Reverse Sexism, Through a Child's Eyes

My wife is generally not allowed to cook. The reason for this is simple: she is a walking kitchen fire just waiting to happen. Over the years that we have been together, she has managed to ruin instant oatmeal, has boiled spaghetti for so long that all the water evaporated and we had to scrape a cake of dried and burnt noodles out of the pot, and has tried to bake a package of Ramen noodles in the oven.

Case closed.

As a result, I do nearly all of the cooking in the family. This, it seems, has given me two young daughters a novel perspective of the world and the gender norms that most children experience.

Yesterday, while watching a movie with my wife, my younger daughter asked where the main character's Daddy was. My wife replied that she didn't seem to have a Daddy, and that her Mommy did everything for her.

My daughter thought about it for a moment, and then asked my wife the question that was burning up inside of her mind.

"But if she doesn't have a Daddy, then who cooks her dinner?"

See? My daughter is amazingly progressive for a three-year-old.

You Went There?

Yesterday, after I picked my daughter up from preschool, I was buckling her into her car seat when she pressed her eyebrows downward in concern and looked at me.

"Matty?" she said.

"Yes, love," I answered.

"Your ears have a lot of hair on them," she observed. "You should do something about that soon before you start looking like a monkey."