Thursday, August 26, 2010

Found this hilarious

Let me start by saying that I am active on several message boards. One in particular is for Christian Moms who have rejected the punitive style of discipline and male-centric households so often espoused by such organizations as Focus on the Family.

Recently a gal was incensed by an article about marriage that her husband pointed to from FotF which explained how men have "needs" which a good wife should meet. Interestingly no matter how hard she tried she could not find a parallel article about the needs of women and how men should work to meet them. She's still waiting for them to reply to her email asking where she can find one.

After some conversation about this obvious oversight, I said something about taking the article and substituting "house work" for "sex" and sending it back to him. A very, very clever woman named "Cherish" ran with the idea and posted this brilliant reply...

From Focus on the (male part of the) Family:
Author Robert Byrne-Baby-Byrne once quipped, "Anyone who believes that the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach flunked geography." This humorous statement hits home with what any adult with a brain knows: Help around the house is very, very important to women. Research consistently shows that between 80 and 90 percent of women view help around the house as the most important aspect of their marriage. When asked what one thing they would like to change in their marriages, they wish that their husbands would be more interested in helping clean and more willing to initiate dish-washing.

Marriage experts Scary and Hanna-Barbara Baconburger surveyed women about their domestic needs. The vast majority of women indicated that mutual laundry folding and male initiation of closet-cleaning were among their primary housekeeping needs. No doubt, our domestically explicit culture plays into the prominence of a clean house on a woman's mind. She can't open the newspaper, turn on the television, surf the Net, or walk into a mall without being reminded of Martha Stewart.

Yet long before the Internet or washing machines were invented, a swept floor was an extremely powerful force in women's lives. History teaches us as much. David and Bathsheba. Samson and Delilah. Reuben and Bilhah. Scripture is filled with references to and examples of women falling into domestic drudgery. Archaeological discoveries reveal that civilizations thousands of years ago had houses of slobby bachelors. Solomon's warnings in Proverbs and the exaltations in Song of Songs written 3,000 years ago are completely relevant today. Time and culture have changed the venues of expression, yet the power of a woman's cleaning drive has remained a constant force of both intimacy and destruction.

Before we go too much further, let me acknowledge that you may be married to a woman who falls into the 10 to 20 percent of women for whom window washing isn't all-consuming. Although picking up socks may not be as dominant a factor in your wife's life, it doesn't discount the fact that it's important. In fact, many women who avoid or minimize the impact of having help around the house in their lives do so because of past painful experiences or because of the fear of future failure. Regardless of how often your wife thinks or talks about you helping out, make no mistake, it is a vital aspect of who she is as a woman.


I almost snorted when I read "our domestically explicit culture." This whole thing made me laugh so hard that I just had to share it.

On a personal note, my own husband would never point to such an article as the one originally referenced and totally gets that we both have needs and wants. I'd hate for anyone to think that I was implying that I can somehow relate to this situation personally.

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