What does a “wife” mean to you?

Excerpts from a conversation on house cleaning.
Male 1: First, you sweep the floor, then vacuum, and then mop.
Male 2: I just sweep and then mop.
Female (interjects): Huh? You can’t do that. It will still be dusty. You need to vacuum.
Male 2: What sort of mop you use? You need to get the special mop that can mop away the dust as well.
Female: Err … got different types of mop meh? I thought a mop is just a mop la.
Male 3 (interjects): There are many types wan.
Female (looks admiring at her male friends): Wah. You guys not bad eh … can clean, can cook. Wah liao wei ..
Male 3: Yeah la. What you think? These days, guys make better wives than girls.
Female: Wait a sec. Hold it right there. Your concept of “wife” is wrong la. Wife does not mean clean and cook la.

Interesting bit of conversation there; this got me thinking of the concept of a wife in this day and age. According to my trusted Little Oxford Dictionary, “wife” is defined as “married woman esp. in relation to her husband”. Hmm … no cooking and cleaning in the definition. I decided to seek a second opinion and search the meaning of “wife” on www.dictionary.com which yielded the following results…….

Wife n. pl. wives
A woman joined to a man in marriage; a female spouse.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Wife n.
A married woman; a man's partner in marriage
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

What?! Also, no cooking and cleaning here. Now what?! Where did the association of the word “wife” with “cook” and “clean” come from? The definition sounds so archaic and made me think of the Stone Age where man said, “Me man. You woman. Me hunt. You cook and clean.”

But I thought over the past centuries and in the last few decades, especially with the movement on the emancipation of woman, such archaic thoughts would have been eradicated from the minds of today’s generation. Looks like Chairman Mao Zedong did a better job at brain washing (mind cleansing) the Chinese during his Cultural Revolution than women did to the general population on woman’s rights and equality. There seem to be a problem with the not so new paradigm shift. While men can accept women being in the workforce and being the breadwinner in some instances, it seems that there are still those that expect the wife to cook and clean as well.

In the Stone Age, there was division of labour due to necessity. Women, being the fairer sex and so-called weaker sex in terms of hard labour (since it’s more about brawn power than brain power), were consigned to cleaning, gathering firewood and cooking while the men go out to hunt. Fast forward to today, the need for division of labour due to gender segregation is not applicable anymore in the family unit. A woman can be as much a breadwinner as her male counterpart, or at least a wage earner which means she can still live quite independently on her salary. The dynamics of a husband-wife relationship can no longer be in the traditional vein of breadwinner and homemaker as less and less women depend on the benevolence of their husbands for survival.

While it is often admirable to see a man knowing to cook and clean, the question remains, why is it still within the realm of wifely duties to do so and not the husband’s in society’s mindset? Thus, what does a wife mean to you? Think carefully before you answer. For in the end, what you really need could be a maid! If that is so, is it not much easier, cheaper and with fewer strings attached to get a maid instead of a wife?! ;)