April 20, 2009

It Must Be Hard To Be The Dad

Parenting: Who says it has to be difficult?

I love this quote, from Parenting.com's "12 ways to make your love life sizzle again" (written by a woman): 
"For about the same amount of money a fancy dinner would cost," says [psychologist Laurie] Mintz, "you can get a bargain hotel room, a cheap bottle of wine, and some bubble bath." Bonus: You won't have to make the bed afterward.
Mintz isn't talking about an affair or a one night stand. She's talking about your wife, the mother of your children, who just isn't as into sex as she was before passing a few footballs from her vagina. The article suggests mundane ways to make sex more fun now that you have three kids, two dogs and a mortgage, including standing naked in front of a mirror and willing yourself to feel good about what you see, scheduling sex into your Blackberry, and just do it anyway and maybe you'll like it by the time it's over. Nowhere in the article does she mention making your husband do the chores or watch the kids, which I hear is the #1 turn on for mothers.

That article led me to "What your husband wants you to know (but isn't telling you)," written by a male sex therapist. This guy starts his list off with "we like to cuddle" to make it sound like men have this sensitive side they're too manly to show their wives. How sweet. But the very next item is "we want you to take charge in bed." The last article was about just getting your wife into the mood for sex, and now you want her to be a domineering temptress after a day of runny noses, making dinner, and explaining to her boss why she was speaking with the school principal again? One step at a time, boys.
Sex may feel like a chore to you, but always having to be the one to initiate it starts to feel like a responsibility to us. And the last thing we need is more responsibility.
Right, 
because "we can't look into our children's little eyes without seeing visions of college tuitions." Then he moves into "men want more guy time." Then "date night sucks." And ends with "you're hot and I dig that you've had my spawn." So husbands want to go out with the guys, return home to have hot sex with their wives, avoid all chores and nights of scheduled romance and hope it'll all work itself out in the end? 

I assume both of these articles were written for the women who married the most genetically pleasing man available in order to produce offspring, who now spend their married lives pleasing said offspring and collecting the paycheck said genetically pleasing man brings home for diapers, shoes and cereal bars. Do these men have no real interest in their offspring? No real interest in maintaining the household? Is it "I bring home the bucks, you make everything look pretty. And then we have sex"? In yet another article about surprise pregnancies, the husband was "too overwhelmed and scared to play the role of dad-to-be" so he "left the coaching up to his mom and walked the halls" of the hospital. While his wife was in agony, fearfully pushing out a baby she didn't know she had, he's too scared to hold her hand. That's pathetic.

2 comments:

  1. That is so pathetic! That makes me mad and disgusts me.... I also have my own similar issues pertaining to all of this. I would say half of the men I have dated would have fit exactly into what you just described; and then there are the women who accept it.

    I had a female relative who recently told me that it is the woman's job to do all the laundry and that she got in a tiff with her friend, who works, is a mother, and makes both her husband and daughter do their own laundry, over this. In a hypothetical situation, I would understand the wife doing the laundry if she was more particular about it (though she could teach her husband what she likes), but I do not understand why having two x chromosomes instead of an x and y would make it so that it is her sole job. This applies to more then laundry of course.

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