i'm reading Doris Lessing's the Golden Notebook right now. Doris recently received the Nobel Prize for literature and this work is considered to be her premier work and largely autobiographical. It was way ahead of it's time... It's still super-pertinent to women of all ages.
Her protagonist is a 23-24 year-old at this point (i'm not done yet) and discusses her fears of being trapped by marriage and children against the backdrop of living years ago as a white communist in Rhodesia in a group trying to breed revolution. It speaks to racism and the inherent racism in colonial africa. I'm not going to discuss the racism in this post....
This book has me thinking about my own life... I bring her fears forward to my times where I'm over 30 and trying to balance an IT career and DJing and dating. This fear of being trapped seems really "real" to me. Once you get married and have a kid; then the kid comes first.
And you end up becoming a hamster in the wheel. You're constantly working to pay your mortgage, to keep yourself and your family fed, the kids off to school, soccer practice, etc.
All of the married w/kids lady engineers I know end up not only having their career, but still do a majority of the housework and most of the taking care of the kids. And this seems like a really unfair scenario to me. Especially considering that I've made at least twice as much money as almost every single guy that I have dated.
Why should I be saddled with both a full-time job and housework for myself and others???
When your partner isn't cleaning the house you live in together you have two choices: a) nag him or b) do it yourself. I can't stand nagging (my mum was a horrible nag) so when this happened to me previously I chose answer b) and it made me angry that I had to do this. Of course I tried asking him to pitch in first but he kept promising to do it and had 5000 excuses as to why he never did. And we broke up and I moved out.
If I were to get married and have a kid, I'd have to forget any DJing, screw my 20-miles/week of running, forget my art projects, my hiking, my writing, and anything else I do for myself that I love... Forget BSing with my buddies, forget all the travel I like to do to other countries... I'd basically have to put myself last... 100% of the time.
I wonder how/why many people submit to this so freely? Why do so many people do this? Do they not have any dreams/joys of their own?? Or do they do it because that's what everyone else does and they didn't realize the implications going in?
I say people because I realize that a lot of men get this "hamster in the wheel" feeling also and I know that all men aren't like my ex-boyfriend.
Why? Why are so many people in such a rush to get hitched?!!!! Am I missing something?
Enquiring minds want to know....
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