I know why people have children.

I have never had a strong urge to breed. I always felt that having children is a calling, a calling dictated to you by God. Having children is a privilege and if one is meant to be parent, one will be. So, I never understood all those people who don't seem too interested in children and the activities involved with having children, yet they go on to have a whole gaggle of them. If having children is such a drag, there are options today to prevent that.

But now I might have some insight into why people have children: to avoid taking care of their husbands. As I have said before, husbands are worse than children, they sulk, they are stroppy, moody, demand your time and attention, and to add the cherry on top, they are not cute. They are just one big sulking, stroppy, overgrown teenager. So, in light of that, I can see why people would rather have a child/children to take care of instead of a grown man-child. At least you can draw in the comfort that no matter what tantrums your children throw all day, no matter how difficult bath time was, and now unbearable getting your child to eat his or her dinner was, at the end of the day, they look up at you with adoring eyes and say "I love you mommy" or "you are the best mommy ever". Those few words can melt away the disastrous day you have had with them. Your husband will never show you unadulterated appreciation and no sane woman wants her husband to address her as "mommy"-unless if you are Ted Kennedy. 


Though this may be the obvious to most women who are mothers, it is a total revelation to me. If you have to take care of someone, it might as well be your child. One of the number one complaints of men these days is that their wives focus all of her attention on the kids and not him and that's probably the number one reason why men stray (Tiger Woods, David Boreanez, both of these men have young attractive wives with small children), they are no longer the center of attention and they want to recapture that feeling of being the number one priority to someone, so they go off and find a bimbo who will tell them anything they want to hear at a price. How needy and insecure is that? Even my husband, who I consider a very self-affirmed man, makes snide comments when I coo at my cat too enthusiastically, believing that I prefer the cat over him. Except the truth is...let's just leave it at that.


Many neo-feminists now muse that perhaps our grandmothers had it right after all. We need to pay attention to our men, get dressed up for them when they come home from work, put on some perfume and make up, make dinner for them and let them believe that they are the king of the castle and that they are appreciated. If your husband is happy at home, even at the expense of your own sanity, he will be well behaved, less likely to take off with the neighbor's daughter etc. After 40 years of feminism, where we are making our own money, forging our own careers, leave behind unsuitable spouses and boyfriends like a bad 80's hairdo, I must acknowledge, that our children have paid dearly for that-in the form of broken homes and only seeing their dads on the weekends (or never) and possibly going on to forge broken relationships and families of their own. But even in light of all this, I still would not go back to how our grandmothers lived their lives. I can tolerate a life of transient loneliness but not domestic tyranny.

"You became a housewife"

"You became a housewife", were the immortal words uttered to me by a dear friend. This assessment came after a long online chat session about where we are at in our lives. Both of us had retreated from the corporate rat race for sometime now. My friend is a gifted designer with a great entrepreneurial spirit and is never short of ideas, she has worked from home for a few years. I always envied her, she has a discernible skill that very few have so she can earn a living at home and as a bonus, she gets to spend all day with her pack of furry friends by her legs all day.

I had also retreated from the corporate world, not entirely by choice but because the industry I was in was pretty much wiped out by the sub prime mortgage fiasco and the recession that followed and so I took that opportunity to move out of the county I was in and tried to work from home, it turns out that I don't have a identifiable skill to work from home and  I lack the discipline-I hate to admit it, I thought I had great discipline, but I don't. The other aspect of working from home, which was totally unexpected for me were the tensions that would arise from that situation. I spent more time tending to the requests of others (husband and elderly relative) than doing my own writing or practicing my interpretation and translation skills. It was too convenient for them to just shout my name when they couldn't find something, forgot something, or just too lazy to go to their mental CPU storage unit and retrieve the answer for themselves. I felt like I was a live customer service center always ready to answer any and all questions. 

This left me feeling frustrated and angry at times, I felt like I wanted to escape-from my own home, it was ridiculous. It is not right for me to feel unhappy, depressed, stressed out in my own home. So, I did the next best thing to get myself out of the house, I found a job. Any job that didn't require me to mop floors. It was what I needed and my prayers were answered (I prayed to God to help me find peace and balance in my life, whatever form it came in was fine with me). I started to feel useful again and I was learning something new and my language skills were put into use for the first time in my professional career. 

Another dimension to my dilemma were the feelings of guilt I felt towards my family, I felt like I was being disloyal to them by having these negative thoughts about my situation. I can't blame them for treating me like a live customer service center, I put myself in that role and now I loathe it. I kick myself every time I hear my name called and something is being asked of me, so it was time for a change. And people don't like change, even the most self-aware and self-attuned people don't like change, when I announced that I got a job and that I will no longer be home to answer the bidding of everyone (I left the last bit out); I was originally met with "well, what am I going to do now, what about me" type of responses, which I promptly answered, "you'll get used to it, just like before." Indirectly reminding everyone that I had a job from Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 once upon a time.


Since I was a child, I was constantly told how my bilingual skills will outshine my peers and competitors, sadly, this has not happened. Every job I had up until now, my bilingual skills played no part in it, I could have been a semi-literate English speaker with horrible syntax and grammar who can barely spell, like many people I have worked with before, it wouldn't have mattered. So, as I relayed all this to my friend, she said that she understood my feelings, which I totally expected. If anyone is to understand my feelings of conflict and disloyalty to the ones closest to me, it would be her. And it was at this juncture she said to me "you became a housewife" and I shuddered, I have become the dreaded housewife-without the desperation, yet. 


I am not a die-hard man hating feminist. I don't think that being a housewife is less than a working woman. I don't have very strong views about whether to work or not once you have children. It's to each their own, many would love to stay home more often and spend quality time with their children, but economics won't allow it. There is no right or wrong way here. It's just that I never think I would become a 'housewife' before I had children, to me, housewife and mother went together, not housewife and nothing else. And to my husband's credit, whatever he lacks in communication skills, he makes it up with his keen sense of perception, he realized that I was happier and perhaps he was happier too, not having me there all day. More breathing room for the both of us. I never did ask him how he felt about the both of us being home all the time. I am not a big proponent of 'talking about everything', especially when one has no choice in the matter thus cannot enforce a change, there is no point in talking. From my perspective, it's best that I don't spill my thoughts, a lot of times it's not pretty and they should just remain as my thoughts.

Something to call my own

So that 'job' that I started a month ago has turned out to be a good thing. The 'job' that I so inconvenienced everyone with (for such low pay) has turned out to be something I could do well. It's to do with international logistics and it has turned out to be a really good opportunity to learn about the nitty gritty details in import and exporting, booking containers and dealing with shipping related matters. It's quite interesting and not as droll as I thought it would be. Most of all, it has given me an identity outside of what I do with my husband and I am quite liking it. I always knew that an independent soul like me could never work full time with my husband on a home business. I will end up despising him-through no fault of his own. 

After less than one month, they have decided to hire me full time and permanent and I was even able to negotiate a salary that I could live with (being that I am new in this field). My flexibility and 'easy-going nature' (ha ha) has paid off. It's also great to work with real adults, who are not suffering from high school hangups. It's great to work with people in the same intellectual level as you and you are not prone to pettiness. It feels such a relief, after being at so many jobs where it's just an upgraded version of high school drama, where there were still 'cafeteria' seating arrangements, except now it's the lunch room. 

The last couple of years, I have tried to work on myself, quietly. I have tried to not be swayed by the drama of others and to not let others negativity get to me and I tell myself that it's their problem not mine. Just because they are having a psychotic moment, it does not mean I have to join them. It's terribly hard at times, especially with the ones you love-it feels cold and detached to not get emotionally involved in their problems, but you can't. If I got involved with everyone emotionally, I would have to be committed by now. 

Spoiled people

Much debate has been devoted to the subject of spoiled children and how unattractive that is. It sucks out their very cuteness when they behave like a spoiled brat. But little conversation has been devoted spoiled adults, which in my opinion are ten times worse. Spoiled children manifest themselves in pretty uniform ways, screaming, throwing themselves in the middle of the cereal aisle at the grocery store, whining incessantly through church service or a dinner at a friend's house etc. And children behave badly is due to their tender age, their inability to fully express themselves verbally and add to that feelings of frustration. But once children are understood and they know that you get what it is that they are trying to tell you and no you will not buy them those sweets, they generally stop behaving badly. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule.

Spoiled adults manifest themselves many different forms and sometimes you won't recognize it until the behavior has exhibited themselves for awhile. There is nothing more unsightly than seeing a grown man sulk, yes, men are the worst offenders. Men have the luxury to be spoiled, women don't. We have to work, we have to keep our house in order and we just don't have the time or inclination to whine and moan about anything and everything, we just get on with it. 

If this current recession has show us anything is that women are made of stronger stock. We don't come home and shoot our families to death and then burn down the house because we lost our jobs and made a few bad investments. We don't physically abuse other people because things are going badly at work or that we feel the strain of having to prop up our whole households by ourselves. We have had to prop up our households anyways, regardless if our husbands had a job. Women do what they have to do without consideration to pride and ego. The welfare of the family comes first.

Sorry, I am suffering from a bout of misandry today.