Tunesday : It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World

It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World

(Newsome, B / Brown, J) Performed by James Brown

This is a man's world
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing, nothing
Without a woman or a girl

You see, man made the cars
To take us over the road
Man made the train
To carry the heavy load
Man made the electrolight
To take us out of the dark
Man made the boat for the water
Like Noah made The Ark

This is a man's, man's, man's world
But it would be nothing, nothing
Without a woman or a girl

Man thinks about a little bit of baby girls and of baby boys
Man make them happy
'Cause man make them toys
And after man make everything
Everything he can
You know that man makes money
To buy from other man

This is a man's world
But it would be nothing, nothing
Not one little thing
Without a woman or a girl

He's lost in the wilderness
He's lost in bitterness

I am from a messed up generation. Growing up in the Seventies, I was told repeatedly that I could be anything I wanted when I became an adult; anything except a housewife and stay-at-home mom. I saw my own mother trying to carve out a quasi-feminist space for herself within my controlling father's unpredictably violent home. My mother-in-law worked full-time - as many hours per day as her husband - but it was still her responsibility to get dinner on the table every night; despite being an indifferent cook that the whole family complained about. As I have outlined through these posts over the years, I don't know if I lacked ambition or support or imagination, but I never figured out what I wanted to be. And after getting a diploma in Early Childhood Development - thinking that I could work in childcare and still have my future kids around me - I was turned off by what I saw in institutionalised care; knew that I wouldn't want my own kids to be raised by these others. I somehow became a housewife and stay-at-home mother, at a time when there was little respect for this choice. It's still a man's, man's, man's world, baby.

Right from the time that we settled down in Cambridge, me at home with a one year old and a husband commuting nearly an hour each way for work, Dave committed himself 100% to getting ahead in his career. The traditional roles that this entrenched us in - me doing the vast majority of the childcare and housework, Dave feeling free to work as late as necessary because he had no responsibilities in the home - worked for us. Dave knew that it was an advantage to have me at home - he worked with both men and women who had to miss meetings or scramble to find alternate childcare when one of their kids was sick - and in the beginning, he thanked me for the role that I played in supporting and advancing his career. This was a tiring time for me: we eventually had another baby, and in addition to me being the only parent to wake up in the middle of the night with the kids, Dave would often not be home from work until nearly their bed time; everything from meals to playtime to baths to diapers was on me, twenty-four hours a day, and it tired me to tears. I remember once Dave came home from work, and when he picked up one of the girls, he said, "Oooh, she's stinky", and tried to hand her back to me. I said, "Do you think you could change her? I feel like all I did all day long was change diapers." To which Dave replied, "Um, isn't that all you have to do all day long?" Which, believe me, is the wrong thing to say to your exhausted wife who is beginning to feel like she gave up everything in a crapass trade-off. I still believed that I was doing the best thing for my girls by being home with them, but as Dave came home with hilarious stories of who said what as they went out for lunch every day, as he was sent on work trips and came back telling me who got drunk and were spotted in the hot tub together, as he drove off in our only car and I pulled the girls to the park in a wagon every day, these lives were obviously not equivalent. 

And in the beginning, I tried to do my best at my tasks: the floor my babies crawled on was mopped just about every day; I cooked hot meals that would be waiting for Dave when he got home; I'd pull out the ironing board once a week to attack Dave's shirts. But, apparently, it wasn't really good enough: Dave has always complained about the clutter that doesn't bother me so long as surfaces are sanitised; he once sighed, "Soup again?" when he saw the dinner that I had spent all day making in an effort to stretch a chicken for a third meal; he even brought me home some spray starch once because his shirts weren't as crisp as some of his coworkers'. And reflecting on my mother's demeaning life as a housefrau, I started protesting by omission: If Dave wants to stuff cupboards and closets full of clutter because he doesn't want to look at it, Dave can also be the guy to eventually pull them apart to organise them and throw out the garbage that he shouldn't have put there to begin with; for a long time (like, years) I only made soup for me and the girls if Dave was out at a work dinner; I eventually pointed out to him that the local dry-cleaner cleans and presses shirts for $1.50 each - if he wanted his clothes expertly crisp, he should take them there (and as soon as I mentally quit doing his dress clothes, it made me prickly every time Dave has asked me to drop off his dry-cleaning; I am not my mother, not Dave's mother, and that is not my responsibility.)

I recognise that I'm from a messed up generation: Raised to believe that taking sole responsibility for housework is sexist and unfair, I do understand that if Dave is going to work ten or twelve hours a day at his job, I should be putting an equivalent effort into my own tasks; we have always been a partnership, supporting each other. But Dave was also raised in our generation: He should have had no expectation of a Leave it to Beaver homelife; we would-be June Cleavers of the world saw the crapass deal she made when she tied on that apron for the first time and we balk at their constriction. In a very literal way, I was banking all the twenty-four hour days I put in when our babies were little - all of the endless days after lonely and tiring days when I had no adult conversations at all until Dave came home too tired to talk - and reckoned that I could sit on my ass doing nothing for the rest of my life and we'd never be even. Not that I ever spent a day sitting on my ass doing nothing, but Dave has never recognised any of my small protests as such; I'm sure he thinks I could be doing more, but my soul objects.

This is a very long prologue to this story:

I was at work the other day (because nothing could be more soul-satisfying than going to work and having an out-of-the-house life of my own), and in a conversation with my manager, Rhonda, she was talking about the landlord of the bookstore and said, "Dave's a dick." And then with a big laugh, "Not your Dave, I mean the landlord." I laughed and said jokingly, "No, he's not, but the people who work for my Dave might think differently." Rhonda got serious and said, "Oh, I'm sure that's not true. Dave wouldn't be where he is, making what he does, if he was a dick to his employees." The conversation went on from there, but that was the interesting part that I repeated to Dave later. He also thought it was strange that Rhonda referred to how much he makes, because she couldn't possibly have a clue (and whatever she's thinking, he probably makes even more than that.) And then, after thinking for a beat, Dave said, "She probably thinks she has an idea of how much I make because you did get to take Kennedy on a tour of Italy last year, not to mention flying to Paris for your birthday." And I replied, "Well I made enough extra money, myself, that I can mentally think that I actually paid for those trips on my own." To which Dave replied...wait for it..."Well, that's not really 'extra' money if you're not feeding yourself or paying for the roof over your head."

What a crapass thing to say to your wife of nearly twenty-seven years. Now, he may have been stung by what I said - Dave probably feels good about making enough to provide these travel opportunities, and it may have felt like I was taking that away from him - and when I repeated the story later to Kennedy in front of him, he insisted it was meant as a lame joke; couldn't understand why I was offended by it. We spent the evening playing cards, and Dave kept bringing me beer after beer, and I was tipsy and mad when we went to bed; unable to sleep, crying into my pillow, taking his "joke" as a challenge - just what would it take for me to start feeding myself and paying for the roof over my head? I was awake forever, fantasising about leaving and making a home of my own, and when I got up in the morning, I still felt mad - but couldn't decide whether it was the beer or the "joke". A few days later, I'm still mad: if Dave doesn't think that me giving up all possibility of a fulfilling career in order to raise our kids and upkeep our home is a fair tradeoff for him earning the money - the support that in the beginning he realised gave him an advantage over coworkers with a partner who worked outside the home - then I would like nothing more than to be supporting myself. It's still a man's, man's, man's world, baby; I hope my daughters find a different path through it.

And I should add: I have no doubt that Dave has fantasies of his own. We have known plenty of men who have left their wives and kids for a "last shot at happiness" with some sweet young thang. Dave does make plenty of money, and on every level, he would be an attractive partner to a young woman. But that's the other crapass aspect of the deal I made: I was there for all of the lean and hungry years - I didn't try to stretch a chicken into a third dinner for no reason - and I traded away my own youth and beauty and years of greatest personal currency with the expectation that I would be taken care of in my decline. My father and my father-in-law have both surprised our families with the degree to which each of them have honoured their part in that deal; how they have taken care of our difficult mothers. If Dave's "lame joke" has a seed of resentment over feeding me and paying for the roof over my head without recognising what he got in return for that investment over the years, then I don't know what to think. But it makes me mad; listening to James Brown kinda mad.