(1)Both men and women get sick or feel bad. (2)Both men and women complain when they feel sick or feel bad, because (3) Both men and women think.that sometimes the attention of another man or woman would make them feel better. It’s important to recognize that we are all individuals, and while you might easily shrug off your intolerable (to me) inability to breathe easily when I have it, my chronic back or foot pain might, if visited upon you, result in similarly (to me) inexplicable complaining on your part. If the problem is that you feel unwilling to take care of your spouse when s/he’s sick, that’s one thing. If the problem is that you aren’t getting equal treatment from your spouse when you’re sick, that’s another. If you think.there’s an inherent difference between men and women in tolerating discomfort or being solicitous of a spouse’s needs, that’s horseshit.
Years ago there was a cartoon of a little boy in his jammies looking into his mommy’s room. She’s lying in bed and obviously very much under the weather. He’s say: “But you can’t get sick, you’re a mommy.”
At our house my wife does tend to be the tougher one. Neither of us is a huge baby, but she’s more reliable than I am.
- But I’m not too bad. I doubt I ever took much more than one sick day a year off on average. Once I went about five years without taking one until an eye injury got me.
I remember once when we were first married and I was still in school, I nursed her through some horrible stomach virus. I was pretty good, but I did tease her once.
Seven days later I came down with the same crud. Oh, the misery.
Of course. Because if you admit to sickness, someone you care about will call you a big whiny baby.
I used to work with a woman who totally freaked out when she heard about men taking their kids to day care when their wives were sick.
Just because your husband didn’t do that doesn’t mean other people can’t, mmmmkay?
She was probably freaked out because all men are walking sacks of rape, and just dream of getting into proximity of a daycare–so much babbyrapin’, so little time! (except when they’re sick of course, then they just sit at home and whine)
No, it was because she believed that this “wasn’t his job”. :smack: Interestingly, her father was a single parent at a time when that was almost unheard-of because her mom walked out on the family when she and her sister were very young, and her husband was himself a very involved father too.
Ah, gender roles. How quaint. 