The Dilemma For years my mum has confided in my brother and me about the troubles of her marriage to our dad, and it is worse now that we are in our 20s. My dad took early retirement and spends his days following his own interests: running, cycling or obsessively doing crosswords. Just as when he worked, he leaves my mum to do all the housework and upkeep for him and my brother. When I visit what used to be home, it feels loveless and hollow, and my mum is becoming increasingly distressed at the life she has been left with. My dad is inflexible and emotionally barren, with no kind of physical intimacy with her. Sadly, my brother is seeing callous relationships as the norm.
I don't know what I can do to show my brother and dad that their treatment of my mum is outdated, sexist and cruel. She is mocked for her opinions or for being "melodramatic". Leaving home and seeing the reality of relationships that normal people share illustrates their lack of compassion verges on the sociopathic to me. I don't know how to make my father and brother see themselves in a different light and act more like a family, or how to rescue my mum from growing lonely.
Mariella replies You've set yourself quite a challenge. Much as the adults who raise us can only look on, aghast at our more outlandish life choices, so we can only gently nudge our parents toward other lifestyles. Your mum is living like many of her generation, and more distressingly a high percentage of subsequent generations, still trying to work out how feminist triumph turned into an unmanageable to-do list featuring career, family, domestic life and partnership. Behind many front doors the advances of the last 70 years are still not in evidence. Whether it's as simple as the division of domestic chores or childcare, or the dark despair of domestic abuse, the chasm between the haves and have nots is surprisingly large. Visiting a friend the other day I admired a display of orchids in a neighbouring cottage window. She told me that the woman who lived there, when she wasn't being beaten and abused by her husband, lovingly nurtured them. The orchids clearly were the repositories for her dreams.
The shocking truth is that your mother, merely disparaged and undervalued, actually has it easy. For one in five women in this modern, emancipated, forward-looking country, daily life is a ritual of misery. I'm not saying that the extremity of the crimes against women mean that you shouldn't highlight your mum's unhappy circumstances, but it's important that none of us assume that all women are free of such tyranny. Your observations about your mum's life are reflected in homes up and down the country to a greater or lesser extent.
The domestic servitude seems less of an issue than your father's disconnection from the barest minimum of relationship requirements. Her circumstances will only change when she develops an active interest in leading a life of her own, not passively replacing her husband's expectations with her daughter's. There are women (and men) who choose to keep their lives small, tucked under the radar and safely ritualised in the monotony of a daily routine. We fought for the right to choose, not to dictate, and your mother's choice is as valid as any other, if presently unfashionable.
Your father and brother will only change when their needs are no longer being serviced, and you gusting in on a breeze of liberation from time to time is unlikely to have much effect. Ultimately it's not your battle. If your mum doesn't feel her life is of greater value, then all you can do is try to raise her expectations. It always struck me as ironic that so many of the earliest feminists waved their banners like Winifred Banks in Mary Poppins and then rushed home to rustle up the tea. In a liberal society, women's rights can't be foisted on their subjects any more than domestic drudgery.
We all have choices, no matter how difficult. If your mum is to reinvent her maturity, she needs to taste the possibilities that freedom can bring. Whether she develops an interest in gardening, joins the National Trust or the WI, watches the entire Nora Ephron canon, joins a walking group or takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip, she needs a transporting activity that overrides her inbuilt domestic impulse. None of us has the capacity to see over the rainbow, but a taste of what might lie there is usually enough to set us on a journey of discovery.
