Why Is the Driver’s Seat Always Men’s Turf?
I don’t know when we turned into Fred and Wilma. Certainly it was not a sought-after transformation (what were those things around her neck anyway? Pearls? Stones? Knucklebones?), but there I was, packing the kids in the car and then heading automatically for the passenger seat. Never mind that we were taking my car, never mind that I actually like to drive; it has just become an unspoken rule: When we travel as a family, my husband drives.
He never demanded it, and I surrender the keys willingly enough, and I’m too darned tired most of the time to attempt a feminist deconstruction of the power structure this habit might or might not symbolize. But I do kind of wonder why the car is so often the last bastion of traditional male and female roles.
Because it’s not just the driving. Richard is also in charge of all car-related maintenance. Occasionally, I’ll vacuum out the kids’ car seats, but then that’s vacuuming, and I haven’t met the man yet who’ll take the lead on vacuuming, even if it’s in a car. Richard claims he took on the car responsibility early in our courtship when he stopped to get the oil checked and discovered there was none. As I told him then, and I tell you now, I had just had a very bad year.
Still, I’m not arm-wrestling him for the pleasure of keeping track of oil changes and tuneups. But neither am I resigned to full-fledged Wilma status. Wilma, to the best of my recollection, never drove. Neither did June or Lucy or Laura or any of the other mid-’60s TV role models that shaped my childish conceptions of maternity. Me, I drive all the time. To work, with the kids; to home, with the kids; to swim class, with the kids; to friends, market, airports, the beach ... with the kids. Sometimes, if I’m very good, I get to go somewhere--on an interview or to the gynecologist--without the kids, but I am apparently not very good all that often. So part of my automotive deference may be a simple desire to be a passenger once in a while. But I think it may be weirdly more than that. For one thing, it is not only me.
Several of my friends have noticed that they too automatically turn over the keys when they go out with their husbands or boyfriends. One woman recently had her husband decide at the last minute to join the family on an outing; when he slid into the passenger seat, their 4-year-old howled in protest. Why was Daddy sitting in Mommy’s seat?
“That’s when I thought, ‘Hmmmmm,”’ she says, “maybe this is a bit out of hand.”
My son too prefers it when Daddy drives, although I have excused this by telling myself that he is used to seeing Mommy drive--Daddy is the novelty. Or perhaps it’s an archetypal thing. I don’t remember my mother ever driving us as a family, although she certainly drove plenty when Dad was at work. In fact, unless we were on our way to church, the image of my mother in the passenger seat all but ensured a good time--a trip to the movies or to the mall or into Baltimore, or better yet, a summer holiday or a sleepover visit to my cousins. In the front seat, they were a team, and this was how the team was configured--Dad drove, Mom passed back graham cracker and peanut butter sandwiches.
Frankly, I always figured it was because Mom wasn’t up to the big drives, which is why I felt fairly weird about the realization that I was perpetuating the exact same division of labor.
So a few weekends ago we took a ride up the coast, and I decided to drive. My husband expressed surprise but seemed happy enough to be chauffeured for once. Until he realized that with two kids in the car, there is no rest even in the passenger seat. And he was such a novice--he didn’t know where the chewing gum and granola bars were hidden, couldn’t reach behind him to retrieve a dropped sippy cup or Power Ranger, had never played the peekaboo game with the passenger-side vanity mirror.
After about a half-hour, he turned to me. “You know,” he said in a desperate attempt to appear concerned for my welfare, “if you get tired of driving, I’m happy to take over.”
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Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.
