Carmen wanted to be submissive; that was one side of her traditionalism. She also wanted Frank to earn the bread while she tended the home; that was the second side. When I asked Carmen what she would do with a million dollars, she laughed raffishly and began naming all the pieces of furniture she’d buy and describing the grand apartment house she’d buy for her mother. Then, slowing down, she carefully explained how the money would not affect the separation of male and female spheres. She said, “With that kind of money you would have teas, coffees, showers, benefits to go to. Then I’d have the kids over for Kool-Aid. I’d just be Mom.” If they had a million dollars, and if Frank didn’t have to work, would he stay home? I asked. “Absolutely not! The children would not respect him if he stayed home. He’d hate himself and after a while he’d hate me. And if I didn’t want to do the housework, I’d pick on him to do it. At least he should get in the car and play golf for two hours, do something outside the house.”
But back in the real world a major, practical problem arose: How could Carmen manage all of the second shift? After her first baby was nine months old, Carmen started caring for other children in her home again. Despite her views on women, her needs were no different from those of other working mothers: she des-
perately needed Franks help with the work of their household. But this need aroused strongly contradictory feelings.
On one hand, she really needed as much help at home as any working mother. On the other hand, the house was supposed to be “her turf.” She said she didn’t care much about Franks sharing the second shift—his help might be nice but this sharing was not the great issue feminists were making of it these days. Besides, it might seem dominating of her, she felt, to make him help in the kitchen. Indeed, to the extent that he was not in the kitchen, she was proud. When Carmen described their division of housework, it was as if she had to concede how much Frank actually helped. She interpreted his involvement in her housework as a failure on her part, and in this respect she differed from the egalitarian women who boasted about all their husbands did at home. Carmen described Franks contribution to shopping, paying the bills, cleaning up, in the manner of a confession: “Okay, Frank and I are equal in the sense that we do some of the housework together.” (After saying this, however, she began to talk about the dangers of sexual equality. “Equality” made a wild leap to “competition” and another long leap to antagonism and divorce.)
How was she to manage the contradiction between the desire to keep Frank out of the kitchen and the need to have him in it? First of all, she left her official submissive persona intact by continuing to claim that Frank was “really the boss.” But she also “solved” her problem by putting an old female custom to new use: she played helpless. It was a stroke of genius; playing helpless allowed her to remain the submissive wife at the front door while also bringing Frank into the kitchen through the back. The only cost of this strategy might be the opinion others held of her competence, but that wasn’t a problem. She was happy to be seen as helpless. She never asked Frank for help directly, so when he did help, it wasn’t because it was his role, but because Carmen couldn’t do it. Trank cooked the rice when he got home from work—not because he liked to do it, not because he was especially good at it, but because he could cook the rice better than Carmen could.
Frank paid the bills because Carmen paid the wrong ones first. Frank sewed (when Carmens mother didn’t sew for them) because Carmen couldn’t sew. Frank worked the automatic teller for Carmen because she “always forgot” the account’s code number. Frank drove them on shopping trips because Carmen couldn’t drive a car. Responding in this way to one calculated incompetence after another, Frank had come to do nearly half of the second shift. Perhaps Carmen drew the line there, or maybe Frank did. Half would have been unseemly.
According to them, Carmen did “nearly all” of the housework and child care and Frank “just helped.” It was true that Frank “just helped,” because Carmen was still responsible in the “woman’s” sphere. But it was not true that Carmen did “nearly all” of the housework and child care. The myth that Carmen was “helpless” saved Frank’s old-fashioned male pride: he could now enter the kitchen as an act of chivalry, “to help a lady out.” And it saved Carmen’s old-fashioned “female pride”: she could tacitly request that her husband share her feminine terrain without her being any less of a woman. The myth of female helplessness wouldn’t have worked for all traditional men, and it would have appalled egalitarian men. But it was useful to Carmen and Frank.