Mind Moves Marie Murray"Every woman needs a wife."This is the cry of a stressed, exhausted, commuting mother of three young children.
Her working day begins at 5am and ends at 10pm, when she folds the children's clothes and lines up breakfast utensils, baby's things, school bags and lunch boxes in readiness for the morrow. She turns on dishwasher, washing machine, tumbler and every technological aid she possesses to assist her in her wifely role.
She makes her weary way to a maximum of seven hours' slumber: that is, if she is not likely to be awoken later by a baby's cry, an infant's night terror or her husband returning from his night out with "the lads".
So is this woman's wish for a wife a curious cry for help? Is it a bizarre desire, or simply wanting to receive from another person what she herself provides?
Ask any woman to quantify a wife's work and most enumerations of those traditional "duties" are so extensive that no self-respecting job applicant would ever apply unless they were in a situation of dire necessity or masochistic desire.
Nor is the wish by women for "a wife" a new phenomenon. Back in the 1970s, the famous publication by Judy Syfers, I Want a Wife, was one of many conscious articulations by women that this role, which was their childhood dream, adolescent hope and the adult achievement, was a con. The myth that "they lived happily every after" consigned women to roles of domestic labour: cleaning up after everyone else, cooking, caring and child-rearing free of charge.
They realised that employment outside the home merely meant double-jobbing as a "superwoman" - that manic Stepford-style perfectionist who had time to rear six children, maintain an immaculate home and throw faultless dinner parties, while being groomed meticulously with unbroken fingernails despite growing herbs and victuals in the back garden.
In this country, married women who strayed into employment in the 1970s when the marriage ban, which previously prevented them from doing so, was lifted, realised that in order to work outside of home, they needed "a wife" - someone prepared to provide unpaid domestic work and curtail their own occupational choices, career advancement, economic independence and personal power. Someone to look after them. A person who would take on the role of wife.
Women want a wife because a wife provides the time, support and opportunity for them to become economically independent, professionally successful, socially interactive and emotionally supported.
After all, "the wife" has the children, gets up at night to feed them, drives them to and from school, attends parent-teacher meetings, dental and doctor appointments and stays at home when a child is sick. A wife brings children to get the new shoes, school uniforms and books. She helps with homework and transports children to ballet, clarinet, rugby, hurley and other children's birthday parties, for which she wraps the brightly coloured gifts.
The wife runs back to school with the forgotten lunch box or PE gear and collects the child injured in the playground. She organises costumes for Halloween, and makes the angel's wings for the nativity play.
Women want a wife because she will clean the loo and bath, replace the wet towels thrown on the floor, do the kids' washing and ensure they always have something freshly ironed to wear.
She will organise babysitters and get the children fed, bathed, dressed and ready for bed so they can relax after a hard day's work. Women want a wife because she will entertain their friends, write thank you and congratulatory cards, remember the names of their clients' husbands, wives and children, send flowers to those who are ill and remind them to call their mothers on their birthdays.
Of course, men will rightly protest that men are equally condemned to a different tyranny: that of being "breadwinner", without choice, without reprieve, without the option to work at home. They will say that their role denies them the privilege of being with their children as much as they would wish. Where is paid paternity leave for them?
Nobody considers the emotional impact on them when the new baby arrives home. Nor do they have the option to go in and out of paid employment in the way their wives can, and everyone looks askance if they decide to be the economically dependent home parent for a while. Many men protest that they earn what others spend with utter disregard for the sacrifices that have gone into earning that money. They say they are made to feel like socially inept, emotionally bungling, inconsequential financiers of family life. Besides, "things are changing" and wives are "helped" more with household tasks than ever before.
But "helped" is the operative and offensive word to most women who must also work outside of home. For one is "helped" with what is one's primary responsibility; one "shares" what is of equal liability. Appreciative inquiry into the roles of husbands and wives is required because until there is equitable sharing of tasks there will always be aggrieved men and women desperately in need of a wife.
mmurray@irish-times.ie
Marie Murray is director of psychology St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview.