Not only is Pa the workhorse, he’s also the brains. What kind of impossible expectation does that set for men and men-to-be?
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My husband shocked me in a way I doubt your partner ever has. He wasn’t having an affair, joining a cult, or spending our life savings on Powerball tickets. But perhaps these things would have been less surprising.
While the kids and I were away, he was furtively reading Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. Yes, the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Yes, the ones that inspired the television show with the women in those fetching bonnets that girls across America coveted in the 1970s.
There are plenty of male fans of Little House. The author Alexander Chee has written about his childhood obsession with the novels, and the rapper Che Smith can be found glued to Little House reruns in the documentary, In My Father’s House. Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times goes so far as to call Pa Ingalls the rapper’s “aspirational talisman.” But my husband didn’t grow up with Little House; he arrived to this talisman in midlife.
While I constantly stress about whether my daughters will be able to have it all, my son is being educated to think he has to do it all.
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I never would have realized his secret if he didn’t seem to know an awful lot about what was going to happen next when reading Little House to our children later that week. We’d been reading Wilder’s books aloud on a recent trip through South Dakota; she had lived in the state, and her books seemed the natural travel companion. Picture us: a family of dusty New Yorkers, settling into side-by-side hotel beds with a good book after days filled with star-gazing in the Badlands, hay-baling on the cousin’s farm, cowboy-boot-rustling at Wall Drug, and rodeo-watching in Deadwood.
The trip was my husband’s version of the American dream. When he was separated from the family, reading Little House was a balm.
“It makes me feel closer to you guys,” he explained. “Like we’re still out west together.”
“Awwww,” I said.
But something was fishy. We’ve been away without him before; he’s never cracked open C.S. Lewis or Nancy Drew. There had to be more to the story.
Indeed, he eventually confessed that Wilder’s books fascinated him enormously. He had fallen in awe of frontier life, of what it took to survive, of what a man was called upon to do. I say “man,” because it is Pa who does all the finding of campsites, chopping of wood, traveling into town to buy and sell, building of house frames and beds and roofs, doctoring of sprains, hunting of dinner.
My 6-year-old daughter observed, “Wow! Pa sure does a lot of work!”
I cringed at her statement. Although Ma cooks and cares for the children, Wilder devotes fewer pages and less passion to these activities. Ma is merely the helpful sidekick to Pa’s adventures. The punctuation marks to his paragraphs.
Not only is Pa the workhorse, he’s also the brains. After a dangerous river-crossing, Wilder writes, “If Pa had not known what to do … then they all would have been lost.” This line could summarize every chapter.
Because Pa knows it all, he also makes all the decisions. When he wants to move from their perfectly good house to the frontier where everything must be built from scratch, Ma objects, “Oh, Charles, must we go now?” Pa shuts down further debate with: “If we are going this year, we must go now.”
In 2016, the gender stereotypes in Little House stand out like a tractor in the city. But Wilder’s work is autobiographical; it merely reflects the reality of her times. She wasn’t looking through the lens of gender studies, and perhaps we shouldn’t subject it to this scrutiny now. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but worry how my girls might apply the book to expectations for their own lives.
It turns out, however, that my worry was misdirected. My husband’s secret obsession with Pa Ingalls—the quintessential, invincible frontier man—made me realize I was fretting over the wrong family members. I should have considered the pressures these books were putting on my son and husband. While I constantly stress about whether my daughters will be able to have it all, my son is being educated to think he has to do it all. What do these books make him think he’s up against?
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It’s not just Little House on the Prairie. It’s the modern books and movies, marketed to boys, that he’s exposed to as well: The Maze Runner, The Giver, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Lightning Thief. All have larger-than-life male characters who must dominate, defend, be clever, risk death, or cause death. In these works, expectations have gotten worse for male characters, not better.
That’s some pressure to be the brains, brawn, and balls of the world, to think you have to protect and provide for everyone.
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Their “manly” messages are replicated in my son’s experiences at sports, where his coaches criticize him for not being aggressive enough, refer to the less athletic-leaning boys as “touchy-feelies,” and order boys to stop crying. It is replicated in his home life, where I’ve been guilty of telling him to “toughen up,” when he and his father are doing the Abs Challenge to attain action-movie “six-packs.” The message thrives in Destiny, the video game that he and his male friends bond over, where he is charged with protecting the world and killing aliens.
That’s some pressure to be the brains, brawn, and balls of the world, to think you have to protect and provide for everyone. No wonder men have shorter life expectancies, higher suicide rates, and commit more violent crimes. No wonder my son exhibits more anxiety than my daughters. It was my husband, not me, who questioned his life-behind-a-desk after our trip west, who stacked himself up against Pa Ingalls. What modern man wouldn’t fall short?
Even our farmer cousin no longer rolls up his sleeves the way Pa did. Baling hay on a commercial farm today involves sitting in the air-conditioned cab of a series of different tractors—hermetically sealed off from the smell of the alfalfa, from the bite of the bug. These machines have GPS to steer and sound systems to stream country music. One tractor chops the hay, another fluffs, the next sucks it into perfect blocks, and the last sets the blocks onto a semi that whisks the bales to a high-tech barn.
Still, riding these trucks inspired my husband to pore over Wilder’s books like survival manuals. They do, in fact, contain instructions for “manly” jobs like building doors without nails, starting fires, or butchering pigs. My husband studied them to memorize, as if something important depended on it.
Living in New York City, I’m not sure what he’s manning up for; all the rivers we cross accept E-ZPass. If nothing else, perhaps, he’ll be ready for the zombie apocalypse. For, if he doesn’t know what to do, we’ll all surely be lost.
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Photo Courtesy of Author
Ma’s role is played down, but not as much as this article makes out. In the first book, Little House in the Big Woods, grandma’s work is detailed, as is Ma’s. When a child says, “Pa sure does work hard!” My response as a father would be to point out that Ma works just as hard, from sun up until bedtime. In Little House on the Prairie, Ma is almost killed as she works just as hard as Pa to build their house. Laura idolizes Pa, and despises Ma’s work, so it makes sense that Pa is accentuated and Ma… Read more »
Yes, all history, literature, poetry and music should be rewritten so it is compliant with contemporary Progressive Feminist Ideals ?
Not quite sure how this board functions, but my second reply to you dropped to the bottom, Tom
Again to Tom, I’m not sure that the first part was directed at me or in general, but from where I sit? Those men were amazing, honorable, and for my money, the greatest generation of men we’ve ever produced. To me it goes beyond shameful. It actually disgust me the way we have revised history so as to imply that they were dysfunctional (Toxic Masculinity), brutes, or much of the rest we hear today. They held the greatest of compassion, even too much protection, as that was the real impetus of modern feminism: women seeking to go out and be… Read more »
Hi DJ … Actually the first part of what I wrote was in general but I’m glad you responded. You said “Their masculinity was necessary for them to carry that load. Many man today could not survive for five minutes in the world we put them into.” … I could not agree with you more. And that’s the scary part of our society today is that there are fewer men who would be able to handle such a life. 20 hours at the gym doesn’t cut it. I see more and more men stepping away from home labor and not… Read more »
I strongly encourage you to get (library, new, used) The Annotated Laura Ingalls Wilder Autobiography Pioneer Girl. It is heavily researched by modern historians and also makes very clear, by Wilder’s own writing, that the Pa Ingalls that we know from the books is largely fictional, a reflection of a pioneer ideal influenced by the time in which the books were written and edited – heavily edited – by her daughter. Reading about the Pioneer Girl Pa, unedited, you would barely recognize him. Laura herself, in her non-fiction essays, was far more critical of the roles and behavior of men… Read more »
Goodpoint. Heather. that was true. Almost an amalgamation of the ideal of a modern man. What a shock!!!
I think you’re forgetting an important part of Pa Ingalls here. He also was emotionally intelligent. He cried and was never ashamed of it. He was present for his kids, listening to their woes, and letting them always know they were loved. Hell, yes, he is a good role model for men, boys, and several women, I know, too, for that matter. He was honest, loyal, and admitted when he was wrong. We all could do a lot worse for a role model.
Very good point and it’s something that needs to be pointed out. What strikes me is that history as we are shown, shows the stereotypical masculine traits of these men where as in fact, they were far more then “brawn” and had many of the characteristics that many claim not to have had. The misogynistic male who forced women to be subservient and slave over a stove while the men worked is what we commonly hear. Seldom do we find the truth that men worked their behinds off so as to provide for their family. Just look at the mortality… Read more »
So I guess what we want to to do is minimize who men were in those days and instead of recognizing what they did and why they did what they did as positive, we want to turn table and attribute the wo’s of today’s American men to the history of the American male (the old days). I think society has done a great job in demonizing the early days where men were who they were with respect to taking care of his family. DJ, I understand what you’re saying about pressures but the difference between then and now is that… Read more »
Hey, Tom. Perhaps I was a bit dramatic there. My dad did get family time. He and I spent much time together, but he was like Atlas, carrying the world on his back all the time. It was never ending, never giving the guy a break. He’d work, be out there risking his life under intense pressure, then working details rather then rest, always working. I went there in my first marriage. In my second I relaxed a bit, let my wife carry some of the load, let here handle her problems rather then accept it as my job and… Read more »
What a wonderful teaching and conversational moment with your children to have. This is the man box that has continued to flourish. A view of men and women from the mid 1800’s. Should it be continued or do new skills better serve men and women of the early 21st century? Ask your kids what would that look like. Do they have a passion gor being wilderness residents? If so would modern necessary skills help them survive?
Even a fictional good example–but, as with my father, not fictional–is something to shoot for. How easy is a kid supposed to be on himself?
I’d rather be Pa Ingalls (although im far from it) than an anemic desk-jockey (no offense to all us desk-jockiies)
Well, you never know when the next zombie apocalypses will occur, so best we men are prepared! Good article. I agree regarding the pressure we still placed upon men; from war to work, carry the weight of the world whether needed or not, win and defend, suck it up until you drop dead two years after retirement…a job well done. I personally thank goodness that I’m not living my father’s life (twice wounded WWII vet, that spent almost 30 years as an inner city cop, not taking a real vacation the entire time, dying a few years after retirement). My… Read more »
Been a very long time since I read those, but I don’t think that PI is dangerous. Instead of meditating on all of his uber-manly deeds, maybe focus on “why” he did them. Roles and responsibilities change across time and cultures, but our motivations stay largely the same.