My mother’s story
My mother is a computer engineer working at Bank of America. She works eight hour days, cooks, and tutors my younger sister (who has learning disabilities) every single day. She wakes up at six and sleeps at twelve, and is occupied non-stop. My dad, on the other hand, works approximately two hours a day “building a company” while taking up no other formal job. Our family is relatively well-off and so him not working does not affect us financially. However, what bothers me the most is how he still deems himself to be the head of the household. Even though my mom makes all the money she still is expected to ask my dad for “permission” before making any large transactions. She is still expected to serve him food (like a waitress) at the dinner table. She is still expected to raise the children (and if we ever make any mistakes she is the one that gets blamed). One day I ask my father, “Why can’t Mom take some rest while you work?”. Later that day, he got really made at my mom for “instilling” this kind of thinking in me because apparently she is responsible for how I turn out even though I see her for less than ten minutes a day. To put this into perspective, my father has been trying to build his company for over fifteen years. In the first couple years, he would work twelve hour days trying to get his project to work, but now he works a couple hours a day (on days he feels like working) and spends the rest of the day on the couch or driving. My aunt, who is married to my dad’s brother and is facing a similar issue in her house, is completely right when she says, “We got married in order to serve as free labor for them”. In this society, many (men) allude to the vast improvement in female rights over the years. But I feel that sexism still exists until women are deemed as equals to men.