I voted “no” because although I will occasionally get Mr. Legend a plate if circumstances warrant, it’s not something he’d ever expect me to do, and in fact he prefers to choose his own food. I’d make someone a plate as a nice gesture from one person to another, but I’d sure as hell never do it because someone thinks women should serve men.
If I’m cooking dinner and it’s something discrete (sandwiches, say, or huevos rancheros) where each person has a specific item made a certain way, I’ll make everyone’s plates for them. Usually they file past me to get them in turn, but I’ll occasionally serve each person as their plate is finished.
And although it is indeed very hot in here and I’d appreciate an ice cream-based treat (did I misunderstand, or is ice cream cake an option? because I love ice cream cake), I also would not - ever - say no to a brownie. Hey, and could you fix a plate for Mr. Legend, too?
In my father’s family the women always serve the men first at family dinners. I don’t know why but I think it’s an Eastern European thing. Also, in my mother’s generation most of the women didn’t work while the men worked doubles, triples and swing shifts. The women tended to pamper the men because the men did work long hard hours.
Then they serve the kids.
Near as I can tell the women themselves never really get to sit down and eat because they are always jumping up to get something for somebody else.
I didn’t do it and once my father jumped all over my ass for sitting down to eat without serving my (now ex) husband first. I said he has two arms and two legs and is more than capable of getting his own food.
That didn’t go over so well and later my (now ex) husband threw it in my face that even my father thought I was a horrible wife.
On my mother’s side the older generation of women do it.
I think most of the ones my age and younger don’t.
I think most of the men I’ve dated would probably be confused if I tried to fix their plates for them.
I answered “sometimes,” but really meant “only under very specific circumstances.” Those situations include things like Husband Has Mobility Issues (he’s had 5 knee surgeries since 2009, & is currently recovering from a bad wreck,) or Husband Is Holding a Sleeping Baby. He would fix me a plate if our circumstances were reversed.
That said, I do know a fair number of women, including relatives of mine, who behave like your family members. All of them are from the southern US, except for one Filipino in-law.
The men I date (or dated when I still dated) would be puzzled and/or insulted if I did.
How would I know what they wanted to eat?
No way am I waiting on a guy like that unless his legs are broken.
(wait that’s three).
Now, that said, if I’m at home, I would always bring a made up plate to my boyfriend when I got finished cooking. I was already up and messing with the food anyway, so why not? It wasn’t a like a “me Tarzan, you Jane” thing.
My husband is Indian, born in Malaysia. Somewhere in his lineage, his ancestors converted to Catholicism, but they hold on to many of their ancestral beliefs. I am American. I understand that cultural norms are what they are. My husband will probably never fully understand some American family values; viewed through the lens of his upbringing, we can seem callous and selfish. There are a few things that I still feel varying degrees of discomfort with, though I realize this is MY problem when I am a guest in his family’s home, and I try very hard not to let it show. One issue revolves around what seems to me to be an exploitative, almost cruelly casual disregard for servants (and indentured servants they truly appear to be). The other is the narrowly defined gender roles that relate to this thread. In my husbands family, table space is a premium when they all get together, so children are served first. Then men. Served, as in food placed in front if them, beverages fetched, condiments retrieved. Women eat what is left. I get the kids first mentality (and appreciate it because in my own family kids were served last, and invariably hot dogs to the adults steak dinners). But even when we go out, the women busy themselves with fetching for their men and hand-feeding their children (children defined as under 12) and by the time they turn to themselves, the food is cold and it’s leftover city. I feel selfish and greedy and sometimes resentful FOR feeling selfish and greedy that when I am hungry I want to dig the hell IN and leave the hapless lads to their own defenses.
Both are dying out, actually. I was the first woman of my generation to refuse to play server to her husband, but the other women in that generation realized that I had a point…the men were almost all able-bodied, and more than capable of fixing a plate. The Y chromosome does not render someone incapable of plating food. The other women had gone along with the tradition because everyone else did it. The women in that generation thought that I was crazy, but that I had some good ideas. The men still resent me because I made their wives/sisters get all uppity.
The smoking hangs on, in my generation, despite the cancers and heart problems of many. However, the younger generations are far less likely to smoke.
I think that everyone is going to be discussing cars and football until the world ends, though.
Controlling portions (especially of high cost/small amounts of food) is a valid reason to plate for people, IMO. Especially if certain ungrateful people tend to overload their plates and then not finish what they’ve taken, and if other people don’t get that treat, it’s just too damn bad.
I have to say that I have made plates for other people, not just my husband, when I felt the circumstances warranted it. At a Dopefest, I made a plate for a woman who was caring for an infant, for instance. When I visited my parents, we usually had something like a roast turkey and trimmings for one meal, and then generally everyone was on their own for lunches and snacks. So if I made myself a turkey sandwich, I’d ask if anyone else wanted one while I had the fixings out.
Shit. I just realized I did this for years. I was totally conditioned to it because it was the way things were always done at family gatherings. Oooh, I’m so mad at myself, I want to jump back in time and kick the plates out of his hand.
My husband was cool though. He did all the cooking at home and often waited on me hand and foot.
Every now and then my wife will do this for me, or I will do it for her. It is just us being nice to each other, or when the other is busy with something. We do this with most everything in our lives.
Well, never mind about straight women. Queer women can do this too. I’ll make a plate for my girlfriend if she’s very tired at dinnertime, so she can stay seated and I’ll bring her dinner. But that’s rare. I practically always let her take her own portions at dinner, which is usually how she prefers it. Breakfast is another matter. She doesn’t always have breakfast but when she does it’s something very simple like toast, cottage cheese, or cornbread, etc., and then I make a plate for her. That’s only at home. I don’t think I’ve ever made a plate for her when out somewhere.
Yeah, breakfast. This is my turf. My wife LOVES the breakfasts I cook and serve to her. Again, just being nice. I like doing it for her. I enjoy making her happy.
Oh, this thread just made me remember that when I was little, my mom always made the plates for everybody at the family dinner table. For dad & kids alike. Her method was to pick up the plate from her own place setting, make the plate, and hand it to the next person, who picked up their empty plate and handed it to Mom with one hand while taking the full plate from her with the other hand. We went around the table trading plates like that until everyone was served. Mom usually stood up to do this while everyone else sat.
Mom is a native Ohioan of Northern Irish Catholic ancestry, FWIW. I believe her reason for making everyone’s plate was not male chauvinism or any “tradition,” but rather to make sure everyone got a serving of the vegetables or whatever that she’d cooked. I remember whenever the dinner was Hong Kong-style chow mein, the eternal question was “On top of your noodles or next to them?” Well for one thing, she hasn’t served any chow mein in many, many years. And she stopped that plate-trading practice long ago, ever since we kids grew out of childhood. Now everyone just says “please pass the” whatever and helps themselves.
I’m reading this thread like it’s an anthropological study - the very idea of plating food for other people in a social gathering seems alien to my British self, where polite ‘middle-class’ society demands that people serve themselves. This way, people only eat what they like and can finish, as polite society also expects people to clean their plates.
It would depend on local customs, but the options are either “one person plates for everybody” or “anybody taller than the table makes up their own plate”. I might offer to bring something over or ask for something to be brought over along the lines of “I’m going to get another drink, anybody else want one?” but it wasn’t a special and specific thing for my SOs when I had them: they were taller than me, they could get their own plates!
The men I have dated have all been perfectly capable of looking after themselves. If they wanted someone to act like their mother, they should have stayed at home.
My man doesn’t like tight spaces, like crowded buffet tables, at receptions. So I do sometimes make a plate for him. Mostly because I want him to eat, and it increases the odds. Chances are he’s drinking and enjoying himself, food is a good idea. (Also he’s part just lazy!)
He’s a guy who gets busy at work and doesn’t eat all day! And he works hard, and ain’t a spring chicken. Sometimes when he’s up early to golf, returns and we go marketing, as we’re putting the groceries away and I’m thinking dinner, it turns out he hasn’t eaten all day! When we were younger I didn’t pay much attention to it. But I’m trying to impress upon him it’s an unhealthy habit, and as he gets older, (like now!), he should cut that shit out. He is unfailingly hardheaded and contrary by nature, change is not easy to achieve. Fortunately he has other charms, as they say. So often, making a plate for him just seems prudent to me.
Yes, I’ve noticed that about the servants, too. In my family I have people on both sides of the spectrum - people that have servants and people that are poor enough that they are servants or could be servants.
I’m not particularly at home with servants in the first place…sure, it sounds great until you realize they see everything you do and are into all your private stuff and know all of the messes you make. But it’s far worse in India, where the servants spend the entire day and sometimes even nights at the house and only go home when they have time.
The hostess is the only one really expected to do that in the families I come from. Everyone else just digs in, so there’s that at least. And the ranking goes from oldest to youngest before male to female, so first I’d serve my old granny (were she alive) before any man in the room. (Except of course kids under, say, 10, which are not really expected to sit and starve while Granny gets her food).
Huh…I’m a man, and I usually do the exact opposite at a buffet - my wife wants to stand around and talk to people, so I make her a plate so she doesn’t miss all the food for having been chatting.
Depends on the occasion. At a family party at someone’s home? Making him a plate benefits us both. I can bury my social awkwardness in a task, and he gets to sit right down and talk to whatever uncle he runs into first thatt we only see once in a blue moon. There aren’t going to be any surprises on the buffet, and we’ve been together long enough for me to be able to pick things I know he’ll like.
He’d do the same for me at the annual dinner for the trade group I’m in.
I wasn’t raised with any notion that I have to serve “my man.” I was however, raised with the idea that I should do nice things for people, and that one of the benefits of that is that some of them will do nice things back.
I struggle with the idea that anyone would be suggesting to younger women that they really OUGHT TO be taking care of their men.
I’m two generations removed from my southernness, and my grandmother was transplanted northward. Maybe that’s a factor, but she was very much in favor of keeping up with the times.
For the most part my wife would rather light her own hair on fire than be seen to be “serving” me. However, at gatherings of her family, where all the sisters have prepared side dishes, she will serve me a plate. On it will a liberal portion of whatever she has made and smaller portions from whichever sisters are currently in favour, and basically nothing from whichever sisters are currently “she’s such a bitch”. There are seven sisters.
The poll requires a savory treat option. Perhaps a soft pretzel with hot mustard and a beer? Yes that would be quite nice, thank you!