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Conservative Central |
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Review: Wife Swap |
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by Andrew Stephens 31/12/03 |
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Wife Swap is a British TV series which has recently begun screening here in Australia. It's a reality show in which two wives swap families for a couple of weeks to see how other families live. Despite the title it's not a tawdry Jerry Springer like affair. There's no infidelity involved (not in the two episodes I've watched), and the couples often seem to learn useful lessons about what's right or wrong in their family life. For instance, the last episode featured a black couple and a white couple, each with two teenage children. The black couple were not in a perfect situation: the father had only recently moved in as a step dad; he wore atrocious club type clothes around the house; and he insisted on smoking dope in front of his step kids. Nonetheless, the kids were well brought up and the house was clean and orderly. In contrast, the white family had a lot of problems. The kids were foul mouthed, immature and aggressive, the house was a cluttered mess, and the family lived obesely off junk food. In the white family, the father existed only as a kind of jolly homebody, who did most of the housework, whilst admitting that his wife "wore the pants." Mother and daughters were openly contemptuous of his authority in the house and connived to ignore his concerns. The mother spent most of her energy going out to work, did little at home except to cook a single Sunday meal, and expected to achieve good behaviour from her daughters by promising to "have a word" with them. When the white mother first moved in with the black family she was initially confident about her own methods. She observed the black step-father grounding his teenage son for disobeying a curfew rule and accused him of being a "Hitler". This gave the beautifully mannered teenage daughter the encouragement to also criticise her step-father for being hierarchical and asserting his authority as a father. The step-father, however, had enough self-confidence to hold his ground. Meanwhile, in the white family the black wife was attempting to assert some discipline in the household. She disallowed abusive language and began to sort out the household mess. The younger daughter responded warmly to this, but the older one remained wild. The black wife then encouraged the white father to assert himself (he had never been given such support previously) which he attempted to do with some good results. At the end of the swap, the two couples were reunited for a conference. At this conference the white father made it clear that he wanted a change in the family dynamic. The white mother responded with a classic feminist type threat: that she would simply take the house and children and kick him out of the family. On this occasion, though, Dad held his ground, even in the face of such a threat. Furthermore, it became clear on their return home that the younger daughter preferred the new way of doing things. Mum then had a change of heart. She announced that Dad was to share the parental responsibility in the house, and she began to hold firm against her aggressive and willful elder daughter. The conclusion to draw from all this? It's one example of how the androgynous model of family life doesn't work. In the black family, although the father's authority caused some friction with the children, it helped to create a civilised household, in which the children appeared admirably well-brought up. In the white family, on the other hand, although the father made an effort to be a feminine homemaker, he didn't really have the instinct or talent to carry it off properly. He didn't create a comfortable or healthy home for his children to grow up in. Similarly, although his wife made a major effort to play a traditionally masculine role, she didn't have the instinct to be an effective authority figure within the house. She didn't have a strong enough impulse toward an insistence on following formal standards and rules. Of course, the above is only one example of a role reversal family gone wrong. Perhaps some other couples manage to carry off such a reversal better. Nonetheless, it should at least provoke some thought as to the wisdom, or even the long term practicality, of making role reversal families the norm. |
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