Men as authority vs men as children

Cary Tennis cheers me up yet again by having some common sense in his advice column. Today, the woman who has written in has a serious problem. Her son has a peanut allergy, but her husband wants to revolt against her "no nuts" decree and keeps "accidentally" feeding the kids peanuts. Cary has the same take on the husband's likely motivation as I do:

Perhaps he's doing it to get back at you for shaming him. Or perhaps he's trying to prove to himself that his son does not really have a life-threatening peanut allergy at all. See, he doesn't really have a life-threatening peanut allergy! See, he's still breathing!

My guess is that the dad is deeply invested in being the Fun parent to his wife's Discipline parent. Gosh, if I had kids, that's the parent I would want to be. From the letter:

It's always when I'm not there, since I am always on the alert. It's always dessert, because for my husband eating sweets is like a religious experience, or at snack time after church, which, ditto.

I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised if the cookie was offered along with a line like, "Mom doesn't want you to have this, but I know how much you like cookies."

This is typical men-are-children and women-are-no-fun-mommy behavior. Of coures, the problem is that there are actual children here who are not well-served by a father who would rather conspire with them against Mean Mommy than take care of their health. And while I'm over-analyzing things, I'll toss is that I'd bet there's a threatened masculinity motivation here, a need to prove that his son is no weakling. I suffered from dangerous childhood illness and a number of allergies, and I can assure you that many, many people see these things as personal failings, and unwillingness to suck it up. For a boy, the pressure to be a man and just will yourself past allergies must be much worse.

Of course, she goes nuts as any of us would when we are confronting someone who is putting a child's life in danger for spurious reasons, and all of a sudden men-as-a-child isn't going to get him off the hook. Time to remind her who's the boss of the house!

I was and am infuriated. I let him have it, and he told me I am never to speak to him that way. So now, and every other time, in his eyes this is less a life and death issue, and more a matter of my dissing him.

The paradox of the role of "husband" in our culture is really well-illustrated here. Husbands are the boss of the house, but husbands are also willful children that need women to give them guidance. The one consistency is that both roles put all the emotional work in the hands of wives. If her husband is playing "child", a woman must do the hard work of a parent, showing love and authority. If her husband is playing "boss", she is an employee, trying to figure out how to please him and stay out of trouble. Also, it's apparently women's work to figure out which role her husband is playing, since, as is illustrated here, it's his prerogative to switch off at will. The letter-writer believes that this is her job to find a way to get him to do the right thing:

Any sensible person would tell me to wait until the air had cleared, be grateful that N had dodged another bullet, and later discuss the matter with my husband dispassionately, since he's obviously feeling ashamed and attacked. And I do bring it up later -- it never stays dispassionate for long, but it always ends with my being persuaded that, this time, I've gotten through to him. Then it all happens again three or four months later.... So how do I handle this?

Of course, I sympathize with her. He hasn't taken responsibility to protect the boy, but the boy needs to be protected. She has no choice but to pick up the slack and find a way to do what he husband won't do. Cary sympathizes with her, too, and can't see why she feels like she doesn't have a right to be angry with a maddening situation.

His solutions make sense. The first is to take away the man's ability to make judgement calls, since he's shown incapable of making those calls.

The rules: No store-bought cookies at all, ever, not even one. No cookies in restaurants ever, not even a bite. Only cookies you bake yourself. No peanut butter in the house, ever. Eliminate all chances for error. Be unrelenting and thorough.

He didn't say how to handle it when the husband bucks having his authority to buy what he wants taken away, though. And this is a man who's made it clear that he sees himself as having the authority of the Man of the House but the responsibility of a child.

Cary also suggests referring the husband to an outside authority he might listen to, since he clearly thinks he's above listening to his wife.

Then, for the long term, get some help from a behavioral psychologist or the equivalent. Clearly, your husband does not consciously want to endanger your son. Yet I find it hard to imagine that these omissions are simply random. He's probably doing it for reasons he doesn't see or can't admit.

Again, I'm not sure how to force a man to go to a psychologist when he's likely to resist. In her situation, it would probably be best to print out the column and show it to him. It's true that the best way to get around this man's attitude is to draw on outside authority, since he's already shown that he is not going to listen to his wife.