Hapless "wives" of working women

By Mohinder Singh

I am acquainted with an American couple where the wife manages an advertising company in Manhattan while the husband dubs himself as "one hundred per cent pure housewife". Gary and Linda, with their two daughters aged eight and six, live next door to our son’s house in a New Jersey suburm.

Gary, a tall athletic man in early forties, is an architect by profession. He was laid off some five years back but hasn’t found a suitable opening since then — he showed me a thick file of rejection letters. Meanwhile, Gary is busy runing the house: he shops, cleans, cooks, washes, and irons. He helps the two kids with their homework and runs errands for them. And he looks after the house garden and the two cars.

Linda, a pert 30-plus, is out for work on weekdays from 6.30 a.m. to 7 p.m. or later in the evening (inclusive of commuting time to Manhattan and back). And she has to take frequent business trips out of town. In Gary she also finds "the most supportive wife one could hope to have when assailed by her work problems".

How is the arrangement working where Gary, the man, has given up everything manly, except his manhood?

Linda has her misgivings. "I worry about him," she confides. "It must be degrading for him, losing the status of a breadwinner."

With Gary I had more detailed discussions. Actually we have something in common. I’m also a retired official with a working professional wife.

Gary seems to have adjusted rather well to the "housewife" role. "I’d be happy to stay home the rest of my life", says he. He does miss the excitement of office, immersed in routine household tasks. But what embarrasses him more is what others would think of him — the smirk on a salesman’s face when he answers the doorbell wearing an apron.

On closer questioning Gary admits to a declining interest in marital sex since he has been home. "Maybe, Linda is too tired when she returns from work", he ventures as an explanation. But he doesn’t deny a certain loss of libido in him. The loss of breadwinner role and the consequent loss of authority as head of the family is known to provoke a crisis of masculinity. Gary concedes he feels so frustrated at times he takes out his anger on the dog, even the kids, followed immediately by feelings of intense remorse.

What’s happened to Gary and Linda is happening to innumerable couples in America and Europe. The traditional areas of male employment — factories and manufacturing establishments — are shrinking, while new jobs are being created in female-dominated service and information technology industries. And this trend seems set to accentuate with time.

The same may well happen in developing countries, too. It’s already begun in South Korea and Indonesia. Due to intensifying international competition for exports, coupled with liberalisation, the spectre of industrial layoffs and male unemployment is looming large. Even where governments come up with social welfare grants for those rendered unemployed, the fact of their being without a job and so stuck at home would remain a stark reality. On the other hand, more and more women are continuing to join in offices and services industries.

Another category are husbands who have retired — many of them bosses in their day — but their wives (often younger by several years) are still at their jobs. And then there are young men who stay on with their families unemployed — the new category of "unemployable, unmarriageable males", while their sisters living along side may be going out to work.

In the family — the traditional bastion of male power and prestige — the emerging financial independence of women means that they are no longer prepared to take the nonsense they used to. And on top the widespread impact of feminism. No wonder it’s mainly women who are applying for divorce when they deem the marital conditions intolerable.

But what about men without work? Their crisis of masculinity is real. They have been brought up as men in the home and at the workplace. And to men any change in the traditional scheme of things comes terribly hard. The result is often anxiety and depression. Psychologically it’s deemed far easier for a "housewife". A certain inflexibility is in-built into what it means to be a man.

There’s no escaping the situation where many husbands and fathers could become victims of economic redundancy. The experience can be quite traumatic because men tend to lose themselves in their work. But when they lose their job, they have no identity left.

Will men change to cope with the unfolding scenario? John H. Moore raises these questions in his book But What About Men? (Ashgrive Press). Men have to come up with some constructive, creative ideas.

Apparently, no one expects a spectacular changeover from something that has gone on for centuries. It could be a slow, trial-and-error process. Anyway, a successful outcome would call for a great deal of understanding and support from working women for their "wives".