overly sensitive?
Jan. 23rd, 2011 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraSo I was generally grumpy about the length and format of the preschool open house I went to on Thursday, and it's possible that if I hadn't already been in a bad mood about that, I would have brushed this off and it wouldn't still be bugging me, but it is, so I'd like other people's perspectives. One of the speakers said that she was a working mother, and then added this little disclaimer, "but of course every mother is a working mother, and every dad has two jobs."
Um, okay. What about the dads with *one* job, you know, primary caretaker while their partner goes to work? Admittedly, this isn't my own personal situation, and for all I know it wasn't the situation of any of the people there that night, so maybe it's inappropriate for me to take offense. But, I don't know. Stay at home dads are my professional colleagues, they deserve as much credit as anyone else in our industry, solidarity! And, I guess I do feel a little personally annoyed, in that I like to think of my staying home as a decision we made in response to our particular specific situation, that could have gone another way under other circumstances, and marginalizing the other options makes it seem like less of a choice. But maybe that's just a lie I tell myself anyways and we're totally upholding the patriarchy. (But I'd still like to be a good ally to my colleagues.)
Um, okay. What about the dads with *one* job, you know, primary caretaker while their partner goes to work? Admittedly, this isn't my own personal situation, and for all I know it wasn't the situation of any of the people there that night, so maybe it's inappropriate for me to take offense. But, I don't know. Stay at home dads are my professional colleagues, they deserve as much credit as anyone else in our industry, solidarity! And, I guess I do feel a little personally annoyed, in that I like to think of my staying home as a decision we made in response to our particular specific situation, that could have gone another way under other circumstances, and marginalizing the other options makes it seem like less of a choice. But maybe that's just a lie I tell myself anyways and we're totally upholding the patriarchy. (But I'd still like to be a good ally to my colleagues.)
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Don't get me started about knitting, either
Date: 2011-01-25 02:51 pm (UTC)Actually, as it happens, I make sure not to own any clothes that require special laundry treatment (other than the dry clean only stuff), and strongly discourage everybody else from making trouble for the laundry guy. But seriously: laundry? Not that hard.
I also remember a conversation about kid's laundry where I suggested putting infant/toddler socks in a mesh bag, so tiny things don't get sucked into the drain, and my neighbor was impressed that I knew that such a thing as a mesh laundry bag existed. Er, yes. They are bags, made of mesh. Not a tricky concept, even for somebody without basket-carrying hips.
Thanks,
-V.