Thanksgiving Gender Roles
Do you read That Wife? If not, you should. It’s written by a woman who could arguably be my most favorite e-friend ever, who spent the night before my wedding staying up with me and giggling like school girls at a sleep over.
She recently posted about the gender differences when it comes to Thanksgiving and it definitely gave me pause for thought. In my (relatively) progressive family the gender chores/roles are becoming blurred as time passes on. For my parents (and Aunts and Uncles), the cooking/cleaning has been done by the women. When I was a kid, the moms would cook and when we were all old enough the kids (7 girls) would clean up (the men would watch TV).
When Food Network came on the scene and made cooking cool, my dad really took notice. Now he can whip up culinary delights to rival the best of them. He regularly is in charge of dinner, if not always in charge of the meat part of dinner. This is probably because it often involves grilling, ooo fire! Or marinades, he’s into those too. When it comes to Thanksgiving though, my mother is still in charge of choosing which dishes will be made (with my father’s input) and in charge of orchestrating how it will all be pulled off.
Once at Thanksgiving, the men hang out with the Hors d’oeuvres and the television and the younger girls float between there and the kitchen. Again, after dinner the younger girls clean up and ready dessert. Only for the past few years, it’s been a bit different.
Since my sister and I are both married, and I have a cousin who is engaged we have a new crowd of younger men in the ranks. My sister’s husband, and my husband (and my cousin’s fiancé) both help with the cooking and clean up. Which is great, because now there are more rotations for the dishes, more people to dry the plates and more (taller) people to put the dishes away. It feels so much more equal around the holidays now than it used to.
I still have Uncles that show up to Thanksgiving, eat and bicker over politics, and that’s their participation in the holiday. The part that irritates me though, is that they have the audacity to ask WHY our husbands are helping. As if it’s so foreign to them that me would help with the dishes. I feel like every holiday, no matter how “advanced” the older generation of men seem, they revert back to the expectations of gender roles from their childhood.
What are the gender roles in your holiday experiences?
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Gender roles in my holiday experiences are generally as follows: For my dad’s side – Men cook. Women clean. My fi and BIL are changing the dishes dynamic as well, because we all contribute to the meal and all help clean, but the dynamic growing up was my Uncles showed up with food, and my Aunts helped with the dishes.
For my mom’s side – Older people cook, younger people clean. Regardless of gender, although I think it helps that we were all girls, so there was no boy cousins to go sit in the living room. Now all our SOs help with the cleanup, and it’s nice. (Agreed on the taller people thing too – very important!)
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 pm
My dad was definitely working all day in terms of prep and my mom would definitely be the executive chef. My husband will sometimes help, but always, always does the dishes. There has to be equity and balance in task division. Otherwise, 1 person feels like he/she is doing everything right? Wouldn’t we all rather just be sitting on the couch watching tv?