Did I Just Kill Feminism?

I was at work recently talking with my carpool buddy. She picked me up every morning and as payment, I would listen to her complain, justifiably, about the boss. She said she wouldn't be able to pick me up the next day because she was sick (i.e. burnt out) so I'd have to find another way to work. My husband and I share one car, which he always takes to the office, so I immediately went into problem-solving mode to arrange a ride. My friend asked, "Why do you always have to be the inconvenienced problem-solver? Why can't you keep the car? Let him find his own damn ride to work!" I admit, I hadn't even considered this: after all, he was the man of the house, the main breadwinner. I thought of his full-time commuter job as being more important than my part-time seasonal one. To me this seemed logical: to my friend, it was hopelessly archaic.

I started wondering if my increasingly comfortable role of the Little Woman at home was seen as something else by the outside world: Subservient Wife.

I grew up in a house with a stay at home mom and a dad who came home, got a beer from the fridge, and expected "his chair" to be free of any occupant. If anyone was still sitting there by the time he made it back from his pilgrimage to the kitchen for his Miller Lite, they were met with the death glare and the thumb gesture that meant, "Get out of that recliner before you never want to sit again." My mother cooked and cleaned and did the laundry. She did all the Christmas shopping and dutifully signed my father's name to all greeting cards. At family birthdays, he'd look over and ask what he and Mom gave us after we unwrapped our gifts. I swore that I would never live like this: I would travel, work and have a relationship where I wore the pants. Or at least one leg of them.

So twenty-plus years later, after having jobs and adventures up the wazoo, how is it that I ended up in the same position as my mother? Or a better question might be, how is it that I wanted to end up like my mother? At what point did I decide that being an independent woman wasn't all it was cracked up to be and that learning how to bake bread, hang laundry and knit was more appealing to me than my childhood image of What I Want to Be When I Grow Up?

I began to look at websites and read books about housewives, women who were happy to be at home and raise children, content in their role. Most of those I found leaned toward the spiritual inspiration of "serving" their husbands. A few I found were stories of the kinkier variety. Where are the stories of wives who love their husbands and just wanted to do things for them to help their careers or make them look better or have a happier home life? I can't be the only 3-headed freak out there who just likes making my husband happy, which in turn makes me happy. When I tell people I'll have to ask my husband before I commit to accepting their invitation to a party, why do they act like I just killed Feminism? Why do people treat me like I just singlehandedly set the women's movement back 50 years because I pair my husband's socks?

I find it odd that so many people say that my husband and I are the perfect couple (whatever that means.) So many of them comment that we seem so happy and compliment each other so well--and yet they criticize how we actually stay happy. My husband never expects me to pair his socks but I do it because it makes his morning easier, just like he doesn't have to make sure our car always has a full gas tank but he does it because he knows I hate filling it myself. Yes, I take out the garbage (because he always forgets to) and he pays the bills. I cook because I like to and because if he did the cooking, I'd be living on tuna fish sandwiches and scrambled eggs. There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I think just being nice to people, especially the people we live with, has become a target for society to point and laugh at how far we haven't come, that self-sacrifice should be frowned upon in favor of gaining all the things our parents didn't have or didn't want. I'm completely happy for people who are single, who work, who are independent if they want to be. I feel like I've had my share of that life and now I've moved on, or backwards to some people's definition, to a place where I am happy. If happy equals taking the bus and doing the laundry, so be it.