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Yes, I would love to do "men's work". I hate cooking and cleaning and have told my father if I wasn't busy trying to finish my degree, I would enter a mechanic class at the community college just for fun. Although I like it when men are "handy", I wouldn't force it if it wasn't his personality.
I think that is awesome. I have some close female friends who do traditional male work (work in construction) and LOVE it! They make tons of money - the work is very physically demanding, very strenuous, and they get crap, on a daily basis, for being a female in such work. They are strong women and just deal with it. These women will retire early with a pension (in a union). I could never do such work but they can and they do and more power to them!
If you advertised your skills on the free market, you'd be in high demand
I doubt it since just about every guy I know regularly does things like that. But I come from a background where people are not coddled. No market when there is no shortage.
It really depends on what is wrong with the dryer..... Sometimes it really is cheaper and easier to just buy something new.
Just an update. I repaired the dyer today. It turns out that it was the belt (thank goodness) and I also decided to replace the old idle pully since it was a pretty stupid design. The repair took about 15 minutes after I watched a youtube vid. It was about as easy as a repair can be. My dh helped.
As an aside, when we went to the appliance store to pick up the parts, I walked in with the old belt and pully in hand. I also had my ipod where I videoed the model number of the dryer as well as the motor set up just in case. The guy immediately looks and starts talking to my husband. My dh looked at me, and then the guy looked at me and apologized. He then started asking me what I needed. He caught my vibe quick, so that was nice.
What's the deal with the tendency of some (not all), of the female gender, including female family members, to "expect" their men to also automatically be "handymen"? While some guys might genuinely enjoy doing these things, I personally can't stand most of it, and would just as soon "hire out", to have the work done by paying someone to do it.
Have any other guys, had their "manhood" called into question, if they weren't super-eager and enthusiastic, to do these kinds of "handyman" jobs, that could always be contracted out to a professional third party, and in many cases, even rather inexpensively?
Back when I was dating I had girlfriends who had their "to do lists". One girlfriend invited my parents to over as we were all going out to dinner and her home seemed a good meeting place. My dad seen her "to do list" and whispered to me that looked like a Tom to do list and not her to do list/ I had to agree after looking at it.
I did not mind the small stuff. I was installing 4 French doors in her house and she took off, said she would return when I was done. That bothered me as I would have liked some company. The doors them selves do not bother me as I am a carpenter.
I was fixing her gate that was dragging on the concrete. Her ex had installed a wheel to keep it off the ground. I assessed the gate and wall and determined it only needed to be cut as it just did not ever have enough room to clear. We got into the largest fight, wanted to know what I based my decision on. I told her 30 years of being a carpenter. Finally she blurted out, what will I do next year if it does not work. I realized right then she seen no future and I broke it off a few months later.
Yes, I would love to do "men's work". I hate cooking and cleaning and have told my father if I wasn't busy trying to finish my degree, I would enter a mechanic class at the community college just for fun. Although I like it when men are "handy", I wouldn't force it if it wasn't his personality.
Women find this trait attractive because it shows that you can build toys on Christmas, fix toys throughout the year and repair things your kids break... especially their bikes. They would like a guy that can unclog a toilet or sink.... because calling and waiting for a plumber is lame.
To answer your question straight up, probably their dad was handy. Or brother(s). Or possibly an ex.
Anyway, at a critical age, they got the idea "imprinted" that man = handyman.
That's true for me. My dad and his brothers all grew up knowing how to build things and fix cars and plumbing and electrical stuff. They learned from their father, who, along with his brothers, learned from their father, and my father's male cousins and their children all learned too. I grew up among a lot of men who knew how to fix stuff. I thought all guys knew these things. I was in for a bit of a shock with my husband, whose father doesn't build or fix anything--that's what you hire people to do. His father's father was a surgeon, and his uncles are surgeons, and my father-in-law went to medical school to become a surgeon, too. My mother-in-law is a doctor's daughter. They all kind of look down on manual labor, necessary but beneath them, like scrubbing a toilet. My husband didn't grow up fixing things, but luckily he sees the value in it and has learned a lot. He's bonded with my dad because of it.
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