Oblivious Upbringings — Part I
I am not the cleanest person on the planet, but I like order. Kinda makes sense. My mom was a neatnik and my dad was oblivious. Mom carefully folded and stacked her socks and her underwear. I am content to pile my panties in the drawer willy nilly. Likewise socks. My dad probably wouldn’t even have had a sock or underwear drawer if it hadn’t been for Mom. I am the amalgam of my parents’ divergent methods.
At seventeen, with my parents’ reluctant blessing, I moved out on my own. I shared an apartment with a roommate. We didn’t last long. A couple months, maybe. It was the dish problem. She never did the dishes, and I got tired of doing them. I ultimately let them fester in the sink in protest. They got moldy. Smelly. And rather than come up with a plan to share the responsibility of dishwashing, we moved out. The plates belonged to my roommate—and she packed them with the mold intact. That made me feel secure in my decision to find a new living arrangement.
I don’t think my roommate was trying to take advantage of me. She wasn’t even being lazy, really. She just had no notion that dishwashing was a thing. She came from a fancier home than I did. A place where clean plates were simply there for the taking. The reality of dishwashing had never occurred to her because somebody else always took care of it.
My first husband’s childhood home was one in which the mom just took care of all household chores. He and his dad never had to think about where the whiskers in the sink ultimately went, or even how to make a sandwich. Women were in charge of all things domestic. To the point where a man just had to state aloud, “I think I’ll have a sandwich,” and a feminine hand would deliver one. Visiting women (me) were expected to jump into action when the holiday turkey came out of the oven, while men relaxed on the sofa.
So it wasn’t really husband #1’s fault that he didn’t see mess. Where he grew up, mess was like a self-healing wound—leave it alone and it will cure itself. But in our marriage, I eventually failed to be the cure. Once again, I went on strike, albeit this time it was unconscious. I quit cleaning. I quit cooking. I took care of the baby and let everything else go.
Including the marriage.
My second husband—the love of my life—was different. He saw mess. He saw women. And he made no presumptions about how the two were supposed to interact. But he had the willingness to look a societal privilege in the eye and act accordingly.
And therein lies the key. To marital harmony. To societal harmony. We can’t help the notions we grow up with—the social structure that is presented as the norm. Kids easily learn to dislike others based on gender, skin color, religion, politics, level of education, or any other illogical hand-me-down. They absorb social hierarchies that have no sound basis. And once digested, these stereotypes are hard to unlearn. But in the interest of getting along—and, well, just basic fairness—it seems important to try.
We all grow up with some unsound biases. Kudos to those who make the effort to recognize that. Stay tuned…. .