The experts say it’s him. Well, OK, they don’t really, even though there has been several findings lately on differences between men and women. Reading those and being a woman I of course would go with him anytime. Why? How about twelve hours of labor for starters. Being a bit unfair? Right, let’s just stay with having kids, where they tell you right off the start that boys will generally take their time for everything: being born, learning how to walk, ditching the diaper, etc. It apparently took my brother two years to start talking, for two years he couldn’t be bothered to utter a word and hubby needed a year to grow his first tooth, while Tesa did it in three months. I am looking at my girls and thinking, hey ladies, please take your sweet time, not that I enjoy handling it all, but really where’s the rush.
From the very start they wanted to do it all, try everything for themselves and instead of celebrating all the little victories, I am worried that’ll encourage them to try even harder. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to raise two helpless heroines waiting for the go easy prince to come and fix it. But I don’t want them to do it all alone either. At the end of the day there’ll nobody thanking them for it and they’ll be nearing their seventh nervous breakdown. As they can very well see from me, despite the fact that hubbs does actually do stuff. He still has it easy. Yet, again I didn’t see him give birth for twelve hours, endure morning sickness all day long for way more than the first trimester and lose sleep due to breastfeeding all night.
And I have every reason to be grumpy, because the newest research says we women need more sleep than men, because apparently we use our brain more. Of course it doesn’t take a scientist to figure all this out, I am a woman I know . What I don’t get is, if we are wired this way, why does Nature keep making us get up at all hours of the night, even when the breastfeeding is long over. The funniest thing is, that half the time kids wake up, hubbs doesn’t even hear them. Never mind my murderous looks in the morning. So, is this Nature’s way of telling me to stop multitasking and I’ll be alright with less than 8 hours of sleep. Because I just don’t see another few hours for it lurking around the corner, but I can definitely shut off a few brain cells.
I just can’t shake off the feeling that Mother Nature is a woman, but you know the one from the WWII, like your granny who really had it tough in life and no matter what you say hers was worse and she’s all no nonsense, get your shit together and stop complaining. Even if you’re sick, no exceptions. But the same doesn’t go for men, they apparently can now finally complain and keep making a fuss over getting down with a cold. Don’t go crying man flu here. The scientists say that they do suffer more when they are struck down with flu. I was just wondering who had to deal with them. Have they seen a sick male specimen for real? Based on my experience this is something you don’t want to be facing – near to death experiences, massive headaches requiring peace and quiet in the whole neighborhood, obscene amounts of tea with lemon and honey and an overall feeling of being misunderstood. At least now I know that science backs him up and it’s not just a case of the princess and the pea.
There, you see the man has it easy and science backs me up. He gets to sleep but doesn’t really need it, he uses his brain less yet gets paid more, he can be sick and we are to be understanding, even better would be immediately start preparing chicken soup. He can have kids without too much damage to either his body or mind and he doesn’t need to chose career over family nor does anyone think they should even make such a suggestion, … and the list goes on. But all that is old news, right.
If my girls are to Iearn anything, it is not to stay clear of men, but to know and accept their own limitations and ask for help. Too often I try to do it all and when everything starts crumbling down, all I get is disapproving looks and snarky remarks from everyone. But he knows his limitations, paces himself, gives off that I am helpless vibe especially if the kids are involved and in the end receives all around approval and most of all help. But it’s not late for me either, I am adapting, playing it cool for a change, learning new rules -because as they say only the strongest survive.
