21/09/2026
The husband made the table.
The wife crocheted the shade cloth, cooked the lunch, took care of manners at the table and washed the dishes.
“Inequality”, today’s generations yell.
Except in the yelling, the heart of the women embitters and what was natural flow and relationship becomes bargaining and sanctions.
And relationships haemorrhage over how unfair it all is.
Meanwhile another generation grows with social politics where there was cohesion.
And modern psychology tells us this is better for children…
My solution was to dismiss the ever present cultural mantra about how unfair it was for me (and believe me, I had my share of difficulties) and get on with it for my children’s sake.
I would sing when I felt burdened, take us all into the weather, into nature, when there had been difficulty; but basically my method was keep doing all the things.
Modern psychology calls this unhealthy coping.
I can tell you that you can cry while still doing the dishes! (Adds to the detergent!)
You can let out frustration under the sound of a vacuum cleaner!
You can jump start a tired soul by jumping in the ocean. And all of these things help children see how to manage their own emotions instead of this dangerous idea that you must remove them from any discomfort, thereby lowering resilience of whole generations!
I say drop the bar on expectation of relationship and raise it by getting on with life’s chores and you will find a lot of the big issues dissipate!
They don’t go away, they just become less important.
Happy wife, happy life was always a simplistic, stick figure image of the truth that a wife’s general state of mind will profoundly affect the family. And too many of us keep believing that we have to put ourselves first when really our deepest satisfaction comes when our family’s needs are met and that, ironically, produces long lasting happiness in a woman.
