Growing up, I remember watching a bunch of Leave it to Beaver on rainy days. Back then I looked at my own parents and saw subtle changes from the idyllic family portrayed in the show, but when I look around at families today, I see a vastly different picture.
The Cleaver family has given way to the Dr. Phil Generation, and the modern family is suffering for it. I say this as I look both at my own family, and those around me.
Expectations and roles in the family have been so completely altered in the last 50 years that the role models we look at in the past are bordering in irrelevant. Looking back, we had this image of the stay at home mother and home maker that did the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking and largely raised the kids on her own, while the husband worked, provided an income, and assisted with the kids to very limited degree.
30 years ago when my parents went through this, the expectations upon my father and his peers included more time with the family and other household tasks, but even then it was still more Ward Cleaver than Mr. Mom. When I was a teen, the Micheal Keaton movie, "Mr. Mom' came out, and so many people found it funny.
Today, it would not be funny at all. In fact, it is becoming the norm. As I look at myself and my peers, I have come to realize that most of us are as capable, and in many cases, more capable of being the stay at home 'mom' than our spouses are. The expectations are such that modern fathers are expected to be so much more. Not only are we supposed to maintain our traditional bread winner roles, but we are also expected to be able to fill the mother roles as well. We are expected to the fill those roles fairly often.
Interestingly, the old 'home maker' or 'house wife' role seems to be one that many women, perhaps most, seem to find derogatory. They have become Soccer Moms. They spend more time as a taxi service than a home maker, in many cases were never taught the home making skills their mothers had.
Relating to this personally, I find myself cast into this role and like most of the men that I have talked to that are in the same boat, I find that I do struggle at times with it. The expectation of doing everything my father did, but also to absorb half of what my mother did becomes an emotional and mental drain that can be overwhelming. Cooking, cleaning house, stopping to take time to play with the kids, being at every event, being an 'involved' parent, but still finding the time to maintain a work schedule that keeps the income flowing.
A few paragraphs ago, I called this the Dr. Phil Generation. Oddly, though I do not like the show, I have listened to enough of it living with a woman that uses the TV to 'keep her company', that I do respect much of what the man has to say. The problem is that a huge portion of his viewership only hears what they want to hear. That means his message is getting garbled in translation. That garbled translation is leading to a further distortion. A fellow rider, and dad that I have had this conversation with a couple of times is a case in point. From the outside, most people would describe his marriage as good. I would describe his life as the epitome of where we have evolved from the Cleaver family of the 50's.
John (not his real name), works hard at his job. He works between 50-60 hours a week. In order to be the father he is, he runs in the morning at 5AM, he goes to work at 6:30AM. He leave at 5-6PM. He goes home, he feeds the kids (3 girls), takes them to karate, where he participates and is learning karate with the girls. He brings them home, gets them through the showers and into bed by 9PM. On the weekends, the girls are his all day on Saturday to 'give his wife some *her* time'. Now, these girls are all school aged, so the wife gets them out the door to school between 7 and 8. She goes to the Gym to work out from 8:30 to about 10. Has lunch with her friends around 11. Gets home about 1:30 does a load of laundry, sometimes two. Once a week she goes to the grocery. Cleaning the (~3000 sq ft) house was too much work, so they have a maid cleaning the house once a week. She is home from 3PM until 6PM for the kids, at which point he takes over and she goes to the bedroom to take a bath and read a book.
As an outsider with a close insight from conversations with both parties, and a lot of time spent with the 3 girls, it sounds like a divorced couple sharing custody of the kids, they just live in the same house. Neither parent is particularly happy, and both blame the other. The worst part? Beyond the resentments in the expectations upon each other to fulfill traditional gender roles, they both feel like they are expected to carry an unfair balance of the workload, they *are* happy. He also swears that his rides to and from work are often all that keeps him from snapping and just quitting on all of it.
So how does this tie into riding? for me it is a quite direct. Most days I try to ride to work, but every couple of days, that option is taken from my hands, by the demands of being either a taxi, or a home maker. By this I mean, either my own spouse has fallen victim to the same traps discussed above. She has overcommitted her services as a taxi, or needs me to fulfill part of the home maker role, by getting the groceries and preparing dinner, often while also handling the 3 year old. This is not a task suited to any motorcycle or scooter. It is a battle that any parent or partner that wants to commute on two wheels needs to be aware of. This has a secondary role of acting as my personal decompress time that makes it possible to fulfill the role I am required to fill. Losing that time is hard on the mental and emotional state at times, but it is what has to be done.
I know that from a personal standpoint, I am fine with the changed roles. I was raised to be more than competent as a home maker. But, finding time to squeeze in the 'Me' time for myself, has become increasingly dependent upon leveraging the time spent on the bike, or the time I can steal mixing business and pleasure on the golf course as the key elements to finding balance.
Til next time,
Dru