{"id":15959,"date":"2009-11-24T10:03:15","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T15:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=15959"},"modified":"2012-09-18T23:44:35","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T04:44:35","slug":"might-as-well-laugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/11\/24\/might-as-well-laugh\/","title":{"rendered":"Might as Well Laugh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank D. and Sara E. sent in these two examples, respectively, of humor that points to women’s disproportionate responsibility for housework and childcare<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Washing instructions:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"wife10\"<\/p>\n

Diaper changing wheel with “Mom” in many more slots than “Dad” or “Nanny” (Nanny?\u00a0 I know, that’s a whole other post):<\/p>\n

\"baby_duty_dial\"<\/p>\n

Both of these point to the fact that WE KNOW that women do this work disproportionately, even as most women work as many paid hours as their husbands.\u00a0 These are inside jokes for everyone in America.\u00a0 But this disproportionality is perhaps the number one cause of women’s continued economic disadvantage (compared to men).\u00a0 Motherhood, as Ann Crittenden explains<\/a>, is the greatest predictor of poverty in old age.<\/p>\n

I suppose we still think it’s funny–and not very, very serious–because most women in the U.S. don’t have much hope of escaping these responsibilities.\u00a0 It’s easy to make personal sacrifices to fight patriarchy (like not wearing make-up), but once kids and a home are involved, you’re not making personal sacrifices; refusing to do more than your share of childcare (and the housework that comes with it) means that your child is sacrificing too.\u00a0 And that is too big of a sacrifice for most women to make.<\/p>\n

So, I guess sometimes humor is all we ladies have got.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank D. and Sara E. sent in these two examples, respectively, of humor that points to women’s disproportionate responsibility for housework and childcare. Washing instructions: Diaper changing wheel with “Mom” in many more slots than “Dad” or “Nanny” (Nanny?\u00a0 I know, that’s a whole other post): Both of these point to the fact that WE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2088,256,272],"class_list":["post-15959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-humor","tag-marriagefamily"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15959"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15972,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959\/revisions\/15972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}