on chubscicles

This past weekend my family had a gentle couple and their thunderous chubscicle of a one year old infant over for dinner. The chunkamunka tank girl in diapers ate everything we did, and almost as much. But that’s not what was remarkable…we’d seen this child in action before, we knew what was coming.

What was remarkable was what my sister noticed and I failed to see. See, the wife in this married couple is a health care worker. So, one second after her maternity leave ended, she was back up in the hospital. Her husband is not a health care worker, and he is staying home to raise the buddhababy. He is already training her to consume like a team of quarterbacks. Noice.

My sister said, What a great guy! He must really be secure in his masculinity! (Okay she obviously didn’t say that, but it was implied). He must really love his baby!

And I thought, oh my goodness, it never for one instant occurred to me that things might be otherwise. I was so used to being the lone woman in a large group of doctor wives, I forgot the health care sector is still largely negotiating historical hierarchies and gurney-journeys of sexism. (To clarify, I haven’t been much good as a doctor wife since I moved out of Ontario, but I used to whimsically play the part well, attend the dinners, voyage to the conferences, and attempt to look like one helluva trophy). And all of my peers in this elite clique wore the pants. All my fellow attachés were fellows, distinctly XY. We’d huddle together and swirl champagne flutes and talk about our yoga classes and recipes and bathroom renos and pets and seasonal wardrobes while our mates debated the efficacy of the last lambasted tribe of Cox 2 inhibitors.

Sort of wish I was kidding. (Of course I don’t. I delighted in this gender play).

But I am surprised I got so used to it as to take it for granted, and not notice the great-guy homemaking parents on the arms of female health care workers. My sister is right, it’s a great guy move, and it's a rare & dynamic model for child/chubbichins-raising that i ought not brush off as par for the course in this generation of gender-bent doctor-wiving.