I think that the fear of becoming your wife’s servant or ‘employee’ is genuine and legitimate.
Many of the married men that I know have found themselves in domestic situations which can be described in this way. They work 40+ hours a week, probably another 20 on domestic duties, and are still denied all but the most trivial opportunities to pursue their personal interests.
But I don’t think that their wives have created this situation by design – I think that it arises from the attitudes that many women have towards men (i.e. that we’re immature, lazy, unperceptive …). So when it comes to the question of whether she should ‘let’ her husband do something, she assumes that it’s in his best interest to direct him to more productive activities, which just happen to suit her own.
The funny thing is that if it were husbands dictating to their wives in this way, they’d be regarded as being abusive.
