How the social role of being a wife makes women depressed

submitted by WhyDoesHeDoThat from youtube.com

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[–]Girlwiththeraventat 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

He does love me. I love him and our family and life we have made for ourselves. Because a lot of it did come from his hard work. I will always love and respect him because of how he stuck by me through everything and worked his absolute ass off to provide for us. Hes also a good dad.

But being responsible for everything makes me deeply unhappy. But also saying I want a divorce because he doesn't do housework or worry about the administrative parts of life seems so petty.

Is there anything in marriage for women? I dont know. It's hard to say and even harder to know what the future will hold. Our relationship wasnt always unequal that way. But then we had a kid and I stayed home. So I did all the housework and whatnot. When I went back to work I kept all the housework and added a job. I'm telling you that so you will understand it wasn't always like this. Life is complicated and I guess that answer is something every women has to decide for herself.

[–]emptiedriver 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is so true. After having the kid... everything changes. Not immediately and not in every way, but, you become a mom and he becomes a dad, and those are so much more "roles" than just male and female. It's easier to be sort of equal and break through typical expectations when it's just the two of you, but a kid adds expectations, needs, a whole new set of perspectives, and some of the basic behaviors are just initially set a certain way.

Like, one of you is going to be more physically weakened by being pregnant, even if you were the athlete before this. One of you is going to be getting up more often to feed a kid, even if you switch to formula (which of course you mustn't do). And then once a kid starts responding to you in the park or the playground, you will be having a different kind of relationship, and a different set of options with other parents or school administrations, and structures start to seem harder to get around than they did when you were young and free. And maybe his good dad-ness shows up more as taking the kid out to play, joking around, and being better at discipline, while you focus more on teaching, talking about emotions, or setting up art projects, and suddenly you're both good parents but living stereotypes.. whether you're encouraged by advice and social norms or personal tendencies, if it happens at all you lean into your gender roles more than before.

You get more time off from work, more social allowance to depend on him after having a kid, while he becomes more openly recognized as a producer and a provider... Roles just get reinforced more regularly. It's so much easier to fall into them, and once a child goes to school...