By Rawlins Gilliland, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – One year before women were allowed to vote, my suffragette Grandmother - a widow with a 2-year-old child - became a professor at the University of Texas. Not surprisingly, she raised a bright, spirited, naturally feminist daughter, who grew up to raise a bright, spirited, naturally feminist son: me.
Mother and Grandmother were, by far, the most influential people in my youth. They not only said what they thought, they told me how they felt, and why. This left little chance for me to be like many men I've observed, who react to women rather than respond to them. To some men, verbal interaction with women is akin to a dialect they can fake conversationally. But it remains my "Mother tongue."
Growing up, I could see that Mother seemed misplaced, miscast in traditional domestic roles. When she suffered a debilitating depression, her doctor prescribed Miltown, a highly addictive and volatile barbiturate that was the Prozac of the 1950's. But it wasn't drugs she needed; it was to feel recognized for her professional talents, her educational background. She looked for a job.
After a humiliating search, Mother became book reviewer for the Dallas Morning News. As is often true for women working outside the home, as a wife and mother, she felt guilty and conflicted.
Even more so because at that time, when a woman entered the workplace, it was seen as failure of her husband to properly provide, which hurt Dad, as he'd always supported Mother's independent ambitions. I too was conflicted; part of me wanted a mother who baked cakes like the others on the block. But one thing was certain: everyone was miserable with the status quo.
One night, after work, I heard Mother mumble that, "Women need wives."
I joked, "So you need to be the one who says, 'What's for dinner, Honey?"
She laughed, "That would help."
To which I replied, "Then I'll cook for you." And so, at 12 years old, I did. Mother became her own person, if not always the accessible, hands-on parent.
Years later, at college, I lived with - some say pampered, I say spoiled - clueless males whose parents sent them away to school never having fed themselves. Struggling to pay expenses, I used my role reversal background to advantage. Nightly, like a croupier, I raked in today's equivalent of $10 per head, serving homemade Southern suppers to starving young men whose idea of a well-stocked refrigerator meant beer and wienies. And who enabled this inverted dynamic?
Our mothers. Theirs and mine.
Today, the perverse is worse. First our sons, and now daughters, leave home thinking Food 101 is a course they're proud to flunk. Where I was once disgusted hearing presumptuous males act like females were predestined to cook their meals, I now hear otherwise intelligent women boasting that they can't cook at all, as if this is a badge of feminist honor rather than misplaced pride.
I saw knowledge as power. They see ignorance as bliss, spending a fortune in restaurants or take-out, gaining weight - and poor health - on snacks and fast food.
Meanwhile, I've got a rosemary garlic prime rib in the oven.
Eat your heart out!
Rawlins Gilliland is a writer from Dallas.