When Adam delved and Eve span, the fiction that man is incapable of
housework was first established. It would be interesting to figure out
just how many foot-pounds of energy men have saved themselves, since the
creation of the world, by keeping up the pretense that a special knack
is required for washing dishes and for dusting, and that the knack is
wholly feminine. The pretense of incapacity is impudent in its audacity,
and yet it works.
Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they
contend successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them.
Accordingly, they don't have to sew buttons.
It might be said, of course, that the safety of suspension bridges is so
much more important than that of suspenders that the division of labor
is only fair, but there are many of us who have never thrown a railroad
in our lives, and yet swagger in all the glory of masculine achievement
without undertaking any of the drudgery of odd jobs.
Probably men alone could never have maintained the fallacy of masculine
incapacity without the aid of women. As soon as that rather limited
sphere, once known as woman's place, was established, women began to
glorify and exaggerate its importance, by the pretense that it was all
so special and difficult that no other sex could possibly begin to
accomplish the tasks entailed. To this declaration men gave immediate
and eager assent and they have kept it up. The most casual examination
will reveal the fact that all the jokes about the horrible results of
masculine cooking and sewing are written by men. It is all part of a
great scheme of sex propaganda.
Naturally there are other factors. Biology has been unscrupulous enough
to discriminate markedly against women, and men have seized upon this
advantage to press the belief that, since the bearing of children is
exclusively the province of women, it must be that all the caring for
them belongs properly to the same sex. Yet how ridiculous this is.
Most things which have to be done for children are of the simplest sort.
They should tax the intelligence of no one. Men profess a total lack of
ability to wash baby's face simply because they believe there's no great
fun in the business, at either end of the sponge. Protectively, man must
go the whole distance and pretend that there is not one single thing
which he can do for baby. He must even maintain that he doesn't know how
to hold one. From this pretense has grown the shockingly transparent
fallacy that holding a baby correctly is one of the fine arts; or,
perhaps even more fearsome than that, a wonderful intuition, which has
come down after centuries of effort to women only.
"The thing that surprised Richard most," says a recent woman novelist,
"was the ease and the efficiency with which Eleanor handled Annabel....
She seemed to know by instinct, things that Richard could not understand
and that he could not understand how she came by. If she reached out her
hands to take Annabel, her fingers seemed, of themselves, to curve into
the places where they would fit the spineless bundle and give it
support."
At this point, interruption is inevitable. Places indeed! There are one
hundred and fifty-two distinctly different ways of holding a baby--and
all are right! At least all will do. There is no need of seeking out
special places for the hands. A baby is so soft that anybody with a firm
grip can make places for an effective hold wherever he chooses. But to
return to our quotation: "If Richard tried to take up the bundle, his
fingers fell away like the legs of the brittle crab and the bundle
collapsed, incalculable and helpless. 'How do you do it?' he would say.
And he would right Annabel and try to still her protests. And Eleanor
would only smile gently and send him on some masculine errand, while she
soothed Annabel's feelings in the proper way."
You may depend upon it that Richard also smiled as soon as he was safely
out of the house and embarked upon some masculine errand, such as
playing eighteen holes of golf. Probably, by the time he reached the
tenth green, he was too intent upon his game to remember how guile had
won him freedom. Otherwise, he would have laughed again, when he holed a
twenty-foot putt over a rolling green and recollected that he had
escaped an afternoon of carrying Annabel because he was too awkward. I
once knew the wife of the greatest billiard player in the world, and she
informed me with much pride that her husband was incapable of carrying
the baby. "He doesn't seem to have the proper touch," she explained.
As a matter of fact, even if men in general were as awkward as they
pretend to be at home, there would still be small reason for their
shirking the task of carrying a baby. Except that right side up is best,
there is not much to learn. As I ventured to suggest before, almost any
firm grip will do. Of course the child may cry, but that is simply
because he has become over-particular through too much coddling. Nature
herself is cavalier. Young rabbits don't even whimper when picked up by
the ears, and kittens are quite contented to be lifted by the scruff of
the neck.
This same Nature has been used as the principal argument for woman's
exclusive ability to take care of the young. It is pretty generally held
that all a woman needs to do to know all about children is to have some.
This wisdom is attributed to instinct. Again and again we have been
told by rapturous grandmothers that: "It isn't something which can be
read in a book or taught in a school. Nature is the great teacher." This
simply isn't true. There are many mothers in America who have learned
far more from the manuals of Dr. Holt than instinct ever taught
them--and Dr. Holt is a man. I have seen mothers give beer and spaghetti
and Neapolitan ice-cream to children in arms, and, if they got that from
instinct, the only conclusion possible is that instinct did not know
what it was talking about. Instinct is not what it used to be.
I have no feeling of being a traitor to my sex, when I say that I
believe in at least a rough equality of parenthood. In shirking all the
business of caring for children we have escaped much hard labor. It has
been convenient. Perhaps it has been too convenient. If we have avoided
arduous tasks, we have also missed much fun of a very special kind. Like
children in a toy shop, we have chosen to live with the most amusing of
talking-and-walking dolls, without ever attempting to tear down the sign
which says, "Do not touch." In fact we have helped to set it in place.
That is a pity.
Children mean nothing at long range. For our own sake we ought to throw
off the pretense of incapacity and ask that we be given a half share in
them. I hope that this can be done without its being necessary for us to
share the responsibility of dishes also. I don't think there are any
concealed joys in washing dishes. Washing children is quite a different
matter. After you have washed somebody else's face you feel that you
know him better. This may be the reason why so many trained nurses marry
their patients--but that is another story. A dish is an unresponsive
thing. It gives back nothing. A child's face offers competitive
possibilities. It is interesting to see just how high a polish can be
achieved without making it cry.
There is also a distinct sense of elation in doing trifling practical
things for children. They are so small and so helpless that they
contribute vastly to a comforting glow in the ego of the grown-up. When
you have completed the rather difficult task of preparing a child for
bed and actually getting him there, you have a sense of importance
almost divine in its extent. This is to feel at one with Fate, to be the
master of another's destiny, of his waking and his sleeping and his
going out into the world. It is a brand-new world for the child. He is a
veritable Adam and you loom up in his life as more than mortal. Golf is
well enough for a Sunday sport, but it is a trifling thing beside the
privilege of taking a small son to the zoo and letting him see his first
lion, his first tiger and, best of all, his first elephant. Probably he
will think that they are part of your own handiwork turned out for his
pleasure.
To a child, at least, even the meanest of us may seem glamourous with
magic and wisdom. It seems a pity not to take the fullest advantage of
this chance before the opportunity is lost. There must come a day when
even the most nimble-witted father has to reply, "I don't know." On that
day the child comes out of Eden and you are only a man again. Cortes on
his lonely peak in Darien was a pigmy discoverer beside the child eating
his first spoonful of ice-cream. There is the immediate frightened and
angry rebellion against the coldness of it, and then the amazing
sensation as the strange substance melts into magic of pleasant
sweetness. The child will go on to high adventure, but I doubt whether
the world holds for any one more soul-stirring surprise than the first
adventure with ice-cream. No, there is nothing dull in feeding a child.
There is less to be said for dressing a child, from the point of view of
recreation. This seems to us laborious and rather tiresome, both for
father and child. Still I knew one man who managed to make an adventure
of it. He boasted that he had broken all the records of the world for
changing all or any part of a child's clothing. He was a skilled
automobile mechanic, much in demand in races, where tires are whisked on
and off. He brought his technic into the home. I saw several of his
demonstrations. He was a silent man who habitually carried a mouthful of
safety pins. Once the required youngster had been pointed out, he wasted
no time in preliminary wheedlings but tossed her on the floor without
more ado. Even before her head had bumped, he would be hard at work.
With him the thrill lay in the inspiration of the competitive spirit. He
endeavored always to have his task completed before the child could
begin to cry. He never lost. Often the child cried afterward, but by
that time my friend felt that his part of the job was completed--and
would turn the youngster over to her mother.