>> Subject: Voted Women’s Favourite Email of the Year
>>
>> an email from canadian friend, Karen
>>
>> Voted Women’s Favourite Email of the Year
>>
>> A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his
>>wife stayed home. He wanted her to see what he went through so he prayed:
>>
>> “Dear Lord: I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my
>>wife merely stays at home. I want her to know what I go through, so
>>please allow her body to switch with mine for a day. Amen.
>>
>> God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man’s wish.
>>
>> The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman.
>> He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate, awakened the kids, set
>>out their school clothes, fed them breakfast, packed their lunches,
>>drove them to school, came home and picked up the dry cleaning, took
>>it to the cleaners and stopped at the bank to make a deposit, went
>>grocery shopping, then drove home to put away the groceries, paid the
>>bills and balanced the chequebook.
>>
>>
>> He cleaned the cat’s litter box and bathed the dog.
>> Then it was already 1pm and he hurried to make the beds, do the
>>laundry, vacuum, dust, and sweep and mop the kitchen floor.
>>
>> Ran to the school to pick up the kids and got into an argument
>>with them on the way home.
>> Set out milk and cookies and got the kids organized to do their
>>homework,
>> Then set up the ironing board and watched TV while he did the
>>ironing.
>>
>> At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and washing vegetables for
>>salad, breaded the pork chops and snapped fresh beans for supper.
>>
>> After supper, he cleaned the kitchen, ran the dishwasher,
>>folded laundry, bathed the kids, and put them to bed. At 9 P.M. he was
>>exhausted and, though his daily chores weren’t finished, he went to
>>bed where he was expected to make love, which he managed to get through without complaint.
>>
>> The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and
>>said, Lord, I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so wrong to envy
>>my wife’s being able to stay home all day. Please, oh please, let us
>>trade back.”
>>
>> The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied, “My son, I feel you
>>have learned your lesson and I will be happy to change things back to
>>the way they were. You’ll just have to wait nine months, though. You
>>got pregnant last night.”
>>
>> Voted Women’s Favourite Email of the Year
>>
>>
>>There are 3 types of people:1. People who make things happen.
2. People who watch what happens.
3. People who wondered what happened.Yeah – not bad….except it missed a couple of things…what did the wife do all day ??
1. It doesn’t mention the wife fighting the traffic and rat race to get to work.
2. It didn’t mention the wife grinding through a day in the office or out in the sun digging ditches all day.
3. It didn’t mention a nasty and vindictive control freak boss who smashed all self esteem and confidence out of her.4. Most importantly, this was completely wrong “stopped at the bank to make a deposit”….I don’t think so….try “stopped at the bank to pay off the credit card”. That point and the payment of all other consumed goods during the day is the very reason for the father going to work in the first place !!!
It’s hardly ever mentioned, and nowhere near as visible as the women’s work in and around the house, but without one partner earning the dosh…everything sort of grinds to a halt.
If you don’t believe me – ask 20 somethings about what they remember of their parents when small and growing up. “Oh, Mum was great, she was always there looking after us…oh Dad, didn’t see him much – he was always off at work.” Money is a necessity in this society of ours and someone has to sacrifice the time so as everything else in the family life can function.
Cheers,
Dazzling
“No point having a cake if you can’t eat it.”
OK Dazz, I’ll take the bait…
Have you ever actually swapped roles?
My husband used to think he was the only one who had it bad, working 60hrs p/w often crazy times eg leave home at 4pm and home again at 2am. Most of the hours over the standard 40 were unpaid too – sounds stupid but if you wanted to be in management for a ColesMyer company it was just a requirement of the job, if you didn’t like it you were free to leave (hence the high staff turnover). He is now a part-time manager for a different company in ColesMyer and a lot of these issues are just now being addressed. Anyway, it was a cow of a job and that is an understatement.
The only hope for any relief or improvement (with the mindset hubby had at the time and after the damage the job had done to his self esteem) was the prospect of promotion within the company. This all took its toll on him, me, our daughter and family relations as a whole. However, as you pointed out, the money has got to keep rolling in. So that was how we lived.
Then I had to spend 6 weeks in hospital.
After one week he came in to visit and said “honey, I don’t know how you do it. I can’t wait until you get home so that I can give your job back and go back to work”. I can’t tell you how gratifying that was. I knew he worked hard but until that point in time he had no idea just what needed doing while he was at work or asleep.
Mind you it was a baptism of fire because he hardly knew our daughter due to his crazy work hours. Until then he had never actually changed a pooy (is that how you spell it?) nappy and our daughter was 13 months old! He had never been alone with her for more than a couple of hours and had never had to wake up and get out of bed when she cried.
The relentless demands of a child coupled with the relentless monotony of the never ending housework were actually less appealing to him than that cow of a job. He has never been quite the same since.
This experience was one of the things that helped him come around in his attitude. He used to think that him climbing the ladder at work while I went back to part-time work when the kids were old enough for school was the way we’d live our lives. After seeing just how hard it was for both of us he had to admit that if there was an alternative then that was definitly the way to go.
So Dazzling while many (dare I say most) women have been chained to a job, have you ever been the full time parent/house-keeper for a decent stretch of time while your partner was otherwise occupied?
Kind Regards,
Sonjasorry!
Have to agree with Daz here. I have had experience working as a medical scientist as as bringing up children full time (I have a 18 month old and a 3 year old). If I have to compare the two, I would definately say that working is much harder than being at home with kids! Lets give the guys some credit here!
Let me compare, changing nappies to coming up with the next scientific breakthorugh, Hmmmm! It dosn’t take alot of brains to change a nappy!!
Come on it’s not really that difficult to look after kids, long hours maybe, frustrating at times, but not difficult.
I personally feel that alot of women make it harder than it really is. How many times do you really go to dry cleansers, banks, make beds and what’s with the milk and cookies and snapping fresh beans, yeah, these are realistic daily chores just like bathing dogs every day and mopping, vaccuming, dusting and sweeping kitchen floors (who does all this in a day?) sounds like a fairy tale!!!
If you keep it simple then it WILL BE SIMPLE! And yes anyone can do it. My husband resigned from his job in Feb and we now share full time investing and children, he fit into the full time parent role very easily. It really is not that difficult to cook, clean a house and look after kids!!!!
We buy properties in all conditions. Can offer Immediate Cash Settlements, No Real Estate Agents Required
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phone 0412 437 582Isn’t the point that MOST working women do about twice the amount of (unpaid) housework than their partners, get paid less in their jobs than men do?
I think it is not about how HARD it is to be at home with the kids (if you can cope it isn’t hard, but it can be hard, if you can’t cope, like with any other job.
It is all about fairness- do both partners take equal shares?Celivia
hmmm… given that women got kicked out of the public service in Australia when they got married-= and that was official policy… so it’s not long that women have actually been able to freely participate in the world of work. Of course, had they chosen not to be married, and be one of those “career women”, then they could have got paid for their labour, but been on the shelf [biggrin]
Not all jobs suck- some people actually like their jobs, Dazzling. And not all men give their families money they earn. At least men get paid for their job, whereas women don’t, and it can make them financially dependent upon the man- often trapped with kids at home. I personally think it’s healthier if each adult works for pay- better for self-esteem, better to reduce social isolation, better to not bedependent upon someone else for an income.
kay henry
Agreed!!!
why would anyone CHOOSE to be a stay at home mum and dependant on a man.
And even worse, to be a stay at home mum dependant on some man for finances and actually believe that you do more work than him because you can change nappies. That’s just nuts!
We buy properties in all conditions. Can offer Immediate Cash Settlements, No Real Estate Agents Required
[email protected]
phone 0412 437 582I CHOOSE to be a stay at home mum. I worked for two years after baby number one, and I have been at home since baby number two. To be honest, being at home with a toddler and a baby with a husband who was gone at 7am and two nights a week at uni until 9pm nearly sent me nuts. I was SOOOO lonely and desparate for adult company.
Now with three kids, 16, 13 and 9 I absolutely LOVE being a stay at home mum. I am in no way dependant on my husband’s wage because his money is OUR money. He is not demanding in any way. Our life is good and we are happy – coming up to 19 years married. I have friends who have ventured back to the workforce and it is very hard, unless you want your kids in after school care or trying to kill each other at home on their own. After locking myself in my room after highschool to keep from being bullied by my older brothers, I will not leave my kids to that fate.
I love my life now and wouldn’t change it. I am evolving, however, and don’t know what I will feel like in one, two or five years. I would try to never make such a blanket statement about what women should or should not do with their lives. We are all individuals and all have different needs. I LOVE my time in the day to do what I want to. And no, I don’t watch any soapies.
I figure that I do enough for my hustand and kids and I deserve some ME TIME.
Regards, Wylie.
All situations are unique. The main point in the personal story I shared above was that my poor hubby was busting his guts thinking that he was creating an easy, stress-free existance for his family. It was not until he stood on the other side of the fence that he realised what it was like for me. Our roles were too different to compare really so I don’t think it is fair to make a judgement on who had it harder.
Kay Henry, you have hit one of the nails on the head when you say that social isolation is not healthy for anyone. At the time I was talking about we had no support network of friends or family. Nobody to just have over for a chat and nobody to mind our daughter (ever) if we wanted some time alone. (At the time I also had a hang-up about using child-care… Praise God I got over that!). Developing a strong social network is one of the many things we are still working to improve. Family will most likely never be available for us (one story for hubby’s side and another for mine, both too long for now) and a network of true friends doesn’t just happen overnight. Life sure is a bed of roses now compared to then though.
Another thing I didn’t mention that made things difficult was that money was stretched so thin it often didn’t go the distance. I can remember having to choose whether to pay the electricity bill that was due or buy fresh fruit & veg for the week. No chance of take away if it had been a rough day! Hubby didn’t pay the bills or do shopping and when we did cross paths during his insane work schedule he was tired and stressed over work so I chose not to mention every hard financial decision I had to make. Again, life is a bed of roses now when I look back.
All told I have to agree with Celivia in that if you can cope it isn’t hard but if you can’t cope then it can be impossible. A lot of factors are always involved but I hope people can realise that when you are under a lot of stress from different areas of your life (as Hubby and I were at the time), coping with what may otherwise be a minor task can feel overwhelming.
What I am proud of is that we worked together to change the status quo. It feels like it was another life when things were so hard. Better yet, we are nowhere close to finishing the “renovation” of our lives so there is still huge scope for improvement. It would have been so easy to just get stuck in a rut and let things continue to deteriorate.
Sorry if this is a bit deep but I truly meant no offence and think that perhaps I may have been misunderstood. I didn’t take the original post by Brisbane04 literally, I took it as a joke. I agree with Dr X that people who truly feel so hard done by and trapped for whatever reason (and I’m sure that there are many out there) need some serious help. Here’s to praying that they get it.
Kind Regards,
SonjaExcellent – I suppose if we are all agreed then that the initial joke was just that…a flippant joke…and we all take it as such, then there really is no substance to any of it – or any of the hundreds of emails like it…or is that generalising to much again ??
“The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied, “My son, I feel you have learned your lesson.””
I gather there is no lesson to learn then.
Simple appreciation by both partners for each partners contribution to a healthy and successful marriage where all things (money / housekeeping / babycare etc etc etc) are all thrown into one big melting pot as in ‘ours & us & we’ instead of this constant American drivel of ‘me, me, me & you & I, I, I’.
We (both the wife and I) call these people that initially come up with these very predictable man bashing emails (only in the Western World mind you, and only because the women have it so good…but don’t know anything different…) that spread like wildfire all in the name of a good laugh…optometrists….you know…I (eye) specialists.
I’ve never responded to jokes like that before, and probably never will again, but they do seem to be coming thick and fast in the past couple of years. Perhaps ignoring them is the best approach.
By challenging some of this garbage spread out under the guise of ‘humour’ though, it does seem to elicit some strong responses, so I’m not sure that the content of these jokes really is all just flippant humour.
Enough – I’ve kicked my soapbox away.
Then simply ignore it, Dazz
) And the rest of us will do what we choose, also.kay henry
Hi All,
Yes it was meant as a joke there was no great thought put into the ramifications of posting it. Thats why I put it in “Forum Frolics”, I have been most amused about the responses. I have posted a number of these recently and hope to continue so. So sorry Dazzling that you get so upset about it.MartinThere are 3 types of people:1. People who make things happen.
2. People who watch what happens.
3. People who wondered what happened.I want to know who actually voted for it as email of the year?
Seems not all women are in favour of it?
[blush2]
Cheers,
Simon Macks
Residential and Commercial Finance Broker[email protected]
0425 228 985Comments may not be relevant to individual circumstances. If you intend making any investment, financial or taxation decision you should consult a professional adviser.
Dazzling,
One thing I truly admire about you is that you are not (or never seem to be) afraid to open that “can of worms” and as a rusult all sorts of interesting replies come out and threads just take off. Some are more controversial than others but we all learn and grow from them as long as it remains civil – and it nearly always does! I asked you once before not to leave PI.com and, as I mentioned before, you have the ability to just make a thread take off.
As far as my initial response to your first post… I was asking a genuine question based on an unpleasant personal experience that changed our entire way of living. I do believe that there is always a lesson to be learned from walking the proverbial mile in someon else’s shoes (and by no means do I consider this applicable only to gender roles in Western society, although that was the original topic).
I wasn’t having a go at you and I’m sorry if I hit a bit of a raw nerve. I know from experience how it feels as there have been times when I have found some women “jokes” insulting, hurtful and degrading. I agree that humour is often used to mask an ulterior and more truthful message. I don’t agree to having a laugh when it is at the expense of another person’s feelings.
Brisbane 04,
Yes, please do keep posting jokes! I have forwarded some on to friends who have also appreciated them.
Simon,
My guess is that the person who wrote it was the voter?! Or perhaps it was a panel of optometrists wives
Kind Regards,
SonjaI guess that all the Stepford wives voted for it?
Celivia
) And the rest of us will do what we choose, also.
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