overly sensitive?

[psocoptera]

So 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.)

Comments

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

Our back stairs (down to the land of the laundry) are narrow enough that the basket actually has to be carried in front. So this means that the laundry-doer has to have strong arms and back, and there's one person in this household that is more well-supplied with those qualifications. :^) That's also the person in this household who generates more, and larger, laundry. So he does it 90% of the time, and he knows that practically none of my clothes go in the dryer, and nothing's ever gotten ruined. He's also been doing his own laundry since he was 12, which helps--his mom said, "okay, time to do your own laundry, this is how you do it," and that was it.