Gender Roles and Learned Helplessness

I have wanted to write this post for an incredibly long time. I even told my mother-in-law about it two weeks ago, but somehow never made it to the computer. It doesn't help that our laptop bit the dust, or the water, I guess I should say! One late market night we were listening to music as we unpacked, playing our computer outside. Pandora sometimes stops playing, asking that age old questions "Are you still listening?" Well, we must have not noticed the music stopped, so we went inside and forgot about the computer.

The next morning we woke up to the sweet sound of rain. The way this summer is going, hearing rain is always exciting and peaceful - a break from the heat. I jumped in the shower, prepared to have a great day, and all of a sudden Luke yells "Shit Mel, we left the computer outside last night." Let the chaos ensue! Thankfully I have some great tech guys at school who talked me through how to save our jumpdrive, which contains the important files. The computer didn't make it though, so now we are doing our work on an old-fashioned desktop! It works though, and maybe this winter we will get ourselves a new little computer!

Anyway, that aside, lately I find myself thinking about gender roles and learned helplessness. Luke already dreaded this post, he said it was going to make him sound like a moron, but I don't think he knows where I'm headed with it. See, both Luke and I have fallen into our gender habits, and are relishing in this notion of learned helplessness.

It all started with a simple comment, one little line that Luke muttered when he wasn't even thinking. You see, one Thursday, after CSA pick-up at Kavarna, I decided to stop by my friend Stef's house to go jogging. It felt great and I felt great. But I didn't get home until 8:00. Luke was just walking in from the field, and it was obvious from the get-go that he was in one of his hunger-induced temper tantrums. He was as crabby as can be, and he went tearing into the fridge. I immediately became frustrated, having given him plenty of notice that I would not be home to make dinner. He said "It's 8:00, I'm starving and there's nothing to eat." I replied with something along the lines of "Your a big boy, you could have made dinner," and he pulled out this next comment that nearly made me vomit in my mouth: "I have a wife, so I don't need to make dinner." Every muscle inside of me clenched, this historic principle from the 1950's could not be making a revival in my house.

The night went on, things were fine after we ate, but the comment stayed with me. And then Friday happened. I wanted to get a bunch done in my house, and three times Luke walked into the house asking me the dreaded question "Can you do me a favor?" It is usually some sort of chore - a delivery, a bank deposit, feeding the pigs. But I hate that question, because it pulls me away from my intended activity of cleaning, or reading, or making dinner. Well, by the third "favor" on Friday, I was stressed and frustrated. I was delivering a last-minute order to Chives, and I was literally yelling in the car, thinking to myself how Luke never does me favors. I will admit I was pretty negative about Luke at that moment in time.

And then I got home. And I went back to cooking dinner, and I noticed something I hadn't seen in over a year and a half! A dead mouse, in the mouse trap. If you are someone who gets mice in your house, you know it is very unusual to get them in the summer. I immediately called Luke in, asked him to do me a favor, and bring the dead mouse out. And he did, immediately. And then I stopped, and I smiled, and I knew that it was God's little way of saying, "Slow down Melissa, lose the anger, Luke does a lot for you too." It felt good.

But anyway, those two scenarios really have me thinking about gender roles and learned helplessness. Luke and I have fallen into these roles that we aren't breaking out of - I cook all the time and clean the house, and he does the 'man' stuff, taking out the dead mice, bringing in the veggies from the fields, cutting the lawn. And it confuses me, because Luke used to make gourmet meals when we weren't married and he lived on his own. And it used to be that a dead mouse wouldn't bother me at all - heck I would grab a mouse at the Wildlife Sanctuary, put it in a container, and then feed it to a snake. So how did I suddenly find them so "icky?" The fact of the matter is I started depending on Luke to do those man jobs, and he started depending on me to do the women's.

But, now that it's been called to our attention, we are deciding to shake things up a little bit. We caught another dead mouse, and I'm pretty sure this was just God's little test to make sure I still knew I could handle it. And I did. I put on a glove, carried it out, and that was that. No cringing, no begging Luke to do it. And ironically, right now the house smells of fish and grilled veggies - and that's all Luke. He's cooking for me tonight, while I walked to the field to get some extra dill for dinner. I guess all it took was for us to identify the rut we fell into, and then all we needed was a little effort to start digging our way out of it. Now, I'm not saying he is going to cook every night, or that I'll carry the 50 pounds boxes of tomatoes in, but at least it's a start. See ya later, 1950's gender roles!