While I’ve been researching various ways to get myself out of my current job aka mindlessly scrolling on Facebook physician groups in search of ideas to jolt me out of complacency, I’ve had an epiphany:
Most of the people active in these groups are women.
Why is that? Are women just more active on social media than men?
As I paid more and more attention to the common threads of their posts and comments, I realized they were more vocal than the men in the groups about the need for more work life balance.
Being able to spend time with their kids. Less time spent with emotionally exhausting patients. More time to be able to take care of things at home, ailing parents, so on and so forth.
These women couldn’t just stop working though, as they were the family breadwinners, thus they were turning to the collective minds in these Facebook groups for ideas and support.
I marveled at the marked difference between the men and women’s comments to my husband J, wondering out loud,
“Do men just not care about the same things that women do? I mean – they have families too. Don’t they also want to spend more time with their kids? Don’t they also have things to take care of at home? I don’t get it.”
J shrugged and replied,
“It’s not that they don’t care… these guys probably just have stay at home wives who take care of everything.”
I paused to think about his statement – so flippant, but so profound.
Most of the more senior (meaning 10+ years in practice) male attendings I worked with during med school and residency worked 50-70 hours a week and loved it! I don’t ever remember them complaining as much as I’ve been doing these last 2 years. They enjoyed being at the hospital, the camaraderie of discussing cases with their colleagues. They didn’t seem to be too concerned when they were running late – they’d just tell their wives they’d get home when they get home.
My more senior female attendings, however, all worked much less. One of them had set up her work schedule from 7 am to 3 pm without a lunch so she could pick up her kids from school. They were more stringent with their schedules in order to get the kids from daycare before closing time, or to get dinner on the table or to carpool kids from sporting events to music lessons or karate.
Most of their significant others also worked in medicine so these women weren’t the breadwinners, so it was “easier” for them to cut back in order to be able to accommodate life outside of work.
What is one to do when she is both the female and the breadwinner?
Most millennial women by now have read Gemma Hartley’s Women Aren’t Nags – They’re Just Fed Up in which she discusses the emotional labour women undertake as they still complete much of the behind-the-scenes work of keeping a household running. There are estimates that the work of a stay at home significant other, usually the wife, is worth as much as $100,000 if a household were to outsource everything. However, it continues to be the unpaid job the working partner still doesn’t understand or appreciate.
As I read Hartley’s article, some things resonated with me while others felt like a diatribe against men I just couldn’t identify with (which is probably not going to be the most popular position to take, to be honest).
Rather, I more identified with Jeremy McKeen’s Nobody Wants to Do the Dishes! ‘Wife Nag,’ Emotional Labor, and the Healthy Couple in which he points out that people who work inside the home view themselves as managers of their household, making the home a workplace (and one they can’t escape!). People who work outside the home do not see home as a workplace, so when they come home at the end of their work days, they just want to home (s/n: yes, I’m making that a verb. You know what I mean).
As a person who works outside of the home, I want to just be at home when I get home. I don’t want to do anything in addition to what I’ve already done over the course of the day.
My husband J also feels the same way as he, too, also works outside of the home.
Which puts us in a quandary
Who is responsible for maintaining the household, doing the laundry, making dinner, getting groceries, etc?
Because I make more as the breadwinner, do I get to tell my husband he needs to have dinner on the table for me every night? It would be nice, for me at least, but that doesn’t seem fair to him at all.
Just entertaining the idea makes the guilt come crashing in – when I was stuck in the hospital during residency and didn’t have any time to do any of my life things, J stepped in and did so much without me asking him to, all while he was the breadwinner at that time. Is this the time that I pay him back for that?
The case for an equal partner, not a helper
I wonder if men even have these back and forth conversations in their minds – is this just part of my female conditioning that I feel guilty for my husband “helping” maintain our household?
It would be demeaning to him to call him my “helper”, putting me as the lead person in our household.
I can honestly say we’re pretty close to a 50/50 split in terms of household duties.
I know this because I started tallying up how much he does vs how much I do after he accused me of not being appreciative. Ever driven by the need to be right, I tried gathering evidence to prove him wrong… and found out I was wrong.
It’s all in my head
The difference between J and I at this point is I feel the need to do more at home, in effect creating more emotional burden for myself where there doesn’t need to be any.
I blame Pinterest and Instagram for making my white walls feel inadequate compared to the fully colour matched decor pics that I mindlessly scroll through. I blame Ina Garten and the Food Network for the guilt I feel as I pour out marinara sauce from the jar when I could have made the sauce from scratch.
Instead, I really should point the finger of blame at myself for engaging in the comparison game.
This is the real dilemma of the female breadwinner
I can’t be both full time at work and full time at home, yet I still try.
J doesn’t expect this of me, but I continue to lay the guilt squarely upon my shoulders despite the fact that I’m the self-described feminist.
I don’t even want to think about what would happen if we do have children, because I’m pretty sure the guilt would exponentially increase.
It will take some time for me to wade through this, but in the meantime, I’m curious…
Is this really a male vs female thing? Do male breadwinners also struggle with this? Am I totally off base in describing the dilemma of the female breadwinner?
Let me know in the comments below!
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Photo of J and M’s shadows. So artsy.
Just hire someone to do the housework and prepare dinner. You make enough money. Sure that person or service won’t be perfect, but you will be more rested and believe me , happier.
I hear what you’re saying and you’re right – it makes sense to outsource those things. But, to tell you the truth, I’m really struggling with committing to it.
I’m afraid of running into the dreaded “lifestyle creep” which sets back early financial independence and retirement.
In the meantime though, I’m watching the dust collect on my furniture as I type this! I could probably be a little more productive with my time 🙂
As a gen-X female doctor and primary breadwinner, I still do the majority of the housework because I’m trying to protect the time of my free-lancing partner. Would be nice to have the labor divided a little more equally, but to be honest, I’d probably have to deal with some control issues first… And who has time for that when I’m working full time, and running the household?
Haha.. I hear ya! I still struggle with my control issues as well.. sometimes I just need to walk away from the dishwasher that has dishes stacked all the wrong way. It would be really unfair to have our partners participate in the household chores, then criticize the way they do it. That would be a lose-lose situation for everyone involve!
For the most part (of course, there are always exceptions), it’s hard wired into women’s brains to be multi-taskers, to care more about relationships, family, and living a “balanced life”. This is evolutionary biology. It pisses feminists off because it goes against what they’ve been pushing for the last 40 years, but whoomp, there it is.
Pscychologist Susan Pinker wrote about it in “The Sexual Paradox”.
Ah, yes. The classic nurture vs nature debate. There is a lot of controversy about Pinker’s book. Until it is reproducible, I’ll believe it.
I strongly believe it’s a nurture situation. In my clinic, I find young toddler boys to be just as empathetic as the girls, but somewhere in elementary school, that starts to be conditioned out of them. I don’t think it will ever truly be teased out if it’s nurture vs nature in the evidence. Anecdotally, I will say males are quite capable of caring about relationships, family and living a “balanced life” as you put it. To put this in male vs female extremes due to our biology alone is putting everyone at a disservice, in my humble opinion. I just saw a guy in clinic today who was very into taking care of his family, and even chose to step away from a highly successful career to do this, leaving his wife to be the breadwinner.
Guys are allowed to care and women are allowed to go after their careers. Where the perceived guilt comes from was my initial question.
I believe in the word of God. A man that can not provide for his household is worse than an infidel.
The truth is, most women are doing so much already… they birth the babies, nurture them, take care of the home, etc. A real man will not find it difficult to simply provide the finance to keep the home running… Some men still expect their women to go out and support them in bringing in money.
I am a true believer that people should live their lives in the manner they want to live.
However, seeing that this is my blog, I feel the need to respond to this comment.
In one fell swoop, this commentary diminishes the capabilities of both men and women. If the only value of men is that they provide financial support for their families and they’re incapable of also nurturing their family and taking care of household chores, that puts a significant limitation to their capacities as human beings. Conversely, this does not allow the possibility of women actually enjoying work and finding fulfillment through their careers, which I know several women who do. In fact, there are several women who don’t find their worth in “birthing the babies” and nurturing them, and that’s ok too.
It’s a strong stance to label people infidels for not fulfilling your version of “appropriate” societal/gender roles. I find people who live in a black/white world leave no room for exploration of other ways to live which is what this post was about. I hope your life choices afford you the fulfillment you’re looking.
This one really resonates with me. Well, they all do. And I realize I am behind on your blog as I just discovered it. Thank you for writing this. Your thoughts and emotions somehow give me hope–in knowing that I am not alone in feeling and thinking as I do! And that you are sharing it in a more constructive way than I do when I moan and rant to my friends and family….
When/if you have a child: the guilt, the everything, is magnified. It is a frustrating dilemma. Strong, independent woman, mother, breadwinner, ?fun parent or spouse?…starting to lose some ground here. Great friend? um, well. Clean and relaxing house to come home to when you finally can come home?
well, you know. I want to find the answer and prove that it can be done. But more than that I want to live and enjoy both my life and my work, now.
I truly believe that we can be all these things, just not at the same time. Our energies are not infinite – we have to choose what we spend our time on and then outsource the rest. For me, personally, I’ve just given up on the clean and tidy house. The dishes will get done when they’re done, the vacuuming and mopping will still be there for me next week when I have the mental energy to address it. Really, minimalism has been the answer for me – I just have fewer things I need to take care of. My attention goes to making sure I’m taking care of myself and spending time with my husband, friends and family – this is time I will never regret spending.
As for me being more “constructive”, trust me, I’ve ranted plenty 🙂 This is just me editing and re-editing my thoughts to make them seem less moan-y. Thank you so much for your comment and for reading!
M