Gwen rants so I don’t have to. Topic is romance novels, Christian and not.
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But here’s my rant: Parenting, marriage, and yes, NFP literature that sets up ideal-husband jobs. As if the measure of a man were whether he wrote down your temperature for you every morning. (No, really honey, just go yell at kindly remind the kids to make themselves breakfast, I’ll write down my own temp, thanks. In this nice quiet room AWAY from the noisy people.)
A major moment for us in the first weeks of parenting, was the discovery that TWO sleep-deprived parents was a very, very bad idea. Much better for ONE parent (the lactating one) to be up all night with young Mr. Screechy. The other adult could thus be rational and productive during daylight hours, and provide actual useful help. Do you really want pointers on how to change a diaper at 3 AM? No. Better not to have the spouse “helping out” at that time.
[In our marriage. Maybe some couples prefer the share the duty. For us, it was a recipe for colicky grow-ups.]
I don’t mind helpful ideas. I am forever indebted to the Mother’s Rule of Life lady for teaching me to get the coffee-maker set up the night before. Not that I am organized enough to do that, but at least now I know. But all this “a good husband would . . .” or a “a good wife should . . .” just sets the stage for smoldering resentment.
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Ahem. And this has nothing to do with how I forgot my anniversary. Again. And the boy’s birthday as well. It’s a busy month. I made dinner for people, that’s pretty good, right?
Two points:
1) Nice idea re. having only one parent going nuts at a time. 🙂
2) Nice to know wives forget this, too. Though I’m happy to say my wife only forgot one Father’s day. in 16 years. 🙂
re: going nuts: I assume you guys had figured this out long ago . . .?
re: forgetting: Yes, I stuck that up there specifically as a consolation. Of course forgotten wives everywhere are probably pointing out, “Well, who’d want to marry *her*??” And they’d have a point.
As far as the NFP side of the question, I wish I knew my Office of Readings well enough to know which Father it is who has a reading in there about how everyone has natural gifts for particular virtues, and it’s wrong to “lord it over” others. The “NFP Experts” are almost always the types of people who have the organization stuff and the chastity stuff down pat. Then there’s the whole conflict between ecological breastfeeding and “feed ’em on a schedule” which led the Shipleys to separate from CCLI.