The other night my husband Tom made a comment about a noxious commercial that really impressed me with how far we women have come.

The commercial takes place in the kitchen of a stereotypical husband and wife. The husband talks about his to do list while he opens the upper cupboard, the door of which is broken and dangles from only one hinge. He pushes it back into place while he narrows his job list down to getting life insurance. The commercial ends with the wife being duly impressed with her clever husband although she does point out that since getting life insurance was so easy he now had the time to fix the cupboard.

Tom said “Why doesn’t she just fix it?”  Yeah baby, we have come a long way!

This is something my father would never have said to my mother, me maybe, but Mom –NO, never! My grandfather wouldn’t even have considered the possibility of my grandmother making a household repair. Were they being chauvinistic? No, their mind set was the norm for their generations.

Things have changed with our generation. Tom’s comment stems from his respect of my ability and not from a desire to get out of doing the job himself. It wouldn’t occur to either of us that he was the only one that was responsible for or capable of doing that kind of work.  Are we the exception, the answer is NO. Although I am probably in the upper range of capability, most of my women friends are capable of doing many if not all basic home repairs. Plus, we have an advantage in that we read the instructions first – Oh sorry, that’s a different blog subject.