# I serve dinner to my husband. I'm still a modern woman. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 28, 2012, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633 "2012-07-28T01:38:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![yellowval](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/919ad9/32.png) [@yellowval](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowval)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633/61 "2012-07-31T12:50:14Z")
I cook dinner most of the time, but I usually don’t put it on the plate for him. We both serve ourselves so we can have the portions we want. In our house, whoever is home first starts dinner. At this point in our lives, that’s me. Since I cook during the week, my husband usually makes lunch and dinner for us on the weekends. We have a pretty equal division of duties in our house, all around, I’d say. ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633/62 "2012-07-31T13:29:42Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Whichever one of us happens to not be holding a screaming baby at the moment takes the lead in dinner-serving activities. Ayup. As for the OP, I think people get the mental image like the scene at the beginning of A Christmas Story, ie. “my mother had not had a hot meal to herself in 15 years,” where the woman is up getting the salt, serving everyone, and running around the kitchen while the man sits on his ass and asks for things. Add any family history to that (my grandfather didn’t get up to get himself ANYTHING at a meal) , and you end up with someone for whom serving the food seems like a particularly servile action. My husband and I often switch off cooking/ serving because one of us is baby wrangling, but I can totally see having a knee-jerk reaction to hearing that someone always serves her husband, depending on how it was worded. It’s a hot button issue for a lot of women, largely for reasons outlined by others already. For example, my husband didn’t even know how to run a washing machine when I met him. The days of women being expected to do _everything_ are simply not far enough behind us to be ignored (and in many cases aren’t behind us at all). It sucks. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633/63 "2012-07-31T13:30:56Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > And those women wind up like my friend who swears before all that is holy that one night she was in the bathroom trying to poop, and it was the longest she’d been off her feet all day, when she heard her husband calling for her. She yelled back she was in the bathroom, and he kept yelling for her to come because the kids needed her. When she came out to see who was bleeding or crying because so-and-so wouldn’t play with them or whatever other situation only Mommy could handle, the huge crisis was this: the kids wanted juice boxes and to have a video started for them, and he was too busy watching tv to deal with them. And from what I’ve seen of him over the years, I absolutely believe every word of it. This is the stuff of nightmares. Seriously, chills. ---
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633/64 "2012-07-31T15:11:02Z")
My wife is a SAHM. She cooks dinner and usually plates everything at the stove; if I’m done getting drinks for the 4 of us (depending on when I’ve walked in from work) I’ll carry our plates, and the kids carry their own plates to the table. Sometimes my wife serves my plate, but it’s not as if I’m sitting there with my napkin tucked into my collar and holding my knife and fork in my fists. We don’t keep pots or serving bowls on the table. Usually I’ll get my own seconds if I want them, but if she gets up to give the kids a second helping, she’ll serve me from the pot/bowl while I’m sitting at the table. She usually also cleans up while I help the kids with homework after dinner. She handles the majority of the housecleaning and all of the shopping. I make the money and pay the bills. She definitely handles the majority of our home life tasks, a fact that is not lost on me. This might not be convincing coming from me as opposed to her, but our system works for us. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633/65 "2012-07-31T15:15:42Z")
> [@oxpictus](#): > > Each married couple has their little indulgences that they offer to one another. My husband makes the bed while I am in the bathroom, in the morning. I put all his meds and vitamins/herbs in a disposable Dixie cup, and serve them to him. Neither action is servitude, they are some of the little “nice” things we do for one another throughout the day. He brings me flowers from the yard, I cook his favorite dishes. It is called, “Love”. We have been married almost 50 years. Maybe I’m getting old and sentimental, but that was a lovely post. _sniff_ 😉 ---
**Author:** ![perfectparanoia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@perfectparanoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perfectparanoia)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2012, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633/66 "2012-07-31T15:46:37Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > And those women wind up like my friend who swears before all that is holy that one night she was in the bathroom trying to poop, and it was the longest she’d been off her feet all day, when she heard her husband calling for her. She yelled back she was in the bathroom, and he kept yelling for her to come because the kids needed her. When she came out to see who was bleeding or crying because so-and-so wouldn’t play with them or whatever other situation only Mommy could handle, the huge crisis was this: the kids wanted juice boxes and to have a video started for them, and he was too busy watching tv to deal with them. And from what I’ve seen of him over the years, I absolutely believe every word of it. My best friend’s husband is like that. Completely incapable of doing anything for the kids. The bad thing is that whenever my husband is less than helpful he pulls out, ‘It could be worse, I could be \.’ Whoever makes dinner serves dinner. We don’t often make enough for seconds and if we do, they are for my husband’s lunch the next day. The only exception to this is if we are having something that people have to put their own together like Fajitas or Burgers. Then I will set everything out on the table while my husband mans the grill. It’s usually me who does it but that’s because my husband is doing something else productive. We don’t take a break until everything is done (cooking, clean up, homework, lunches made for next day, misc. chores). Our operating posture is that if one of us is working, so is the other one. Granted, that means I tend to do more since I work faster but it’s fair. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-serve-dinner-to-my-husband-im-still-a-modern-woman/629633.md?page=3)