The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Tickle Monster's Healthy Breakfast

Speaking of speaking out loud about gender differences, I wanted to post briefly on Emily’s terrific piece last week about playing with our kids. I’ve noticed the same phenomenon ‘round here: My husband can easily spend 90 straight minutes on the floor with our boys, building with Leggo. Whereas in the same situation, I tend to sit on the floor next to them, folding laundry, separating broken crayons from their paper wrappers, and tidying the playroom. (Is this what’s known as parallel play Ann???) I sometimes fear that if I truly forced myself to build with Leggo in that time, I might produce a teensy little ironing board and travel steamer. 

Emily your story reminded me of one of my central parenting theories: I may not refer to it as “my kitchen,” but I have definitely observed anecdotally that the husbands somehow manage to sit down, eat their breakfasts and read the papers each morning while the moms tend to make pancakes, slice pears, pack lunches, and wipe spills. Maybe this is my corollary to the Tickle Monster theory: Our husbands are better at focused play because they are better at focused everything, when it comes to parenting. They certainly can and do pack lunches and wipe spills. But when they are eating they eat and when they are playing they play. They somehow find time to take care of their own stuff and they don’t maniacally multitask while doing it.  Not sure what this has to do with our math performance in college. But last week my 4 year old observed, as I sat down next to him at breakfast with a piece of toast, “But mamma you don’t eat breakfast. You eat coffee.”  

If our kids think we exist on air and live only to fold small t-shirts, I’m not all that surprised they don’t want to vote for the girls.