Epsilon hates french toast. He hates it with the full force of his fickle three year old psyche. Unfortunately, that is what I made for breakfast Saturday morning.
An hour of dithering and tantrums chase me from the dining room, leaving my partner at the mercy of the ritual meal time maelstorms. No longer outnumbered by adults, Epsilon turns on his father. "You are a bad Daddy."
"I am." My partner replies calmly.
"Other children at nursery have good Daddies."
"How are they good daddies?" This could be interesting.
"They stay at home and the mommies drop the children off to school." All parents learn lessions in not laughing at their children in the face of their ridiculous statements. My partner paid more attention than I did on the day they went over this detail in parent training school. He remains silent long enough for Epsilon to continue "The daddies clean the house. That is why our house is always dirty."
I would love to be a fly on a wall in the inside of my child's brain. I am not. A part of me would love to live in a world where men stayed at home to take care of the family's needs, and were reprimanded for being bad (dare I say, upity) for entering the work force.
My partner points out that there is a reason that Epsilon's model of the universe looks like a woman's fantasy of reversed inequality. In Epsilon's world, when we are both in town, I work from my partner's office, so we both take him into nursery. If we are both in town, and only one of us takes him into nursery, it means the other person is working from home. This usually implies that some portion of the work breaks are spent cleaning the house. He observes that he comes home to a cleaner house on days that one of his parents stays at home. He observes that most of his friends parents live together most of the time. He observes that usually only the mothers drop his friends off at school. Our smart little modeler and scientist puts together the data at hand and forms a picture of the world.
I do live in a feminist fantasy. Thank you, Epsilon, for pointing this out.
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