Mac-Coleman

5 February 2013 - 

While writing yesterday’s blog on falling birth rates and the erosion of the family, I did not delve into marriage and the specific things that men and women do in a marriage, as wife and husband, as mother and father, to make it a successful and strong institution.  The subject is easy to outline, but, for me, difficult to flesh out.  One of the reasons for the difficulty is the common use of the word “role” when talking about responsibilities in marriage.  I don’t like the word.  It smacks of life and marriage being a stage play.  Men and women memorize the script and proceed through life’s three acts as actors on a stage pretending to be something.   I have enough trouble staying out of my own fantasy world to be directed thusly. 

 I prefer the word “tasks” when describing necessary activities in a successful marriage and family.  Tasks carries a better sense of action and reality than does the word role.  It also does not lend itself to the time-honored but, in my opinion, lazy method of assigning responsibilities by sex.  The word carries more the image of writing together the list of things-to-do and then discussing how to best divide up primary and support taskings to get them done, and then adjusting when necessary.  Of course,  some tasks will be divided up by sex.  Like duh, women have babies; men don’t.  But, accomplishing the primary and support tasks—gittin’er done—is a team effort. 

Today’s blog is one of those team efforts.  I told my wife that after writing 1,600 words yesterday, I wanted to write 300 words on roles vs. tasks and end it for the day. She asked me if I could include something on capability and on desire.  I agreed. 

Like duh, women are the ones who have babies.  But, that unique female capability does not require wives and mothers to shoulder the full responsibility of raising those children.  The task is out there before the team.  The capabilities each partner brings to the mission (I almost said fight,oops!) must be applied to accomplishing the task of building and running a home, providing an income, and raising children to be disciplined, responsible, God-fearing, hard-working adults.  Working and raising one child tasks to the limit all the capabilities of both parents, all the time.  Working and raising four children exposes and refines hidden capabilities both mother and father, husband and wife, never even knew they had (Raising seven children makes your Aunt Carolyn a saint to be held in reverential awe).  But, such success only occurs if the tasks are approached by the team as a team effort.  Immediately dividing responsibilities into established roles discourages team effort, personal motivation, and success; hidden capabilities rust in the dark; children learn limited lessons from a limited example of family cohesion. 

Capabilities, of course, vary from team to team.  Proven tradition says that families are most successful when some tasks are primarily the responsibility of the husband and father and some are the primary responsibility of the wife and mother.  That is what the large statistics indicate strongly, and these findings should be weighed carefully.  The small, personal statistics will vary a bit from that model, however, depending on the specific capabilities of each partner in the marriage and parent set.  What a couple decides to do, when based on careful and continuing examination of individual and mutually enhancing capabilities, is going to be best for their family and their lives.  Children will more probably follow, love, and respect their parents if the tasks of life are approached thusly.  The same loyalty, love, respect, and willingness to sacrifice for the other in the partnership also will follow such an approach to the tasks at hand.

All that wonderful stuff said, my wife is smarter, emotionally and mentally stronger, and more courageous than I am.  She sees things I don’t, in the people around us and in events that transpire.  Her sense of right and appropriateness is unerring.  She communicates specific messages with words and actions far better than I do.  I, however, can lift more than she can and know what it takes to maintain things and property.  What a dangerous fool I would be if I didn’t want to team up with her to git’er done. 

 Finally, an uncommon thing in life is to accomplish what you signed on to do and still do other things you want to do.   One’s desires are vital to one’s happiness and to a team’s success in its required tasks.  A team approach to life in a family is the best way to adjust responsibilities so that desires are also addressed with the full support of the other team member.  This translates into manspeak thusly:  my wife’s desires are more important than mine.  It is my privilege to adjust and to sacrifice so that she can fulfill her desires as much as possible.  If we assign everything to roles, however, with the hierarchy that always seems to accompany those roles, her individual desires will rarely be fulfilled or be forgone completely in order to fulfill the required tasks at hand.  Team decisions and subsequent adjusted decisions, however, make things work.    

This is not a sermon.  This is a personal understanding, based on wisdom that I have acquired from the myriad mistakes I have made.  This wisdom tells me that this is the best, most adaptable way to achieve life-long success in all family relationships.