Babying the Boys
In today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse, Elly sets the example of someone who espouses the feminist jargon of the 1970s and yet, falls into the traps the jargon warns against. It’s either that or one of these, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime” kind of things. So it would seem the next step is,”Teach a boy to do things for himself, and then women will have nothing to do in their spare time.”
Given Elly's history, I am not sure what she is trying to say here, except that she wishes Michael could clean his own room and get milk for himself. However, if I applied the statement to Elly herself, it has very little to do with training a boy to do something. Her situation occurred when she decided to marry John Patterson, quit school to support him financially, and then get pregnant as soon as John secured a good-paying job. The strip has portrayed these decisions as being Elly's own. I cannot recollect a moment where John or Elly said he forced her to do these things. In fact, in the strip reprinted back in September, it was a sore point with Elly's parents that she chose to give up her education. After all, John had to have a financial plan to finish dentist school before he met Elly; so Elly's self-sacrifice has always seemed to me a sacrifice for her own self.
As for the idea that if boys were trained to do things for themselves, then this problem (presumably the problem of women having to make a choice about their position) wouldn't exist, it is a pretty silly idea on the face of it. The difference in the division of labour between men and women has little to do with a man's knowledge of how to do household chores like cleaning his room. However, it does provide an interesting perspective from Elly. If she believes it to be true, then her perspective is that men cannot do household labour as they do not know how to do household labour, because they were not trained to do so as boys. Certainly this is reflected in the "instruction strips" where she tells John Patterson how to load a dishwasher or how to fold a towel. Now, there is a perfect example of a woman only having herself to blame for that ridiculous notion.
Given Elly's history, I am not sure what she is trying to say here, except that she wishes Michael could clean his own room and get milk for himself. However, if I applied the statement to Elly herself, it has very little to do with training a boy to do something. Her situation occurred when she decided to marry John Patterson, quit school to support him financially, and then get pregnant as soon as John secured a good-paying job. The strip has portrayed these decisions as being Elly's own. I cannot recollect a moment where John or Elly said he forced her to do these things. In fact, in the strip reprinted back in September, it was a sore point with Elly's parents that she chose to give up her education. After all, John had to have a financial plan to finish dentist school before he met Elly; so Elly's self-sacrifice has always seemed to me a sacrifice for her own self.
As for the idea that if boys were trained to do things for themselves, then this problem (presumably the problem of women having to make a choice about their position) wouldn't exist, it is a pretty silly idea on the face of it. The difference in the division of labour between men and women has little to do with a man's knowledge of how to do household chores like cleaning his room. However, it does provide an interesting perspective from Elly. If she believes it to be true, then her perspective is that men cannot do household labour as they do not know how to do household labour, because they were not trained to do so as boys. Certainly this is reflected in the "instruction strips" where she tells John Patterson how to load a dishwasher or how to fold a towel. Now, there is a perfect example of a woman only having herself to blame for that ridiculous notion.
posted by howard at 1:40 AM
10 Comments:
howard,
I think that what she's trying to say here is that she hasn't thought too hard about her life. Nobody held a gun to her head and made her marry John, quit school or any of the other things that she blames him for making her do. She'll deny it to the end of time but she did all that of her own free will. We led off with two panels of passing the buck.
This leads me to believe my suspicion that the reload will be an exercise in question-begging via a fall guy as well as revisionist history is correct. We'll be shown strip after new strip that "prove" that John is the cause of all helpless victim Elly's ills.
I'm not so sure this is a silly idea -- the notion that if boys are raised with mothers who do everything for them (regardless of whether the boys know how to do it themselves), then they'll grow up to become men who expect their wives to do everything for them.
It isn't about knowledge (whether a man "knows how" to pick up his socks) but about expectations (whether it's "his job" to pick up his socks). I think today's comic could be read either way: when Elly says, "if men were only taught as boys to do things for themselves, this problem wouldn't exist," it could refer either to the future man's knowledge, or to his expectations.
If it's a question of expectations, then I have definitely seen this happen in real life multiple times: a woman does everything for her son (picks up his clothes, cleans up after him, etc. all the way through adolescence) and the boy grows up to become a man who expects his wife to behave the same way. In my experience, these women do not treat their daughters like this at all. The daughters are expected to clean up after themselves and participate in general housekeeping chores, and even to clean up after their brothers. The end result is a boy who grows up in a home in which the women (mother, sisters) take care of all his household needs, and he never has to lift a finger for himself. It's easy to go from that upbringing to a marriage in which the man expects his wife to care for him in the same way. The girls, for their part, grow up expecting to shoulder the household duties and care for the men (both husband and sons). And so the pattern repeats itself.
Conversely, if sons and daughters are raised with equal expectations, and observe their parents splitting household duties equally, they grow up to expect the same in their own marriages. The boys grow into men who expect to pull their own weight, and the girls grow into women who expect their husbands to be equal household partners.
To me, this has always been one of the darker, more fascinating sides of gender roles. We, as a society, talk a lot about adults, and about how husbands should participate more in household chores, ideally doing half of them. But what about children? How does the child's experience influence their future behavior? The notion that traditional, helpless adult men are created by doting mothers who serve their sons but not their daughters is a compelling one. Not least because I have seen this pattern in three or four different families.
The question for FBoFW is whether Elly treats Elizabeth the same way.
anonymous,
The daughters are expected to clean up after themselves and participate in general housekeeping chores, and even to clean up after their brothers.
Elly certainly expected Liz to drop everything and babysit April for next to nothing so I should think that she was expected to be cheap labor in other areas.
Goodness, anonymous, I was going to say the same thing, only you did it much better.
I agree that to the extent that Lynne's oddly uncommunicative prose allows, it is about expectations, not exactly skills.
But beyond that, it is also about infantilizing boys who become men who cannot conceive of living an independent life after college, and must find a mate (and a certain kind of mate) as soon as possible, to make his life clean and comfortable.
What's interesting here is that Mike's eventual mate is from his exact same culture (his town, his childhood) and seems likely to share his expectations; and that Deanna does, in fact, work the second shift like a bear in overdrive, having a professional life as a full-time pharmacist (the good feminist) and then at home either being the only one competently doing or arranging the childcare, the cooking, the cleaning, etc. She must be on speed, and she must never sleep. This kind of life has sent many a woman into breakdown.
Then she goes on to kin-keep, doing mentoring and very high-level tailoring on a gown for a sister that is not even her sister.
If Deanna could only read how Ellie knew as she raised him that she was enabling Mike's sense of entitlement, but went and did it anyway, Deanna could really thank her. Maybe with a baseball bat.
Oh, I meant to write "the good wife and mother" under Deanna's job description, too. Because what a catch-22 it is. In the foobverse, you have to be a modern woman, because it is what the boomer demography demands. But Ellie just can't let go of the rigid old rules that a woman has to also be a superlative wife and mother, and that means willing enslavement to husband and children.
I actually know a bunch of women like this. Madness awaits.
Oh, one more thing and I promise I'll never double post again. I'd edit my previous ones if I were only allowed to.
Howard's "teach a man to fish" quote reminded me of the incomparable Terry Pratchett version:
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
dreadedcandiru2,
Nobody held a gun to her head and made her marry John, quit school or any of the other things that she blames him for making her do. She'll deny it to the end of time but she did all that of her own free will.
Certainly, several years of the strip were devoted to Elly struggling with the consequences of the decision she made, and blame she laid for having made that decision. Of course, today’s strip was written before those years occurred.
This leads me to believe my suspicion that the reload will be an exercise in question-begging via a fall guy as well as revisionist history is correct. We'll be shown strip after new strip that "prove" that John is the cause of all helpless victim Elly's ills.
I really hope you are not right on this one, but the choice of reprints strips has been almost unrelenting with negative John and Michael choices. My hope had been, with the addition of Who’s Who bios on the website of Michael’s Grade 1 and 2 teachers and Janice Madigan, there might be additional strips involving young Michael at school, which might require fleshing out of those characters.
Elly certainly expected Liz to drop everything and babysit April for next to nothing so I should think that she was expected to be cheap labor in other areas.
While this is certainly true, there were quite a few strips showing all the kids doing some kind of household chores. With Michael, he turned into a complete slob in university, with many jokes oftentimes done on his and Josef Weeder almost never paying their rent to Mrs. Dingle on time, or when they were in the Rez, barely able to buy food and clean themselves. As a married man, I would be hard-pressed to think of a Michael cleaning strip, except when his family was living with Elly.
Elizabeth, on the hand, was shown as clean freak when she was living with other people (Candace and especially Eric) but a complete slob when she was living by herself…except her most recent apartment, where I think Lynn is trying to make a point about her marital preparation.
Anonymous
I think today's comic could be read either way: when Elly says, "if men were only taught as boys to do things for themselves, this problem wouldn't exist," it could refer either to the future man's knowledge, or to his expectations.
If we are talking expectations, you are right that it is a different story. However, since we are talking about Elly and 5-year-old Michael, I am not so sure Lynn meant it to be about expectations. The fact is that Elly could be showing Michael how to clean his room or how to get himself milk, instead of doing it for him, and the joke will also work. However, assuming we are talking expectations, I have known a number of guys who were fastidiously clean as a single man, and still expected their wife to take over the house-cleaning, when they got married.
The daughters are expected to clean up after themselves and participate in general housekeeping chores, and even to clean up after their brothers.
My personal experience is that it is not so much cleaning up after themselves, as an expectation of the division of labour. On two occasions in my single life, I had female roommates, and they both had the same expectations of the division of labour. Certain chores were considered to be the “man”-chores and certain chores were considered to be the “woman”-chores. For example, gathering the trash and taking it out to the dumpster was a “man”-chore for both these young ladies.
I have actually seen this go the other way too. I knew a fellow whose father did all house-cleaning in his family and taught his sons the same way. When the fellow got married, he and his wife had tremendous battles over housework because he did not believe she should be doing it and when she did it, he believed the quality of her work was very low. Eventually she relented and let him do the housework. Her friends were very envious of her, but she said it drove her crazy.
We, as a society, talk a lot about adults, and about how husbands should participate more in household chores, ideally doing half of them.
The expectation of half though is impossible. I was once told about the 60-40 split. You think you are doing 60% and your spouse is doing 40%, while your spouse thinks the same way. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, while I bring home the money, and although I do household chores when I am home, it is simply not physically possible for me to match a woman who has all day at home to do things around the house. More importantly, among the stay-at-home mom set, if the house is a disaster, no one is going to point to the working husband and say, “You keep a messy home.”
Thursday Next,
But beyond that, it is also about infantilizing boys who become men who cannot conceive of living an independent life after college, and must find a mate (and a certain kind of mate) as soon as possible, to make his life clean and comfortable.
Now this has very much been the theme of For Better or For Worse. Back when Michael was in university and would visit with Gordon and Tracey, there were several strips devoted to the idea that Gordon was more advanced than Michael, because he already had a business, a wife and children. You can also take John and Elly, married before John got out of university.
Anthony Caine was apparently of the same mind, since he proposed to Thérèse in his second year in university, and the whole “Second Chances” theme of the Anthony and Elizabeth relationship is based on the idea that he should have been dating Elizabeth and he should have proposed to her instead. His “I have no home!” speech was based entirely upon the idea that Thérèse had decided not to be the primary caregiver for their child. There is a very strong theme of this “man must find a mate ASAP” in this strip.
howard,
I really hope you are not right on this one, but the choice of reprints strips has been almost unrelenting with negative John and Michael choices. My hope had been, with the addition of Who’s Who bios on the website of Michael’s Grade 1 and 2 teachers and Janice Madigan, there might be additional strips involving young Michael at school, which might require fleshing out of those characters.
I, too, hope I am off base. I'd be a happier man if I knew more about Mike's teachers, Janice Madigan, why the Sobinskis left Milborough and how Dee reacted not to mention what home life at the Poirier house
was like. It doesn't mean I expect to see it though.
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