In an earlier HP posting the point was made that ubiquitous "children's meals" in restaurants contribute to the culinary intolerance of today's children. Cultural context intrudes here, as in so much else. Now, far more troubling societal forces intrude with the introduction of genetically-modified foods. Just feeding your kids responsibly becomes increasingly complex and unlikely. The excellent documentary, The World According to Monsanto, availble here, provides an introduction to the problem.

In frustration, I now turn to large-scale home gardening and I am fortunate to be in a position to do so. I do not envy young parents. The challenges are not getting any easier.

[RachelW]

He's absolutely right; it would be a great job if only you got appreciated for it. That is, as author indicates, the "big if"....

[ilpostino]

Thelma
I cook but I don't clean or clean up. I take out the trash and recycling but I don't sweep/mop the floors. I grocery shop but don't clip out the coupons. I walk and feed the dog but never take him to the vet or groomer. The wife does all that and I do all this. And that is the way it's been for about 30 years.

If your man is getting his boxers in a wad over trashed pot pie, dang, what will he do when the little tyke hits serious puberty?
He needs to chill.

[mandycat]

Well, I'm with Dad all the way on this one. Regardless of which adult does the cooking, children should not be allowed to treat the family kitchen like a fast food drive-through window. As long as he isn't cooking squid casserole or tripe a la mode, the spoiled little darlings can indeed eat what's put before them or go hungry. And if they don't like it, they can leave the table. Silently.

Picking your battles is one thing. Letting your children treat you like incompetent household staff is another entirely.

[SisterJ]

Amen. My father was a musician, so he worked at night. He took on the job of cooking and helping us with our homework, while our mother got us off to school and worked during the day. A la carte was never an option. In fact, we HAD to eat whatever was served... no getting out of it.

This was particularly daunting on "Lima Bean" night, and I complained to my mother about it years later. She looked at me for a moment, then confessed that it was all they could afford. I think of that now every time I cook them. And, my daughter loves his recipe.

[GatorGrrrl]

I agree. While I never made a kid eat something he doesnt like, I dont even make the junk food an option. Eat what's served or have an orange. See you at breakfast.

[lynnschny]

Thelma...your honest y is always so refreshing...

[OnTheCusp]

Holy Sh*t! Your guy cooks? Shops? Has he got a brother?