I have been thinking a lot about gender roles lately due to my recent plunge into complete domesticity, a place I doubted I would ever fall.
When I was a kid, I refused to let my Mom teach me how to cook. If she was not going to teach my brother how, why should I learn just because I am female? Once my mom went out of town and my Dad expected me to cook him some peaches and cream oatmeal. This was a horrible disaster and ended with my dad & I not speaking to one another for the whole weekend.
Now that I am married, I cook all the damn time and somehow fell into this role of homemaker. Sasha & I work the same amount of hours and make about the same amount of money. Monetarily we split everything 50/50. Somehow it ended up that he mows the lawn and cleans the gutters and I do the cooking and housework. This is fine, because I do not want to mow the lawn or clean the gutters, but these are things that do not need to be done every day, unlike cooking dinner & cleaning up the dishes.
I have tried to get Sasha to cook at least once a week, but that was short lived. Plus, he tends to use every single pot and pan in the entire kitchen to make one meal and he has a total aversion to washing dishes, so it is actually easier for me to do the cooking. I am good at planning the meals and making sure the kitchen is fully stocked for the recipes of the week. I just don�t know how I got here. It seems naturally inborn, nature versus nurture.
I am not saying this is the way it is for all families. My friend�s husband insists on doing all the cooking and grocery shopping and I know of others who share these tasks equally. My female co-worker recently gave birth to twins at the same time getting a huge promotion to basically run this company. Her boyfriend stays home with the babies while she brings home the big paycheck.
I know I am lucky I have a house to care for in the first place. It will all even out in the end and that this is just some kind of cosmic retribution for taking my own mother for granted. Just wait until you have kids, I can hear her saying.