cocorosie - By Your Side

This sardonic tune by twins Cassidy and Bianca is a play on the archetypal housewife. In the song, they basically state that they'll live the life of a slave "for a diamond ring". "I'll iron your clothes. I'll shine your shoes. I'll make your bed and cook your food." Many men still possess in their mind that these types of women still exist, and they do. When men are put into these situation of being a "housedad" it's involuntary in most cases from the lack of work or other issues keeping them from the workforce. It's revolting that women's house work is seen as menial, and many men crush under the fatigue of taking care of the home. This is seen in many television programs, too. In the fifties, there was an episode of I Love Lucy that desplayed exactly this. And even in modern television, like the show Desperate Housewives, where one of the characters is layed off and he takes the role of the soccer mom/housewife and breaks under the pressure. But women are forced into these conditions, being payed substantially less at the same jobs. "[W]orking mothers not only earn less than men, but also less per hour than childless women, even after such differences as educatyion and experience are factored out."(340) What is the resolution to this problem? If working your way up through academia isn't the trick, then what is? Is having a Y chromosome really important to the productivity of a person? I think not, and it's ridiculous that women are forced into slave labor for their husbands and children.