Why I'm Angry With The Men In My Family
an NYT article, a book recommendation, and a photo of my dinner.
hello,
unlike last week, I actually have something substantial to write about this week. doesn’t mean I didn’t spend all week feeling embarrassed about what I sent out last Sunday and *almost* decided to skip writing today. but then I realised two things:
that i needed to overwrite my memory so i stop obsessing over the dumb crap i wrote last sunday.
that this newsletter is supposed to be a distraction! something fun! a little personal project to keep me sane!
so here i am.
Grateful But Still Angry
note: the following content might sound like i’m lauding a man for doing the bare minimum, but that’s just the world we live in.
it’s pretty unusual for me to be awake past midnight but last night i was. it was almost 1 am actually, and i was deeply engrossed in a cute contemporary YA novel about two high school kids twitter-warring against each other [if you’re wondering which one, it’s called Tweet Cute and is actually SUPER cute and fun and i would totally recommend it.]
anyway, so while i was digitally flipping pages on the kindle app, i heard some unusual sounds — unusual for that time of the night, i mean. the clinking seemed to be coming from the kitchen. it took me a few seconds to realise that all the thaali-banging noise was actually my father washing utensils in the middle of the night. i was…surprised. to say the least. it was his turn to do the dishes, yes, but he’d been busy watching a film [Saturday evening and all that] so i just assumed he would put it off until the next morning or something. so yeah, i was pretty surprised about this uncharacteristic display of commitment and sincerity. very unlike him.
generally speaking, my father’s a pretty decent man but he’s still a man not immune to the entitlement that comes attached to his existence. his entitlement, a direct result of the raja beta syndrome and other patriarchal phenomena, has always enraged me. but that rage reached a new level when the lockdown months began in march 2020. like most Indian households, a bulk of the chores automatically became my mother’s responsibility and as much as she loathed that, she still took it on because of the conditioning as well as lack of alternatives. in may 2020, when my rage was peaking, i wrote a little something to channel my energies in a less destructive direction. Titled ‘How COVID-19 Came Down Hard on Indian Mothers,’ the piece has a pretty personal tone and struck a chord with many of my friends. the validation was great but it couldn’t put a band-aid on the chaos at home. my parents fought a lot during that time and i hated every second of it because, unlike my brother, i really can’t tune myself out of the family drama.
fast forward to lockdown 2.0. when the announcement was made, i felt a familiar dread creep in. i was incredibly anxious that the workload would, once again, fall on my mother and the chaos and fighting would return. but, to my surprise, almost two weeks in, things are looking quite different. i’m not sure if it’s because we’re constantly exhausted and anxious about the ongoing health crisis or if we’ve actually become relatively more responsible, but we seem to have fallen into a routine that’s keeping the house running without any additional stress or drama [will it last? stay tuned to find out]. the big change is that my brother and father are actually doing *some* work in the house without cribbing.
and while i am grateful for this unexpected change in attitude, here’s the thing that still bothers me — they’re still not taking responsibility for things the way they should. they’re happy to take on some of the physical labour, but there’s very little emotional contribution.
let me explain with the help of a New York Times article i read a couple of days ago that triggered this post.
In ‘Why Women Do the Household Worrying,’ journalist Jessica Grose mentions a study that articulates the invisible “mental load” of running a household/parenting. while the idea that you can’t put a price on women’s domestic contribution is not new, what i really liked about this article/study is that it simplified the “mental load” in a way that, i am assuming, middle-aged Indian men *might* be able to comprehend [if they wanted to, that is].
the study divides the “mental labour” into four parts: anticipate, identify, decide, monitor.
you could read the article, but here’s an extract anyway:
“If we’re using the summer camp example, “anticipate” is realizing we need to start thinking about options for the summer before they fill up; “identify” is looking into the types of camps that will suit our family’s needs; “decide” is choosing the camp; and “monitor” is making sure the kids are signed up and their medical forms are sent in.”
a bunch of couples were interviewed for this study and the results showed that there was a major imbalance in how these four tasks are divided.
“I found that in the majority of cases, decision-making that rose to a certain level was very collaborative. But the act of putting the item on the agenda seemed to be overwhelmingly something that women were doing, as well as on the back end, following up once the decisions had been made.”
of course, the people interviewed here are
american (i think)
couples who seem to be splitting the workload equally [or at least they think they are]
so the study is interesting primarily because it reveals that even though the couples *seem* to be splitting the household workload equally, they actually are not.
the reason i thought this article is relevant to what is going on in my house is that, on the surface, it seems like the household chores are divided equally. someone’s doing the cooking, someone’s doing the cleaning, someone’s feeding the dogs, someone’s dusting the house.. blah blah. [to be honest, my mother is STILL doing the bulk of the physical labour but stuff is better distributed among my brother and father this year so..] but the people doing the physical chores are still not actively taking responsibility for it. they still have to be reminded, almost every day, that “hey, can you do that thing you promised you would do every day, please?”
now, that’s infuriating. as hell. [especially because i’ve been doing the reminding LOL]
just like the article mentions, the “anticipate” and “monitor” parts are still being done by my mother (and to a certain extent, me), while we’re all splitting the “identify” and “decide” tasks.
so i guess what i am trying to say is that..
in an ideal world, my father takes responsibility for the meals being prepared instead of just asking, “so, what’s for dinner/lunch?” every day. in an ideal world, my brother does not have to be reminded to make lunch on Sundays or put the clothes out for drying in the balcony. in an ideal world, men are more empathetic and understanding and less trash, ha ha.
I Made Prawns..
and fucked it up big time meaning i put TOO MUCH salt. in trying to fix that, the dish turned out more water-y than it was supposed but it tasted all right (if you don’t consume the gravy).
anyway, things are awful out there so i hope everyone’s keeping safe and taking time off for their mental health.
v. relatable, thank you for sharing! loved the article you linked to. stuff like this always makes me wonder how on earth I'm gonna run a household in the future. it just sounds like so much WORK. prawns look yum tho 😋