So You Wanna Be a Stay at Home Dad? On the Season Finale of Desperate Housewives

Though I’ve yet to write about it, I’ve been addicted to Desperate Housewives for much of the past year. Call it the guilty pleasure—not nearly as smart as The Wire or as compelling as Six Feet Under (my other Sunday Night addictions)—but the combo of sex, domestic drama, and betrayal, all from a women’s point of view is welcome relief from trying to keep up with the whurl-a-gurls. Of course Terri Hatcher, Eva Longoria and Nicollette Sheridan have gotten much of the play in the press this year—quite frankly cause they’re like sex on ice—and their story lines have played up that reality. Marcia Cross’s charter Bree is like crazy, though not nearly as much as her character from Melrose Place—still haunted by the episode where she showed up at the beach house.

The least sexy character (and story line) belonged to Felicity Huffman (Lynette), who I’ve been a fan of since Sports Night. While her cohorts on Wisteria Lane were dealing with S&M, gay-bashing, undercover sex with teenagers, tax fraud, and murder, Lynette was dealing with the everyday realities of daycare, parent teacher conferences, diapers and all the other stuff that come with being the stay at home parent. While her husband Tom (Melrose alumni Doug Savant) wasn’t a total goof, his commitment to “the grind” often left him indifferent and uninformed about what was going on with his wife and their four children—all boys. Ironically Lynnette was probably more committed to “the grind” before she gave it up to stay at home with the kids and it was those tools of the trade that she employed as she helped undermine Tom’s attempts to come up in the game. When Tom quits his job after being passed over for a major promotion—twice—his former boss lets him know that it was Lynette who requested that he be passed over (she feared his ambitions were out of sync with the stability needed for the family). After brooding for a bit, Tom announces that he would become the stay at home parent and Lynette was going back to work.

Now I fully understand the appeal of “the grind” (it’s like crack) and like so many folk I’ve had the damndest time trying to balance the work, the parenting and being a husband. As the sole income earner, “the Grind” becomes religion, so I can’t fault Tom and others who fall into this trap, especially since my passion for the work (like I said, it’s like crack) often blinds me to the importance of the small moments that the whurl-a-girls get with their daddy. (Hell, the two-year-old whurl-a-gurl came downstairs to “play” just as the season finale of Desperate Housewives was going off the air.) What struck me about last night’s episode was how cavalierly Tom felt that he could be the stay at home parent. Now I ain’t one of those cats who believe that there’s some biologically defined division of labor among genders, but I also know that most men—including us feminist types—are clueless about the amount of time that women put in as mothers, husband, home-makers, whether they are stay at home parents or working as full-time professionals (my wife just recently gave up “the grind”). As the folk at Salary.com recently explored the average “housewife” not only puts in a 40-hour week, but about 60 hours in overtime—now that a “grind”. Hopefully writers of Desperate Housewives won’t simply exploit Tom’s stay-at-home status for easy laughs (like Daddy Daycare), but willingly embrace the opportunity to help men more fully understand their roles in the domestic lives of the children and partners.