You will eat again: The most important conflict in American life explained.
Baumann, Paul
OF SEVERAL MINDS PAUL BAUNANN YOU WILL EAT AGAIN On the front line of the gender wars Not long ago the business of counting chads and elec toral votes in Honda raised the ominous...
...Whaf s the use," said another woman with world-weary resignation...
...That accusation is, of course, little more than a teasing and affectionate complaint...
...So does mine...
...They're so fragile, really...
...It will take time and a good deal of behavioral modification to change things...
...Moms" was—are you ready?—a mere 6 percent...
...It is not a question my mother and father ever asked each other...
...For example, we've been eating sandwiches for dinner for almost a month now...
...She has, upon occasion, expressed the opinion that in the twenty years that we've been married, I have "conscientiously avoided learning on what day the garbage needs to go out...
...Political and economic crises come and go...
...There will be food.'" "George will not eat a sandwich for dinner," said another woman...
...Housework is forever...
...The garbage, I have learned, goes out Friday morning...
...Although in retrospect my mother's cooking clearly seems to have been an act of revenge against the patriarchy...
...Shaking her head with knowing amusement, the author of the study said that the difference in the amount of housework done by most men and the work done by those men who describe themselves as "feminists" or "Mr...
...That dilemma, as I'm sure you know, can be succinctly stated: Who is going to take out the garbage...
...China, Saddam Hussein, North Korea, Israel, and a host of more obscure "flash points" could conceivably turn our everyday world upside down...
...I tell him, 'Don't worry...
...I am as spottily informed and fiercely opinionated as the next kibitzer about these potential calamities...
...My husband leaves all his organizational skills at the door when he comes home," said one mother of three...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS PAUL BAUNANN YOU WILL EAT AGAIN On the front line of the gender wars Not long ago the business of counting chads and electoral votes in Honda raised the ominous specter of a constitutional crisis...
...As it happens, my wife and five or six other women in our neighborhood linger at the bus stop to talk after the kids have been sent off to school...
...For some reason my wife sees this as a hostile question, especially if it is asked before noon...
...And now there is much anxious talk about an economic downturn or even recession...
...At least I think we both did...
...She did not come home for forty minutes...
...well, mostly about dinner...
...He believes that since I'm home and he's working, everything is my job...
...She claims that I am "obsessed" with dinner...
...Perhaps there are minor points of dispute...
...Now I break it down into three smaller lists so he won't be intimidated...
...Global warming, we are told, is an impending disaster that may affect every aspect of our lives...
...What should be the proper domestic division of labor between men and women is the anvil upon which God has chosen to hammer into perfection the soul of my generation, and I broach the subject with fear and trembling...
...Raised for the most part by stay-athome moms, my generation of men was imprinted early with certain expectations about...
...He just comes home to the Merton Street Hotel...
...Besides, if s not true...
...You will eat again...
...I think...
...As it happens, I recently was privy to a discussion between two women academics, one of whom had completed a study on how much housework men actually do...
...George W. Bush, some fear, is an unfolding disaster that may do the same...
...My wife and I, of course, have a perfect understanding on these matters...
...If you send them to the grocery store, they don't come home with anything you could actually make a meal with...
...According to my wife, all the women laughed, rolled their eyes, and then let loose...
...8...
...He expects to be served an actual dinner and he wouldn't know what to do if I put a sandwich in front of him...
...My wife then brought up the neuralgic issue of "dinner...
...Happily, much of that work has already begun...
...I encouraged her to solicit the opinions of her friends about the housework study...
...I must admit that from time to time I do ask, in the most ingratiating way imaginable, what we are going to have for dinner...
...exclaimed the mother of three after hearing about my dinner questions...
...All of them pale, however, compared to the one conflict that has shaped American life more profoundly than any other for at least the last thirty years...
...I always knew they only talked a good game," responded the other woman...
...I used to give him a list of things to do on Saturday morning and he had an anxiety attack...
...Steve thinks that our house is a hotel," said another...
...I have to do all this?' he says...
...I'm merely a bit fuzzy about which day the garbage goes out...
...When I told my wife about this latest news from the gender wars, we both had a good laugh about it...
...The "dinner obsession" actually seems to be rather widespread in our neighborhood...
Vol. 128 • May 2001 • No. 9
