It’s interesting to see on social media sometimes comments that say “Oh girls can work now,” to videos that castigate and criticize ‘splitting the bill.’
Girls, women, females; have always worked. We have always worked, and reason why our brains are so wired to multitasking; where we can do laundry, watch a show, clean the room, think about what to write, while simultaneously making tea and taking out the dog and the trash – is because we are always working. Houses run on that labour; on the infinite (or at least what seems to be as infinite) power of the female body and brain where we only shut down when we’re asleep.
Just the other day I was having a conversation with a lad I met during a photo gig at an event. Surprise, that I only have time to talk to him while I am doing something else entirely, and that’s the thing now a days. Who honestly has time to do one single thing? Time goes so fast, from 6am and then it zooms by and now you’re at 10pm and the dog needs to go out. It goes too fast.
This double burden is further pushed by other women on women. Take my dear mother for example, and as a disclosure yes I live at home. My brother steps out of the door for a brief day and my mother’s down there cleaning up his room, kitchen and so on. Then I’m in the office and she calls out to me, to grab the trash she’s picked up from his office and I scream back “I don’t pick up after your son,” and I have to be clear about this. She gets upset of course, starts going on and then goes a bit loud. I wasn’t the one that raised this person to be like this, in fact, I am quite sure we received the exact same ‘raising’ or did we?
No, we did not receive the same ‘raising.’ I was raised with different expectations – those that we will call “burdens.” The burden of being the financial person in the household, the graduate, the planner, the 1, 2, 3 and 4. Clear rationale and evidence as to why I am currently single and living in my mother’s household. The burden of having to care for an immigrant family is even more on racialized women. Of having to be the translator, the lawyer, the cleaner, the professional invoicer, the secretary at some point, the real estate person. All of these burdens drain you, to a point where you’re left scrambling on how you go on your own life.
My mother raised my brother and I on different planes. I carry that burden in my jaw, in my stomach, on my legs, in my brain… in my bank account. It’s everywhere, it’s chaotic and its everlasting – until God forbid, they pass away and even then i’ll be carrying the burden of their ‘collections.’
The point that I am getting to here: don’t raise your daughter and son differently. They will grow to resent you, as I resent my mother for thinking I have to be the punching bag of every issue, while my brother exists free in his own world playing games and having his grown mother collect his garbage and recycling on days he steps out. I wouldn’t want that on any woman, and I would absolutely never accept that from a man – explains another reason why I’m single. Imagine that additional burden, I would absolutely break down.