Why Men Criticize Their SAHM Wives: A Review

Ick.

That was my very first thought upon reading this article recently featured on Huffington Post titled, "Why Men Criticize Their SAHM Wives."

For my house, none of this would be happening.  My husband would never criticize me for not keeping the house clean or failing to make dinner.  Sorry- but no.

And the concept of a Type A husband versus a Type B wife- not buying that either.  Sure, we might all have our personality types and I believe its true what they say about opposites attracting but tell me- where does it say that because you're a Type A man, it gives you the right to criticize your Type B wife?

It doesn't.  You don't.

So how about instead of one spouse criticizing the other, we just step back and realize that having kids, especially small kids running around is hard.  It's SO much work.  For both husband AND wife.  Add on to that, the societal pressures to cook organic, healthy dinners every night, have a sparkling clean designer home and washboard abs and is it any wonder that women are falling short?  That's not even discussing the women who are home educating their children.

There's NO way we can keep up!

Now- you may have read some of my previous blog posts regarding housekeeping, excpectations, how to be a good Wife and such.  But what you may not know is that it took me awhile to get to this point.  When the kiddo was young, keeping the toys picked up was simply not a priority for me.  Why bother?  He's just going to trash it all again in 10 minutes- what a waste of my time mmkay....But what was NOT a waste of my time was sitting down on the floor and playing with him.

When your kids are small- your priorities are different.  You are more child focused and not home focused and this is exactly as it should be.

I will also mention that while the playroom may have been a disaster of EPIC porportions, my kitchen and bathrooms were always clean.  And as the kiddo got a bit older and was able to learn how to put toys away once he was done, my house started to look more like a home.  I consider this the natural evolution of being a SAHM.

Fast forward to the preschool years and we could finally invest in some good toy bins and storage solutions to help contain (and hide!) some of the kid stuff.  I could actually buy real lamps and put a glass vase out on a table without fear of it getting destroyed.  I had more time available to invest in healthy, homemade dinners and we began taking daily walks for "treasure" around the neighborhood.

We were finally out of survival mode and on to real life.  It was fabulous.

Now that the kiddo is 10, my life as a SAHM/WAHM looks completely different than what it did in those early years.  My home is almost always company ready, I make dinner from scratch nightly, my home is on a regularly cleaning schedule and I'm not as tired and have more time to invest in myself and my marriage.  We've entered the ZONE and life is pretty darn good.

But you know what- not once throughout the last 10 years of baby, marriage and life did my husband ever criticize me or make me feel like I was failing.  He supported me and the work I was doing at
home- even if that "work" involved snuggling on the couch watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with the kiddo while he picked up cheeseburgers on the way home from work.  Because he knew and I knew that at the end of the day, it's not about the image of perfection or other's ideas of what it should look like but the feeling of love within your home that truly matters.