Sister Wives

I have been thinking a lot about this whole idea of plural marriage lately.  Well, for the last two years, really, since I started watching the show "Big Love".  I heard that there is a new reality show in America, featuring a family with multiple wives in it.  Called, of course, Sister Wives.

I liked the show Big Love.  It was like those women always had someone to back them up and that their Sister wives were their best friends.

We had a guest for shabbos, who was telling us about a family in her neighborhood who are in a plural marriage.  She was saying that the women were the ones who recruited the new wives for their husband.  There are currently something like 9 wives although at the time, it was just 5 wives.  They wanted this woman to be wife number 6.  She couldn't understand what the women had to gain from recruiting new wives.

I can tell you exactly.

At this point in time, what I really need more than anything, is a wife.  I need someone to help with the cooking and the cleaning, the childcare, the shopping, someone to prepare me a bath when I am tired.  Someone to understand when I am tired, or have PMS or on my period.  I need a wife.

Many people complain loudly that it is so sexist that it is always the men's right to have more than one wife. 

But I know why. 

The fact is, that men are a lot of work.  Pretty much more work than one woman can handle.  We need help.  Especially in today's world, where we are expected to work, maintain a house, birth children, breastfeed them and then take on most of the responsibility of their daily lives until they leave the house or we die.  I think that we, as women, have bitten off more than we can chew.  So since we are expected to do the work of the traditional man, in addition to the work of a traditional woman, we should also be allowed the option of taking a wife.  I am telling you, life would be a lot easier if we could share the responsibility. 

If I were to choose a wife, I would get one who could cook, clean, hang and fold laundry, take care of my kids.  That would free up a lot of my time.  In fact, I could, as first wife, make her work in addition to everything else, freeing up my time to pursue any whim that I had at that moment. 

It sounds heavenly to me. 

But can you imagine the other way around?  A woman with more than one husband?  If my husband were in the government, there would never be unemployment, because he is a make work project.  My house can be perfectly clean, even after a full day of having a daycare in my house, but seconds after he enters the house, it looks like a cyclone hit.  And he doesn't even seem to notice that he has left his sock in the hallway or his underwear balled up in the corner of the living room (why he takes them off there, I have no idea).  They can stay there for weeks and he won't notice (I know this, as I have tested this theory).  Can you imagine having to have two of these?  In addition to your children and full time job?  It would kill you. 

I, as a woman, am happy that there is no culture or religion that I am aware of where a woman can have multiple husbands.  We don't need it.  It is detrimental to our health. 

What we do need, though, is a wife.  Or four.