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Filed under: Moms, Dads, Parental relationshipsMy father was an intelligent and physically capable man who could fix just about anything. If he couldn't fix something, he would just build a new one. In other words, he was good with his hands. But every night at dinner, my father would sit back with his hands in his lap and let my mother cut his meat for him.Even as a child, I found this confusing and strange. When I asked my mother about it, she said she did it because he liked her to do it. That didn't really clear things up for me. But in reading this article, I realize that my mother's mothering of her husband wasn't all that unique. Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, says women who take care of their husbands as if they were children - cutting their meat, picking out their clothes, washing their backs - are bending to societal pressures to be the ultimate woman. "We've been taught that the way to show love is to do for others," she says. Psychotherapist Tina Tessina blames it on the hormone oxytocin. "It makes women feel tender, close and cuddly to their newborn and other children, and maybe husbands, too." Tessina, author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting About the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage, says that endorphins can also contribute. "Endorphins flow heavily in new mothers, and [they] are the same hormones we feel when we connect to a husband. It's pretty easy to confuse the two."And while some experts say this kind of nurturing can work for some couples, at least one former nurturer doesn't recommend it. "As a woman who mothered her husband for too many years, I can report it's about the worst thing a woman can do," says 55-year-old Linda Franklin. "It makes your man lazy, unwilling to be proactive in his own health care and for the most part a boy who refuses to grow up. It took me a long time to understand you can be compassionate and loving without being smothering and controlling."Another good reason not to mother your husband: it confuses the hell out of the kids.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments



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