According To Slate, Thanksgiving Is A “Sexist 1950s Nightmare”

I love Thanksgiving.

I love helping out in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and tearing bread for stuffing. I love dressing up to sit in the living room (I’m a dress girl. You won’t catch me DEAD in pants on a Holiday.) and gorge on pie. Most of all, I love being with the people I love.

Thanksgiving just feels like a moment carved out of better, simpler times….and I cherish those moments fondly.

The people at slate, however, see those moments as a “sexist 1950s nightmare.”

Why Thanksgiving turns your marriage into a sexist 1950s nightmare: https://t.co/unjedFN40v pic.twitter.com/syLeWYupEV

— Slate (@Slate) November 20, 2017

Because of course they do.

A few years ago, I spent most of Thanksgiving dividing up the furniture in the house for when the divorce came. My husband had just walked out the door with a six-pack of beer to hang out with a friend, leaving me with a kitchen explosion of vegetable peels and uncooked dishes, a scatter of recipes and cookbooks, a table yet to be set for 18, and one gigantic, raw bird. He could have that fucking blue-leather couch.

To say I was livid would be a gross understatement. Before we got married, we’d both promised each other we’d be partners and share our home responsibilities equally. As I furiously chopped Brussels sprouts, flung cranberries and miniature pumpkins on the table in a failed attempt at a Martha Stewart centerpiece, and jammed homemade stuffing into the turkey, my mind kept spinning: How had we gone so far off the rails?

Because it wasn’t just like this at Thanksgiving. We both worked full time in demanding jobs. Yet at the time, my husband didn’t know who the kids’ dentist was, had never made summer camp plans, never bought toilet paper, or filled out all those damn school and Girl Scout forms. He’d never clipped baby fingernails, nor had he been the one to frantically figure out how to get work done when a snowstorm, strep throat, or unexpected barf threw the whole jerry-rigged system of work and child care into disarray.

Good lord.

Did this woman consider speaking to her husband about needing and appreciating his help that day?

Or did she throw a fit and then go write an article for Slate?

I would say that my relationship follows pretty “standard” gender norms. On Thanksgiving I’ll shop, and cook, and pick centerpiece flowers, and make name cards… he’ll go pick up huge bags of ice, and rearrange furniture, and get the fireplace going before guests arrive…

Sure, some may call our roles “sexist,” but gender roles became such for a reason… I ENJOY making centerpieces… he ENJOYS chopping firewood… and we BOTH ENJOY helping each other.

The fact that her husband totally ditched isn’t 1950’s sexism… it’s a lack of communication in her own relationship. That’s on her, not on society, and certainly not on Thanksgiving.

The intense expectations that women should be responsible for creating the perfect holiday only whips all that low-level radioactive sludge of resentment that builds up over the years into a frenzy. If coming home to another workday of housework and child care is the second shift for women, as sociologist Arlie Hochschild called it, holidays like Thanksgiving are the third.

Women are still largely expected to do the “kin work” of keeping family together, planning and organizing the holiday magic as well as being responsible for taking everyone’s emotional temperatures, and soothing ruffled feathers. Sometimes this means paying attention to the little things, like including people in conversations so no one feels left out and doing whatever’s needed to keep family gatherings on an even keel.

OMG THE SEXIST HORROR.

I hate to say it… but I’m starting to get why the husband goes out and chugs beer before spending holidays with her…

It wasn’t until I experienced the holidays as a mother that I began swirling around the house in a sleepless flurry, barking at the kids, worrying about making the day special. My stress levels rising, I’d snap when my husband told me to just calm down. That’s when I realized I was acting just like my mother at the holidays.

As teens we used to make fun of her, I’m ashamed to say, at how wound-up and bitchy she could get: She’s such a martyr. She’s ruining the day. Why can’t she just calm down?But looking back, I realize now she was cooking, cleaning, polishing silver, washing wedding china, directing her bored and snarky daughters, and managing crises like broken dishwashers, while my dad watched football, asked for another scotch and water, and wasn’t expected to do more than cut the first few slices of turkey. (Mom did the rest.) I’m not sure she ever ate a hot meal on Thanksgiving or got more than a few hours of sleep. She certainly didn’t get any thanks.

SHE DIDN’T GET ANY THANKS? That’s YOUR fault. Thank your freaking mom.

It’s interesting that she can point this out in her mother, and instead of realizing it may be beneficial to sit down, take a deep breath, and put everything into perspective, she decides to blame our SEXIST SOCIETY.

On that miserable Thanksgiving a few years ago, when my husband returned sans beer, I said through gritted teeth that I wanted to enjoy the evening. But tomorrow, we needed to talk.

She sounds lovely.

Without even realizing it, we’d both fallen into the traditional gender roles we’d seen our parents inhabit, though I was also cramming full-time work into the mix. And if we wanted to stay together, and if we hoped for something different for our kids, we had to figure out how to change.

So we started small. We sat at the table and figured out how much work it takes to run the family, came up with common standards, and divided up the chores based on what we liked doing, not our gender.

We came up with rules, so we wouldn’t have to keep renegotiating or arguing.

Because in the age of feminism, the key to a healthy marriage is treating your husband like a college roommate.

Listen… I understand that relationships take work, compromise, and communication.

I can TOTALLY understand how it would be frustrating to be expected to do EVERYTHING while your husband drinks beer.

What drives me up the wall is the automatic drive to blame this on sexism.

Not everything is SEXIST….gender roles exist for a reason. If they don’t work for you… so be it. But don’t blame YOUR relationship problems on perceived sexism… because that’s simply a lack of personal accountability for your own marital mistakes.