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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1430 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 2025

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I think there is also an element of tolerance - I lived alone for many years prior to our marriage, whereas she never lived alone, so I am quite used to soldiering on when I'm sick as I had no alternative; when she is sick, she is instead used to going into full rest mode to recover.

This may explain the whole phenomenon.

Back when people lived on homesteads, it was expected that men worked outdoors (that is to say farm, hunt, repair the buildings etc), women did the household, and no one lived alone, there was no room for being ill. You pushed on as best you could or suffer a real shortage later.

A little later, when factory and office jobs came about and allowed you to call in sick sometimes, the men started doing so. But someone still needs to do the household tasks; there are tasks that can be delayed, but if no one cooks there's nothing to eat, and that is a pretty immediate concern.

And if the man has no experience cooking at all (which wasn't that weird - many people never lived alone and this was a "woman's task"), you can't expect him to instinctively know how to do it. You'd have to teach him and show him, all the while being ill. At that point it's probably still easier to do it yourself.

Nowadays it is expected that a man knows how to do the basic household tasks, at least in a pinch, just as women are expected to have "real" jobs. But two generations ago it really wasn't. So the ill woman still had to push on, while the ill man takes a day off work.

Two generations ago there were balogna sandwiches.

I beg people to actually talk to their grandparents and great-grands about how life changed in their lifetimes. Everyone in 1970 had wonderbread and lunchmeat at home all the time, and ate it regularly. Yeah nobody preferred it but it was how life was that sometimes you ate what you had available instead of what you wanted- remember this was a society as poor as Russia or Mexico is today.

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