Romance for Real Women

The Fourth is coming up on Friday and it’s something to look forward to because real women love men who can grill. Men who grill are manly men. A man wearing an apron while tending a grill is masculine. A man wearing an apron in the kitchen is a wuss…unless of course he is a chief in which case he is a manly man.

There’s something about a man who wields a large spatula around a burning grill that causes that lovely atavistic frisson which can lead to still lovelier things later provided he also cleans the greasy grill pan.

One of my sister’s husbands liked to fish. He would bring home everything, including the tiniest, most inedible aquatic vertebrates. At that time, she was still interested in pleasing him, so she’d go into apparently genuine raptures about the most insignificant of catches. (He always took this excessive praise as his due which amazed me and was a part of the self importance that finally led Mary to give him the boot.)

It was only later that I understood she was experiencing the same thrill I experience when a man grills, that sort of primal connection to food and the feeding of loved ones.

Here then are my top five reasons to encourage your man to grill.

First, it gets him away from the television set. There is nothing more annoying than to be stuck in the kitchen while everyone else is watching TV. Grilling will get him onto the patio or porch where you can watch him and wave to him encouragingly while you’re stuck in the kitchen.

Second, it gets the kids away from the television. All kids love fires. This shouldn’t alarm you unless of course they begin to set them. A grilling fire will get them off their cell phones or ipods at least for a few minutes.

Third, he’ll drink less beer. This may not be entirely true.

Fourth, he’ll demonstrate his competence to the entire family. This is a good thing. Children and partners are all reassured when the man of the house demonstrates competence in tasks they’ve set for themselves. We tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that this competence translates into other areas. It will be up to you of course to make sure the chicken is cooked through before it comes off the grill. This may lead to an argument. Be gentle, but firm.

Fifth and most important, you’ll enjoy that shared sense of accomplishment when the hot dogs and hamburgers come off the grill. You’ll glance at each other tenderly between mouthfuls of char grilled beef fat. And if some drips down your blouse, not to worry. You can always change into something pretty later on.

He’ll want you to.

Real women should take note of a study that could actually give them useful clues into the psyches of their partners. Clues, I might add, that apparently didn’t even occur to the researchers themselves.

The study on postpartum depression in men was conducted by researchers at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA. It was published in the August, 2007 issue of the journal Pediatrics although interestingly, the general media have just reported on it today, May 6, 2008, which really goes to show you how the Democrat primaries have saturated the news.

Nevertheless, apart from the cognitive dissonance real women might feel upon hearing that men suffer from postpartum depression, the study does yield some interesting findings. But only if you know how to look.

The researchers studied more than 5,000 two-parent families. Got that, ladies? Two parent families.

It found that one in ten of these new dads suffered from postpartum depression.

The reasons?

Anxiety over supporting a family.

Anxiety over relationships with their wives.

Worry over the cost of raising a child to twenty-one.

Have you got that, everyone?

These are the good guys.

In another study, the University of Chicago reports that 31% or 22.5 million of the nation’s children don’t live with either parent. Add to that the 18% or 11.9 million children who live with only one parent, usually the mother.

You can betcha those guys don’t suffer from postpartum depression.

One question the folks at Eastern Virginia don’t seem to have asked is when these new dads last had a good night’s sleep.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not belittling depression. But my advice to real women whose husbands are adjusting to the new kid by worrying about how to support their family is to uncork the champagne, pull on some sexy lingerie and dim the lights. After the fun, let him sleep all night.

He’s a keeper.