Kyle Hepp

9 Comments

1. 

   I, too, am married to el rey de la casa but am fortunate that he abdicated to marry me. We make all decisions together and he never had a problem with my choice to be a stay at home mom at the same time that he old me that I could work too…just whatever I wanted to be happy. I do the bulk of the housework because I choose it (and no one can do it right except me) But he has changed diapers and cleaned the house and bought me embarrassing girly things at the store, more times than I can count in this marriage. His mother persists in saying mi pobre hijo….but he and I know better. I say mi pobre suegra y su jefe gruñon…. (do you guys have the word gruñon in Chile?)
   You guys have the exact right idea…work it our between the couple what makes both happy…and then just love each other

   Comment by Rachel — April 23, 2008 @ 12:07 am

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2. 

   This reminds me of a guy I met when I spent New Years in Valpo. He was a friend of a friend of somebody and ended up hanging out with our group. Whenever he’d emptied his glass, he would hold it out to one of us women and expect to be served. Finally, one of the other women decided to speak for us all and said, “The bottle’s right there. Do it yourself.”

   On the other hand, most of my Chilean male friends love to cook and have no problem helping clean up. I would chalk it up to a generational thing, but the Valpo guy was our age too…

   Comment by Leigh — April 23, 2008 @ 7:10 am

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3. 

   Hahaha. Great post. I so identify with it. One of the first things I noticed (and looked for) when Vuko and I started dating was if he helped clean. I had him over for lunch one day and when we finished, he washed not only the lunch dishes, but all of my dishes that had been accumulating for days. Needless to say, I kept dating him quite happily.

   About the feminist thing…actually it isn’t that incoherent given Chilean history. The type of feminism that took root here in Chile around 1915 was a “domestic feminism”, where the women who practiced it, argued that while the men were materialists and took part in “dirty” things like politics and business, the women were purer and more spiritual, and their duty as women was to raise the next generation. So basically they made themselves the dueñas of the spiritual realm and la casa, so as to have a bit of authority if only in their homes. It was also a strategy to convince the public that women needed to be educated like the men and should be allowed to go to University because they had to educate/raise their children well, so they argued they could no longer be withheld the right to a good education. Since raising the children well became the woman’s sole motive, Chile has produced a lot of reyes de la casa. And, by the way, this was the LIBERAL point of view. The conservative point of view was absolutely disgusting. And the more extreme “feminists” (those who may align closer to anglo-feminism) committed suicide (Teresa Wilms Montt) or died young (Teresa Prats) or their feminist views simply didn’t get as much press (Gabriela Mistral). Her christian-ish poetry got press here in Chile but for example her love letters did not, nor did her interest in Alfred Kinsey and female sexuality. The domestic feminism movement was the most important here and it existed in the States too, but there it wasn’t as popular as in Chile. I think your observations fit this socio-historic context quite well.

   Comment by Maeskizzle — April 23, 2008 @ 8:49 am

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4. 

   Ahh, such a familiar story, although my suegra is actually not like yours. When we go to la abuelita’s house, this little 70something-year-old woman serves us all, and only the women help. She’s so used to it that she would feel offended if we made her sit down, so the rest of us just try to help as much as possible, although most of the uncles just sit there. Rodolfo’s mom does serve everyone when we go for weekend lunch, but he, his dad and brother all help out with cooking during the week. And his mom is in charge of household finances!

   I feel like our situation is very similar to yours, in that I go to work all day and make more money while he works part-time and studies and is in charge of household stuff. He’s also informed me he’d be happy to be a stay-at-home dad when the time comes! Basically I get all the perks of feminist equality plus more old-fashioned chivalry, so I’m not complaining!

   Comment by Emily — April 23, 2008 @ 9:36 am

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5. 

   Feminist equality and old-fashioned chivalry! My favorite combination. I, too, was reminded of my luck in finding a Chilean somehow broken of the “rey” habit the other day when my suegra’s tia (read: some family relation, I think) came over and chatted for a while. Of the many stories she told of her husband (she was in fact at that moment pretending to be at the police making a denuncia for psychological abuse), one struck me as the epitome of machismo…or if not the epitome, at least a hilarious example. Apparently her husband is a bit obsessive compulsive, and this manifests in hand-washing, something their son (who is at least 20) neglects to do upon entering the home. Since this habit distresses the father so much, he decided to take it out on his wife, asking why on earth she had not taught their son as a child when and how to wash his hands, because this was in fact HER duty. Yup. Hand-washing. And he’s angry about it NOW. Soo, long story short, mamacita you make a good point about the generations…the son in the end told off his father, asking where HE was when he was a kid and why HE didn’t teach him to wash his hands the way he wanted. Geez, I never knew clean hands would create such an uproar, but there you have it.

   Comment by Emita — April 23, 2008 @ 2:36 pm

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6. 

   Hmm. Sounds just like the family I am forming, except, his dad was a stay-at-home-dad giving him the idea and his mom is not at all like your suegra (note her stay at home dad husband).

   Comment by clare — April 23, 2008 @ 10:42 pm

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7. 

   I´m not married to my Chilean love yet, but I live in his house with his family. his mother does everthing for us, washes our clothes, makes our bed, even cleans our room. I am very much not used to that sort of thing at all. In the beginning, I was very bothered by it, mostly that she would just walk into our room and start picking up my dirty underwear!
   My boy and I are starting to think about marriage, I was wondering about all the legal stuff and citizen stuff also. Do you think you could email me and explain the citizen thing to me, I do not want to lose my US citizenship or become a citizen of Chile. Does he get US citizenship, or what happens with that??
   If you could email me and let me know that would be great. My name is Shannon and my email is shannon.kasella@gmail.com. if you can help thanks, if not, thanks anyways at least there´s someoe that relates to me and this whole different lifestyle.

   Comment by Shannon — April 24, 2008 @ 1:42 pm

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8. 

   Oops I posted a comment and then deleted it on accident.

   I can identify with all of this as well. My husband grew up in a home where he was forbidden to go into the kitchen, lest he become a homosexual. Lucky for me, he was far more interested in food than in avoiding homosexuality, So now he´s the cook of the home. Cleaning….that´s another issue. I do most of it, happily trading the cooking for the washing up, and we have a cleaning lady that comes once a week for a few hours (whom we hired to avoid TMF – Total Marital Failure when it came to ironing, and down and dirty scrubbing which I was damned if I was gonna do on my own every freakin saturday).
   To this day amongst my in-laws (most of whom are under 30), the women STILL sit in the back seat (oh I made a stink about that one like you would not believe).
   In spite of this crazy upbringing my husband has had and his refusal to clean, he´s made huge career sacarifices for mine, so I forgive some of his other stuff.
   I´m a feminist in a machisto land. But sexism is still around in my own country, it´s just not as blatant.

   Comment by Bluestreak — April 24, 2008 @ 2:03 pm

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9. 

   Keelay, I’ve been having so much fun catching up with what you are up to! It sounds like such an amazing job to be a blogger. You have always had a way with words! It reminds me of elementary school when we submitted a story for The Magic School Bus about going to the rainforest, and I left all of the writing up to you. Too bad we didn’t win! Well I am glad you found us and I am looking forward to keeping in touch!

   Comment by Lindsey — April 26, 2008 @ 8:25 pm

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