Playing Mommy?

I saw a screen t-shirt that someone was wearing yesterday at school. It read "I don't need to have kids. I married one." Yes, it's funny. And I know it's supposed to mean that the person they married is childish. But it also set me thinking on a parallel track. On whether some of the new generation married people had gotten the whole marriage deal right. I, for one think that many women tend to turn their mommy-ing instincts to the wrong object of attention - their husbands. Maybe that's because of the lesser age difference between couples these days as opposed to our previous generations, as SM pointed out. And of course, not being one of them ensures that I can look at it objectively and point out how weird the whole idea is.

Sometimes it's tempting I suppose to tell someone you can, for example your husband to do certain things. And well in the grand scheme of things, you are replacing his mom's role in his life, in that you take care of him now. So it's easy to place a misguided sense of babying on the husband and what's worse is that I've seen some men enjoy it and wrongfully take that to mean that their wife "loves them so much". Don't get me wrong... I love my husband as much as the next girl on the street loves hers, but I don't take it up to me to baby him around. He is free to do what he pleases however and whenever he wants. For instance, although I enjoy eating together with him, my rumbling tummy has sometimes propelled me to the dinner table sooner than him. And I know when he is hungry he'll eat. I don't have to keep going on about it or worse, spoon-feed him. Believe me, I've seen that happen. So what's wrong with that? Many women in the situation, I think want to make sure that they are a stellar wife. While it's easy to understand that urge, it does affect you finally. How? It makes your husband depend on you too much, makes him unwilling to do anything unless exclusively requested or told and anything that remains undone will turn out to be your fault because you did do it sometime in the past. And then throw-in the baby-talk and you have a muddle here. Yes, we all have pet nicknames for the 'significant other'. But does it really have to go- 'Does my honey-bunny need a huggie-buggie?' or something? Sorry if that sounded weird.

I guess it's time for wives to realize that they can be stellar in their "wifely" duties without going overboard. Being attentive is an entirely different thing than being nagging. They can be compassionate without being smothering. And if they are too much 'in-love' to notice it, maybe the husband who no doubt enjoys all the attention for a while should snap out of it and point it out. Think of it this way. As a wife, Mothering may just be smothering.