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Do you mother your husband?
Categories: Just For Moms, Just For Dads, Love & Sex
My father was an intelligent and physically capable man who could fix just about anything. If he couldn't fix something, he would just build a new one. In other words, he was good with his hands. But every night at dinner, my father would sit back with his hands in his lap and let my mother cut his meat for him.
Even as a child, I found this confusing and strange. When I asked my mother about it, she said she did it because he liked her to do it. That didn't really clear things up for me. But in reading this article, I realize that my mother's mothering of her husband wasn't all that unique. Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, says women who take care of their husbands as if they were children - cutting their meat, picking out their clothes, washing their backs - are bending to societal pressures to be the ultimate woman. "We've been taught that the way to show love is to do for others," she says.
Psychotherapist Tina Tessina blames it on the hormone oxytocin. "It makes women feel tender, close and cuddly to their newborn and other children, and maybe husbands, too." Tessina, author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting About the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage, says that endorphins can also contribute. "Endorphins flow heavily in new mothers, and [they] are the same hormones we feel when we connect to a husband. It's pretty easy to confuse the two."
And while some experts say this kind of nurturing can work for some couples, at least one former nurturer doesn't recommend it. "As a woman who mothered her husband for too many years, I can report it's about the worst thing a woman can do," says 55-year-old Linda Franklin. "It makes your man lazy, unwilling to be proactive in his own health care and for the most part a boy who refuses to grow up. It took me a long time to understand you can be compassionate and loving without being smothering and controlling."
Another good reason not to mother your husband: it confuses the hell out of the kids.
Even as a child, I found this confusing and strange. When I asked my mother about it, she said she did it because he liked her to do it. That didn't really clear things up for me. But in reading this article, I realize that my mother's mothering of her husband wasn't all that unique. Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, says women who take care of their husbands as if they were children - cutting their meat, picking out their clothes, washing their backs - are bending to societal pressures to be the ultimate woman. "We've been taught that the way to show love is to do for others," she says.
Psychotherapist Tina Tessina blames it on the hormone oxytocin. "It makes women feel tender, close and cuddly to their newborn and other children, and maybe husbands, too." Tessina, author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting About the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage, says that endorphins can also contribute. "Endorphins flow heavily in new mothers, and [they] are the same hormones we feel when we connect to a husband. It's pretty easy to confuse the two."
And while some experts say this kind of nurturing can work for some couples, at least one former nurturer doesn't recommend it. "As a woman who mothered her husband for too many years, I can report it's about the worst thing a woman can do," says 55-year-old Linda Franklin. "It makes your man lazy, unwilling to be proactive in his own health care and for the most part a boy who refuses to grow up. It took me a long time to understand you can be compassionate and loving without being smothering and controlling."
Another good reason not to mother your husband: it confuses the hell out of the kids.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ame s 5-01-2008 @ 6:37PM
My late-husband had a horrible childhood and I felt compelled to make up for it when we got married. I spent 10 years doing everything just short of wiping his heinie (that came later in the marriage, when he was terminally ill) and, man, did I pay for it after our children came along. He once threatened me with divorce if I "made him go without sex for a month ever again." I had an infant and a 2 year old at the time. He didn't once pull "night time duty" with either of them, and just couldn't understand why I wasn't up for sex after living on 8 hours of sleep over the span of 5 days.
DON'T mother your husbands, newlyweds! You will pay for it later.
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Eva 5-01-2008 @ 8:37PM
My husband would never tolerate my belittling him by treating him like a child. I can't imagine doing so. I like making sure he has a clean house and clean clothes and food, but it's not a mothering thing, it's a wifely thing.
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Judy 5-01-2008 @ 10:13PM
I'm probably pretty far from it. I refuse to fold his clothes, because he wants everything done differently than the way I'm used to. He has the weirdest eating patterns, and so half the time he doesn't even eat with us, or doesn't eat the same food as us. Okay, I have been known to get him out of bed for work, but that's because if I didn't, we wouldn't get a paycheck.
Cutting a grown man's meat for him? I'll pass, thankyouverymuch.
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Jenni 5-01-2008 @ 10:52PM
Cutting his meat for him is one thing; but not even folding his clothes? There is a point where you can go too far treating him more like a child than a partner in marriage. However, there is a partnership in marriage and, no matter how old fashioned I sound, I enjoy doing things for my husband. This includes cooking him dinner every night, cleaning the house, and (heaven forbid) I even wash and fold his laundry. I put it away too!
Guess what? I'm not a stay at home wife either! I work a 40+ hours a week career (not job, career). I enjoy taking care of my husband. Do I baby him? Yup, sometimes. But this is in no way demeaning to me or him. We both enjoy it. I enjoy taking care of him, he enjoys being taken care of.
He also doesn't cross the line and demand it (that's a bad man). A man who goes to work and provides for his family deserves to be pampered a bit.
By the way, he has no problem doing things around the house for me, either. I just prefer to do the majority of it. It's what makes me feel like a wife! Something I cherish, even with the struggles of marriage.
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Judy 5-02-2008 @ 11:01AM
I don't think there's anything *wrong* with folding a man's clothes. I wash all the laundry, sort it out, and have no problem doing so. But when we got married and I would try folding and putting away his clothes, I always did his *wrong* and he ended up just taking it out and doing it over. Really, I've tried repeatedly, only to have him do it over, so what's the point? I fold my jeans and most of my pants and put them in a dresser - he hangs his. I always just folded the tops of the socks over to match a pair, while he bunches them up in a ball. He rolls his t-shirts; I fold. I would either have to adapt to his way, do half of the clothes one way, or he can just do his own.
He keeps his clothes in a separate room, anyway - in his home office - so I don't care. I hang his shirts and fold his jeans so they don't wrinkle, then put everything else in a clothes basket and set it in his room. I would fold his laundry if it wasn't such a hassle and a waste of time!
My first husband was a total freak about his clothes, and could not leave the house unless he had ironed his jeans. (My daughter says he is still like this.) It was always a source of dispute - he often wouldn't go anywhere with me unless I took off my jeans and let him iron them! Drove me NUTS! Maybe I refuse to do this husband's because of what a freak my first husband was, too.
Ethel 5-02-2008 @ 12:24AM
Recently when my husband asked where I wanted his lunch bag I told him about the statistic that a married woman does 7 hours of chores more after marriage then before (care of Newsweek), and that's not including what kids add. Then I suggested that the best thing to do when he gets home is put his dishes in the dishwasher.
Or as my grandmother told my mom when she got married "Don't start doing that now or he will always expect it." Nurturing is for the kids, loving and honoring doesn't include mothering. I will only work as hard as he does, and I expect the same from him, he's an adult and I am sure as hell not his mom. If he started expecting me to mother him it would turn my stomach, since as husband and wife we know each other in the Biblical manner - and the role of mother doesn't include that, at least not in my house.
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Judy 5-02-2008 @ 11:07AM
I also greatly enjoy cooking my husband dinner, but as I said, he has weird eating habits (he usually only eats one meal a day, so if he has a big lunch, then no dinner), and also often prefers to make dinner himself, because I make healthy stuff and he makes yummy stuff. It's an endless source of frustration for me, but I can't make him eat if he's not hungry, and he feels like he shouldn't have to change his habits. Nothing would thrill me more than to make a family dinner every night, truly, but I can't make him eat!
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Jennifer 5-02-2008 @ 1:01PM
I fix hubby his lunch(es) for him to take most days and wash out his reusable water bottles, do his laundry, and cook most of our meals (he tends to throw a bunch of stuf in a pan and calls it a meal, ick!) I do way more around the house than he does but I also work less than he does. Would he do more if I asked him, yes, but then I would feel guilty. I work 3 days a week for 7 hours each day, he works 6 days a week from anywhere to 8-14 hours so it works for us. Oh and yes I cut his meat up for him sometimes (especially for his lunches as he eats in the car and cannot cut it up while driving...) Trust me when I say that he in no way sees me as a mother figure to him.
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