Mel McEwan gets on her high horse over a letter sent to the Guardian's "A Letter You Always Wanted to Write" section in Lifestyle, written by a pissed off husband who is drowning in his career and has been asking his wife to consider picking up the slack with a job now that "both kids have been at school full-time for years, and our firstborn is heading to college soon."
The letter is titled "A letter to … my wife, who won’t get a job while I work myself to death". McEwan has this to say about it:
This dude is real mad that his wife won't get a job. By which he means a paid job. Because if you already guessed that they have kids for whom she's the primary caregiver, give yourself a gold star!
But obviously this lady is a reeeeeeeal bitch, because she refuses to take on a second job while this guy works himself to death (!!!) in a mine. Just kidding. At a lawfirm. Because, in his own words, "I want you to work so I can get a different position and we can still maintain a similar standard of living."
Does his ungrateful wife want to maintain the same standard of living? Who knows! Who cares, amirite? The point is that this guy does, and it's his wife's duty, if she loves him, to share that goal. Or support it, even if she doesn't.
The best, bar none, response I read to this was Prof. Tressie McMillan Cottom's, on Facebook, which I'm sharing with her permission.
It's such a beautiful deconstruction, in every way, but this part is especially terrific:
Part of that "lifestyle" he's so hot to maintain are children that reflect his economic and social investment in them. Therefore, it would have to be a good school for good careers that his peers would recognize as such. Those things don't just happen. They have to be managed. As he admits to working an ungodly amount of hours and only nods minimally at "helping out" at home, it's reasonable to assume that managing that process is his wife's responsibility. And that doesn't include the transportation, networking, relationship building, scheduling required to get and keep two middle class status-striving kids in music lessons, sports teams, language lessons, tutoring, community service, orthodontist appointments, healthy eating (to maintain physical appearance of middle class, high status), and so on.
All of that sounds like a job. A job that requires his wife hang out with those friends he dismisses as ladies who lunch. Because who knows the word on the new school, new teacher, new requirements for entry into the good life if not the social circle of other parents who manage these things full time? One man's lunching lady is another man's status manager.
YES.
The dude's letter ends thus: "But mostly I want you to get a job because I want to feel loved."
If, indeed, this dude doesn't feel loved, then I wonder why it is that he's staying in this marriage. Could it be, perhaps, that he's getting something else out of it? Like someone who is managing his entire home life while he works to maintain a lifestyle he cannot abide to abandon?
In which case, maybe it should be as obvious to him—as it is to the rest of us—that his wife already has a job.
http://web.archive.org/web/201607061821 ... rbage.html
LOL she tries to make the guy sound like an entitled douche. She says its safe to assume he only helps out minimally at home because he's working long hours. She says that lunching and going to exercise classes is an important part of maintaining the facade of that middle class lifestyle that she implies is his dream and not hers, and that those things are actually important networking tools that keep the home running. She suggests that working long hours in a law firm isn't such a life-threatening deal.
Well let's "unpack" (as Melissa would say) this a bit by taking a look at the original letter, because it paints a rather different picture.
I remember the thrill of first seeing you at law school orientation. You were radiant in a sea of dour, nervous faces. It quickly became clear that you were kind, down-to-earth, engaging, loyal to family and friends. By graduation, we were inseparable. We took the bar exam and were married. The future looked bright – two freshly minted lawyers with supportive families and a dream of starting a family of our own some day.
I started my career with the gruelling hours and high stress that are traditionally visited on young lawyers. You were unexpectedly ambivalent about finding a good job – or any job. After gentle pressure from me, and more from the student loan payments, you puttered around in some non-legal positions more suited for someone with half your education and intelligence, and which offered commensurately low pay.
Pregnancy – something we both wanted – diverted you to the most important job in the world. After a few years, we were blessed with a second child. You have never returned to work, although both kids have been at school full-time for years, and our firstborn is heading to college soon...
...
This is a rather different picture, as it doesn't sound like his missus was ever willing to pick up the slack, even before they had kids. And now, with two kids of school age, mornings and afternoons free up considerably, even if you have to manage the house. "Orthodontist appointments, music lessons, sports teams, language lessons, tutoring, community service, orthodontist appointments, healthy eating", none of these things are full-time jobs, although they might occasionally get in the way.
He goes on:
I’ve climbed the professional ladder reasonably well. We have the trappings of middle-class success – a nice house in a safe, quiet neighborhood; annual holidays; happy, healthy children; money saved for their college years. But it has come at enormous personal cost to me. My stress level has increased dramatically with added responsibilities at work and my health has deteriorated. People who haven’t seen me for years flinch when we meet again and I’ve attended more than one event at which I have overheard someone remarking on how much I’ve aged.
I don’t think I can do this for another 25 years. I often dream of leaving my firm for a less demanding position, with you making up any financial deficit with a job – even a modest one – of your own. I’ve asked, and sometimes pleaded, for years with you to get a job, any job. Many of my free hours are spent helping with the house and the kids, and I recognise that traditional gender roles are often oppressive, but that cuts both ways. I would feel less used and alone if you pitched in financially, even a little.
That’s not going to happen. It has become clear that you are OK with my working myself to death at a high-stress career that I increasingly hate, as long as you don’t have to return to the workforce.
You keep busy volunteering, exercising and pursuing a variety of hobbies. You socialise with similarly situated women who also choose to remain outside the paid workforce. You all complain about various financial pressures, but never once consider, at least audibly, that you could alleviate the stress on both your budgets and your burnt-out husbands by earning some money yourselves.
You know, to me that's a very different picture from the one Melissa chose to take from it. He says he's helping out with the house and kids when he's home. He acknowledges that "traditional gender roles are often oppressive", which hardly sounds like an entitled dudebro.
If indeed he's physically showing the signs of extreme stress and the tone of his letter certainly paints a picture of a man at the end of his tether, then snarking about it not being the same as working down t'pit is utterly unempathetic, especially as:
- Lawyers suffer nearly quadruple the clinical depression rates of the average occupation, easily the highest of any occupation studied.
In 1996, lawyers overtook dentists as the profession with the highest rate of suicide.(3)
The ABA estimates that 15-20 percent of all U.S. lawyers suffer from alcoholism or substance abuse.(4)
Seven in ten lawyers responding to a California Lawyers magazine poll said they would change careers if the opportunity arose
]Source
Here's explained to her that he's at the end of his tether, and "begged" her to take a job so he can back off bit, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears, despite the fact that he works in a profession with a high depression and suicide rate. No wonder he's feeling unloved. And he's also totally aware of his middle-class privilege.
Our family is grateful for all that we enjoy and we know that we’re far more fortunate than millions who work far harder than I ever have, or will. And I know all too well that work can be unpleasant. But I don’t want you to work so I can buy a Jaguar or a holiday home. I want you to work so I can get a different position and we can still maintain a similar standard of living.
I want you to get a job so I don’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying that my career is the only one between us and financial ruin. I want you to work so our marriage can feel more like a partnership and I can feel less like your financial beast of burden. I want our daughter to see you in the workforce and I want her to pursue a career so she is never as dependent on a man as you are on me, no matter how much he loves her (and he will).
I have been in a similar situation, and what Melissa doesn't seem to understand (possibly because she doesn't pay the bills and doesn't have a spouse who gets to sit on his ass all day, posting links on his vanity blog) is that there are times, particularly when the economy is in danger of shuddering to a halt and bursting into flames, when the house and the car and the lifestyle doesn't feel like a privilege but more having to keep the lights on by running on a wildly accelerating treadmill. But you keep on going because, by god, you've got
responsibilities whereas your partner has nothing but excuses.
These days I live a much simpler and happier life. My ex has had to deal with the consequences of profligate spending. I don't take any pleasure from that or wish her ill - it was just a natural outcome of the path she chose. So I apologize for the WOT, but I once I had read the original piece, I really felt for this guy. McEwan's response in favor of propping up the traditional gender roles status quo allowed her to achieve a personal best in terms of drawing the least charitable interpretation of events and in utterly lacking any trace of empathy.
Thoughtless cow that she is.
