Women to Blame

Correct me if I am wrong but three of the biggest problems in our country today-- traffic, obesity and disaffected youth-- can be blamed on women working. Middle class, white males like myself have spent the last 20 years bearing the guilt for pretty much everything, so now it's time to return the favor and lay some blame somewhere else. So ladies, drop your makeup, put both hands on the wheel and let's drive.

Take fifty percent of the vehicles off our roads today and traffic would be a non-issue. Replace the happy meals and buckets of fried chicken with some stay-at-home-cooked vegetables and obesity could be a thing of the past. Have someone waiting at after school with open arms for our children and they wouldn't be more connected to Barney and Ninetendo than they are to their own family. The fact is, if you move one-half of each parental group out of the workplace and back into the home, quicker than the Braves can lose a Worlds Series, these problems are solved.

Sometime after the 1960's something changed. Women became empowered and started exchanging their aprons for timecards. It could have been an evolutionary process. It could have been they were sick and tired of avocado-hued appliances. I mostly suspect women realized that their husbands were as dorky as Sonny and they were as cool as Cher and it was time to get appreciated. Ward Cleaver would soon be spinning in his grave, or at least in his cardigan.

Thirty years ago when houses were built like the one I live in, there were only one-car garages. Two, (or more!!) family vehicles were as inconceivable as phones without chords, or rotary dials. Mom was as much a fixture in the home as a set of bunk beds or Ed Sullivan on a Sunday night. But alas, things change.

And boy do they change. I was stuck in the airport in Phoenix recently and watching two businesswomen in the restaurant where I was dining. I was sincerely impressed. Prada, Gucci, and Jones New York look incredible with a Prosignia Laptop. These woman were the eptiomy of professionalism; engraved business cards, Bally briefcases and of course the retained, hyphened maiden name. Hugh Hefner would be spinning in his grave, or at least in his silk pajamas.

But before anyone thinks this column is simply a diatribe against women working, let me clarify. Though things HAVE changed in the last decades as a result of women going to work, women are surely not to blame. Men could stay home. Besides, every woman quitting her job and going back to daytime housework would probably not fix everything either, maybe not anything. But, what has changed in the last thirty-some-odd years (some very odd) is shifting family values.

It's not that women are some evil Darth Maul trying to wreck the Federation, but simply put, husbands and wives have made the home money-centric rather than family-centric and this is what forces the woman to work (obviously single mothers and lower income families are a part of a completely different dynamic).

Two people need to work today, not to make ends meet, but to stay at the levels we have set for ourselves in our society. It's not about bread on the table, it's about 2 cell phones, a bedroom for each child--one to spare, bigscreen TVs and the newest model of a sports sedan and an SUV--one of each. Really, how far will we go? We're not just trying to keep up with the Joneses we are the Joneses.

We've trapped ourselves. The greatest shift in American civilization in the last half of our century could have been the freedom for women to work. It's too bad we've turned it into slavery. And though some quick-fix, chauvenistic, tongue-in-cheek solution can be offered by a hack like me, it's still as complex and as challenging a problem as families have ever faced. Billy Murphy - 11/8/99