I get the message but 2 shows shown there don’t fit that bill. Peggy was probably more useless than Al in Married with children. And Phil was actually a decent husband in Modern family. It’s right about Everybody loves raymond though. Not sure what she saw in him.
The adult responsibilities need to be shared fairly. If someone is a stay at home partner, they should get more house chores to compensate for the working person. Otherwise the working person gets saddled with work, childcare and house chores and no time for themselves.
This arrangement generally does not acknowledge that caring for children is work.
Oh you’re “staying home with the kids” all day? You should be the full time maid and cook to make up for that. And obviously be my unpaid therapist as well because well, emotional labor doesn’t count either!
That’s fair, but then I know a few couples with one breadwinner and children in school or no children but the partner with no job expects the chores to be split 50/50.
To me, hours worked counts for hours of chores. So a partner without a job and no kids to watch better be doing 40-50 hours of chores a week before wanting to see the working partner do anything around the house.
This arrangement generally does not acknowledge that caring for children is work.
how? Since I specifically put :
Otherwise the working person gets saddled with work, childcare and house chores and no time for themselves.
I’d take that deal to never have to go to work again.
And if the kids are in daycare for 8 hours a day? You got any kids? Because I do.
Also, once the person who works outside the home comes home are they expected to take over the childcare completely while the other relaxes or is it split evenly when home? Working all day and ignoring things when getting home is bad when the other continues their work into the evening and the reverse is as well.
The main thing is that over the course of a day their contributions are balanced out.
Also, I seem to remember the only thing Peggy nagged Al for was sex.
But she also constantly emotionally abused him, made fun of his manhood, of his earning potential, of his sexual prowess, of his ability to be a father, witnessed him constantly suffering, somehow made that his fault, and yet expected sex from the man, expected him to please her.
Like, he’s not any kind of a role model. His character was intentionally written to be despicable. But at the same time, like, holy fucking shit, he would have been so much happier if he had just divorced her. She would have been so much happier if she had just divorced him. It was entirely toxic. there are no redeeming qualities from any of the characters in this show.
I thought he divorced her, started a cabinet company and then remarried a lady from Columbia…
Did you come away from Married With Children having expected a normal family? The joke is that they’re a dysfunctional clusterfuck.
I watched it for, uh, two other reasons…
Of course not - they’re responding to OP’s incredibly myopic post with valid context.
If Peggy wants Al share in the housework, Peggy can get a job.
I think Fresh Off The Boat probably doesn’t fit either; I only saw a few episodes, but none of them tried to present a nagging wife trope.
He runs a business (restaurant) all day and the kids help with housework
Ah yeah haven’t seen that.
Basically what I came here to say. Message is good but a couple of the examples might not be the best.
If anything, Al was the “nagging wife” in MwC. Also Jefferson, too lol.
Peggy: Aaaal, I want sex!
Al: Ah. No, Peg.
Audience applause.
Love me some Peggy, but I wouldn’t exactly agree that she and Al belong in this image.
I so recall an episode of her just eating chocolates in front of the tv in a scene. They are awful people mean at least Al worked and kept his job to afford a house with two kids (wait sounds like Simpsons). But both are kinda awful which is why it’s a sitcom, otherwise it’d be boring and no one would remember the show. Flushes toilet
Guess the house looked kept well too of course so not just her or anything. Yay for TV sets (not the actual tvs I mean)
I mean, you could argue that the “useless husband” trope is just the “nagging wife” trope re-workwd to demonize men instead of women. Both are just as bad.
Sitcoms are bad in general. Turn off the laugh tracks and you’ll find they aren’t funny at all. The characters have to be designed to be shitty and unreasonable people, because it’s incredibly difficult to write a story with characters that make reasonable and empathetic decisions without it being boring. Dumbing people down into tropes makes it cheap and easy to crank out episode after episode after episode.
If you pay attention you’ll also notice that these shows tend to only have maybe 100 unique plots, and after that they just repeat. And these shows steal from each other. It’s similar to how so many anime’s have a “beach episode” or “bathhouse episode”.
it’s incredibly difficult to write a story with characters that make reasonable and empathetic decisions without it being boring
Nah, not exactly. Yeah ever story needs some conflict or adversity to overcome, but if the characters are healthy and empathetic then the conflict has to be external. But that doesn’t work so well for shows that revolve around a small set of insular characters and their at-home relationships. External conflict fits better with adventure stories and crime solving and whatnot.
Dunbing people down into tropes makes it cheap and easy to crank out episode after episode after episode.
Yeah for sure. TVTropes.com has ruined so much of this for me lol (warning if you’re not familiar, it’s a worse timesink than Wikipedia)
It’s also a little scary in retrospect that a lot of the men can be used very clearly to demonstrate what undiagnosed, untreated neurodivergence looks like. Looking at this fucking retard with executive function problems! Isn’t he a shithead? He’s so lucky that this woman with undiagnosed, untreated neurodivergence manages to mask her way through life and only unload her frustrations on the one person in the world who loves her unconditionally. Let’s have an episode where she is unable to contribute to their normally working relationship and watch as his complete lack of support and zero close friends illustrates his utter dependence on structure and routine.
I mean, yes, Hollywood writing for ongoing series is often repetitive. You literally have a “procedural” genre where they go through the same basic structure with almost every episode. Some sitcoms are quite bad. Some are pretty funny (and don’t involve laugh tracks). There’s a pretty big difference between your average multi-camera sitcom and single camera sitcom. But at the end of the day there’s just good shows and bad shows and those don’t always correlate with popularity.
Superstore is a pretty good recent sitcom, I don’t remember it having a laugh track.
The concept of “mental load” blew the cabin doors of my brain wide open. This isn’t the comic that did it for me, but it’s as decent one about how men are often socialized to be basically useless outside of a few specialized roles: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic
That is a good perspective on a majority of hetero marriages. Key take aways is communication is so important in relationship. My spouse thanks me a lot that I’m not “one of those husbands” and actually when I was putting my son to bed last night he said he’s glad I’m his dad and I’ll quote “because if I was a lazy dad he’d tell me to get out so he could have a hardworking dad like me.” He doesn’t see me at work, he meant at home.
I know there are other dads out there that do strike a balance in the home. So we (men) are not all hopeless. But I’m not ignorant to not recognize the vast majority are big children looking for a mommy instead of a wife. In the example of what my son said above, parents need to be examples of what is right. He sees me cooking, cleaning, and doing everything around the house. Also participating in his life and being present for him. That’s what matters most.
Anyhow everyone with children should be aware of these issues and do better than their “traditional” parents. Break the cycle. I don’t want my kids relying on another person to do basic life functions, that’s a very pathetic way to be.
I don’t want my kids relying on another person to do basic life functions, that’s a very pathetic way to be.
Totally, I have a friend who really struggling because her two boys are now becoming teenagers and all they’ve ever seen is her doing virtually all the work around the house, so naturally they’re now resistant to being expected to step it up in the chore department. And it’s not like their father can really admonish them, because they’re just copying his lead.
I get that it can be a struggle to overcome your upbringing, but you’ve got to try.
I loved Kevin Can Fuck Himself for exactly this reason. We get to see the useless husband absolutely fall apart over the course of the show.
SO UNDER RATED!!! I loved that show despite resisting / not getting it when it first came out. It was not very well marketed. But I get it, it is SO subversive and hard to describe in a compelling way. I struggle to convince people to watch it, and when they do they turn it off in like 30 seconds because “it’s just another sitcom” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Keep watching!!!
This show left my streaming service after I watched 2 episodes.
Such a unique way they filmed it. I gotta find this again and watch the whole thing
Okay, I’m probably not the target audience here because I don’t watch sitcoms. Here’s the thing I don’t like about the husband’s share of the housework thing. I don’t feel like it’s fair if I share the housework but my spouse doesn’t share the yard work. It’s a partnership, and we need to divide responsibilities. If we don’t, it’s extra on me as the husband. Sometimes, I have the capacity to take that on. Other times, I don’t and I need my spouse to fill in for me.
Now here’s the thing. If we don’t have a yard, I should absolutely divide the housework because it’s otherwise not fair to the spouse.
But, like I was reminded when I got married, marriage isn’t 50/50. Sometimes it’s 40/60. Sometimes it’s 0/100. You put in what you got because it’s a partnership.
It is also very hard to have a realistic estimation of how much work your partner is actually doing, because obviously they are doing it and not you. So it is somewhat obscure to you and their share appears smaller to you. If you want to share work equally you should be prepared to do what you perceive as ~70% of the work load.
On another note: I feel like yard work is a strange example because in most cases work in the garden is a rather voluntary thing. Nothing bad usually happens if a garden is neglected a bit, unless you are relying on it for produce. Granted, things can overgrow, maybe a bush is removed rather sooner than later, but the household is just a huge never ending chain of responsibilities and important garden work is rather sporadic. Household work just needs to be done to ensure there is food on the table and clean clothes in the wardrobe.
Previous homeowner made some questionable planting decisions. It is a lot of maintenance. I’m working up to just removing them all. If I can get THAT done, I’m happy doing all the yard work and splitting the house work. Maybe my situation is unusual though
“If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.” -Emma Goldman
I wish I was that eloquent. Well put
A fucking Emma Goldman quote in the wild? My GOD, I love Lemmy
Watch Kevin Can Go Fuck Himself. Especially if You like Anny Murphy of Shitt’s Creek fame.
