I saw this on the MSN odd news bit. There a group guided by a book trying to encourage Christian men to get off their butts, interact more with their families, rescue those damsels in distress and act more "manly". They want them to use Scot patriot William Wallace AKA Braveheart as an example.

I'm all for men taking a little more responsiblity. If that's manly, super! Not sure I need to be rescued but I'd sure like somebody who could walk next to me and shoulder a bit of the load. Seems like a good idea as long as these guys are helping the appropriate damsels, not painting their faces blue nor exposing their genitals at whim. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

Strange - the real Wallace was a terrorist mercenary, and killer of women and children.

In England we await the portrayal of the IRA as a childrens charity by Hollywood too <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

Its true that most Christian men are like Ned Flanders than Rambo.

Maybe it takes a compelling event like an A to elicit a heroic response from some ?

At least you don't live in the land of the politically correct. Personally, I think most men are like Ned Flanders.

Maybe it takes a traumatic event to make most people do anything. My WH says how long he'd been unhappy but didn't do anything about it until the OW opportunity came along. And I certainly didn't focus on my marriage until THAT happened.

Fully agree GG.

As a male....I get a tad miffed about stuff like that.
Not at you Grapegirl.

Just that:

I work 40hours a week. used to work more (60+ hours per week) before d-day.
90% of the time I did/do the following:
Bathe 3 children.
Feed 3 children dinner.
Clean up after dinner.
Get kids ready for and put kids to bed.
Do homework with kids.
Pack lunches for following day.
Get clothes out for school next day.
Clean up house after kids goto bed.
When WW is home I cook dinner most times still.

Oh, and I'm pretty much the soul disiplinarian. That means, I take care of all the kids needs, yell at them when they are bad....and they run to Mommy for support.
I got sh** end of the stick


FWW would work 2nd shift and carry on her affair, come home to clean house, allow kids to trash house during the day, then head off to work leaving a mess.

not to say she didn't do anything with the kids. It was just the "fun" stuff! Leaving all else for me.


I have the stereo typical comments made about men round the house! I would stay home and take care of the "domestic" stuff in a NY minute!
My wife even remarks watching me get the kids around in the morning is like watching a conductor direct an orchestra. Seemless. Fluid.
Having all their ducks in a row. No wasted time. Just Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bob & GG,

I don't know who Ned Flanders is (sorry for my ignorance).

I don't agree about an A and men doing domestic work round the house.

I suppose male nurses are gay also?

While in my parents home an in-laws home things are this way....In my own home they are not. Nor are they in many of the homes of men I know!
I can think of 6 or 7 right off hand.
While I can think of X2 that are more stereotypical, I think stereotypes need to be checked at the door round.

Because where does it stop? First sexual. Then racial. Then national.

my two cents anyway

DD you ARE braveheart - the kind of man Christian men should be !Domestic support is GREAT from a husband and father ! Its been one of my Plan A improvements to do MORE of that !

Ned Flanders is a useless drippy Christian in the Simpsons cartoon.

BTW all the male nurses I know except one ARE gay ! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

DD, Ned Flanders is the nice but not too motivated guy on the Simpsons. Not Homer, his neighbor.

In life, I think 10% of the people do 90% of the work. I admire you for working fulltime and then doing all the child care at night. It's rough. Shift work is also hard on a family. In a lot of families, taking care of kids becomes the woman's job. For the past 20 years, I've raised our kids, supported H's work demands and needs, run and fixed things in the house, done the gardening, kept the extended family together, driven A LOT of miles, attended countless practices and games, spent hours helping out in classrooms and helped maintain the intrastructure of our community by being involved in different organizations. I don't begrudge a minute of it nor do I think of it as "woman's work". It's a job somebody has to do and I'm glad I could.

I don't think male nurses are gay. I don't think female executives are gay. I don't think stay-at-home-dads are weird. I don't think parents who connect with their kids are weird.

I think parents, not just men but women too, who work long hours, grab their kids out of daycare at the last minute, throw something not particularly healthy in the microwave and then plop down on the couch in front of the TV are making bad decisions.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Strange - the real Wallace was a terrorist mercenary, and killer of women and children. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Watch it man...thats my peeps you are talking about. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

Ned Flanders? Rambo?

How about a nice mix to get the job done? Just don't let Ned out very often. {darn left handed comic book characters}

grapegirl,

I love braveheart movie but I am more of promisekeeper <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> , look at #4 ...

-rh-

The problem....and I've thought this through many times:

It is a choice between family, careers, and money.
As parents we have to pick one! Not two.
We can try to balance a few..But in the end it is a very fine line.

My wife and I traded: Tag teamed. I worked days, she nights. The reason? Balance money and children. We are totally against daycare. The idea of a stranger raising our children didn't sit well. Still doesn't.

What happened. We failed in our marriage. BUT! We had money. We have healthy children.

You can pick career and money? Then your kids are raised by someone else. You spend more time with co-workers than your kids.

You see the problem. Today, if we allow ourselves to accept the programming that we must keep up with the Jones' we set our selves up to fail. Lack of money sends both parents out of the house.

I've never watched the Simpsons. Hence I've got no clue about Ned Flanders. You said Ned Flanders, all I could think of was the novel about Ned Kelly. Not the same thing.

I don't let the kids watch much TV. A couple of hours a week. Mostly it's movies we check out from the library. That way I know what they are watching. Myself and my wife are pretty much the same..very little TV, a movie or two a week.

Grapegirl: I do think quite often one person in a relationship picks up the slack for the other. The whole giver/taker thing. In general, women must give to their children. So, it follows that that will flow over to their husbands.

My wife started working again six weeks or so after our youngest was born. She's 4 now.
The odd thing. The kids are not totally comfortable when we are both home together. They don't know who to goto to get their needs met.
See the problem

Anyways I'll get off my soap box.

Grapegirl:

(1) Whatever happens in your M may or may not apply to others. Blanket statements about "all men" is sexism. The vast majority of the men I know work hard, support their family and do their share in taking care of the family. Some men are incompetent fathers just as some women are incompetent mothers.

Perhaps you should get out more.

(2) As an observation, it sounds like your M is extremely polarized. You can't see anything that your H brings to the M. If so, then why not get rid of him?

<small>[ January 20, 2005, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: Jimmy Mac ]</small>

What's being Christian - or being of any religious, political, ethnic, or gender persuasion - got to do with being a good parent or a good spouse?

As we can see over and over and over again on this forum > not much. No guarantees and no immunity from selfishness and recognition of right from wrong.

Being a good parent or good spouse has to do with personal values and practice of them, regardless of their origins, whether externally ascribed or internally acquired.

Gents I think you are being defensive when GG isn't attacking you.

The MSN report alludes to the fact that turning the other cheek and meekness seem to be the primary attribtes of many or most Christian men, and that they should get angrier and live harder, still within the Christian idiom.

I agree with that, at my old church almost all the men were insipid holier than thou types who would pray for robbers not throw them out of their house AND pray for them.

Christianity should BLOOM manhood, not cripple it IMO.

Bob Pure:

Try reading the posts...GG: "I think most men are like Ned Flanders."

"Meek Christian men" are currently in Iraq killing and being killed. In the past 100 years, two major wars resulted in tens of millions of deaths caused directly by Christian men killing other Christian men and women.

And, Christian men, on the orders of a Christian president, dropped the only two nuclear weapons ever used in wartime.

So, you want Christian men to be even more aggressive?

try reading the posts

Thats good advice, it should help me on here thanks.

I'm flinging any mud at anyone here:

Just at generalizations and sterotypes!

The first being Bob, you should get to know more male nurses! They aren't all gay! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

Men do perform domestic tasks. I do. However, I'm not a nurse nor am I gay! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />

JM: If any of us were to look at what our fathers or grandfathers did for the marriages 40 years ago...How similar would it be?

Today, things have changed (well people are still killing in the name of the tooth fairy or santa clause...or whatever), A good marriage requires 50-50 effort for all tasks:
money, child care, house work, or shopping.
Yes one person will pick up slack...that is our nature....

Geeze Jimmy Mac, I certainly touched a sore spot on you. Okay, calling most men like Ned Flander was a bit unbalanced. There's also many, many Ned Flander-ish women. Go to any organization and you will see that a small amount of people do most of the work. People with drive, intelligence, values and commitment are real gems. Many of us are so strung out by life in general that we just kind of slide by best we can.

Believe it or not, I do get out a lot. I've seen good parents and bad parents and indifferent parents. IMHO, our society does a poor job training people to be parents. When my kids were very small, I had the good fortune to be a part of a program that taught people to parent. (Unfortunately, my husband decided not to be a part of that experience.) Moms, dads, grandparents and nannies learned how to interact with kids, how to set limits and encouraging children. I thank God for what I learned there. Because of it, my kids are fabulous kids.

As for my WH, I think constantly about the balance of our marriage. He works at a difficult, demanding but fulfilling profession. I think he'd work a lot of hours whether I was home with the kids or not. Having one parent home made everybody's life easier. What you don't know is that until about 5 years ago, my H was physically handicapped. Living with someone with a stressful job, constant pain and limited mobility is very difficult. I can see that after he had his hip replacement surgeries, we didn't work hard enough to change the patterns that had been established.

Now, about the amount of time men spend doing housework, do a google on housework statistics. You might find it interesting. The data isn't from yesterday but I don't think things have changed much. The numbers from Japan, the UK, Canada and the US are fairly consistent. According to the statistics (and do bear in mind that they are just statistics) women in general do 22 hours of housework per week verses 10 for men. This ratio did not change whether women worked out of the home or not. However, most women put in less hours at a paid job. I sincerely hope that the housework thing is moving towards a better balance. Men who do do their share or more deserve kudos and big hugs.

Okay?