Linda And Jimmy (1977)

Every man will always feel that he's got to support the family. You're brought up where your father goes out and works and your mother's home doing the housework or something and uh he has to take care of uh bringing home the money to pay the bills, pay the rent, and bring put the food on the table. But uh I feel it's much different now with sharing the responsibility. I drive for a limousine company. Lincoln uh Town Car Continental. It's a very good. It's flexible hours where I don't have to worry about if uh you know, when I'm working, I can work anytime I want. And every morning I try to get in by about 4:00, 4:30 in the morning, so. There's certain days that I come home and I watch Shannon uh during the afternoon. And then at night, I usually fix supper. And then uh I go back to work. Why am I so sleepy? Yep, we woke up late again today. And now we got to get to bed earlier, Shannon. No, not today. Tomorrow. All right. It's not school. Right. Yeah, tonight tomorrow. I consider myself a feminist. And by that I mean a woman that's going to support other women. And a woman that's going to that's just going to be herself and not going to have to do a lot of things that people want her to do. What got me thinking about the women's movement was when I thought about my life and I wasn't happy staying home. I saw the women's movement and women fighting for their rights. And when I heard that you didn't have to act in quotes feminine all the time or passive. And when I started acting a little bit assertive and more confident, I felt a lot happier. Huh? Yeah. We go home and we're resting and you're waiting for daddy? Yeah. My sister and I are pretty close to our mother. The three of us get together a lot and talk about the women's movement and share experiences. After I worked a while, I found I wasn't so dependent on daddy like I had been. I mean, for years all it was was, you know, him and I and the kids and him making, you know, the money and me staying home with the kids and bringing up the kids. And then it became, uh, when I started working, I became, uh, a breadwinner and I could make my own money. Now I had money in my own to spend. I could buy what I wanted. For a while I thought, you know, this was wrong, you know, I couldn't go to work and leave the kids at bed, you know, that wasn't what a mother did. But I had to be, uh, a me first, you know, in order to, uh, get it all together. I had, you know, I found out, hey, I could say uh, I'm going out tonight or I'm going out tomorrow and not feel guilty about it. For a while, you know, and uh For a while you did feel guilty about it? For sure. For years, every time I went out I would feel, oh, I'm leaving the kid. I never had uh uh a point in my life where I felt and that until, you know, the women's movement really, until I uh felt take care of your needs. Take care of them. Because you don't uh life is going to be kind of dead. You're getting your chance now and do it. I mean, I'm not going to wait until I'm 90 and and then say, look, I, you know, all my life I wanted to do this. Now it's too late. And uh I don't think the price was too high to pay. There was a lot of, like I said, conflict and arguing and that. And there still is some, but uh I get uh to the point where I say, this is how it should be in my mind and that's how I'd like it. Yeah, you were saying about uh that why wait till 90, you know, and uh you know, that whole thing, do it now. And that's that's to me that's been like one of the hardest things. Like, once I found out that I had all these rights and I had all these uh capabilities of doing stuff, I wanted it done right away. And like it seemed like all of a sudden, out of nowhere, here I was in the house saying, okay, now we're changing all equal, you know, I have the pay and okay, I'm working. And all of a sudden it was like she was like, oh my god, you know, what what is going to happen to us? And uh at the beginning was probably the hardest part. Saying, you know, me wanting to share, wanting equality and Jimmy wanting to share it. But, you know, now that there there was some, you know, uh prices that I had to pay and advantages that Jimmy, you know, has now like I said Oh, that thing has to be a hang on the wall. I said, "Right, it does." I said, "Well, you know, when are you going to do it? Why do I have to do it?" And I said, "Well, the same reason I have to do this." But you don't have to do it. You always say you don't have to do it. And like all of a sudden On Sunday, everybody has dinner at my parents' house. My father has traditional ideas about women and families and likes to tease us about being liberated. Did you keep the words to the music? I have the whole thing. They say that that's the American way of life. They smartened up, right? With liberation there are responsibilities. I want to be independent to take care of myself. To me that means half of the financial responsibilities in our marriage are mine. I don't want Jimmy to have to take some job he doesn't like just to support me. But the question I'm raising is, can I be a good mother and also work? I think in order to be a good mother, you have to have your own life. I couldn't possibly make Shannon happy if I wasn't happy. And in order to be fulfilled, right now I have to work. Okay, our committee uh our committee is from Jan's office and we're trying we're our committee formed to eliminate sexism in the schools. I think uh I'm a better mother now because I have my own life and my own needs and I'm acting on my own desires. Through uh being my own person, I've shown Shannon a lot of things that you wouldn't have been able to see. We didn't have her name. Can I have her name? I'm a community organizer for an act, ethnic neighborhood action center. My job is to help organize neighborhood people around issues that affect their lives. You know, on the other hand, we're also trying to really build a very strong committee that's going to work toward the elimination of sexism in the schools. It just happens to be this slate is all women, so there's there's a hook in. You know, and that one of the things our slate will say is that women had there is no women right now on the local school board. There was only one woman in the last what, 10 years that's been on the local school board? And that's outrageous and it's sex discrimination. I think me working has really helped me define who I am. Because I've seen who I am by how I react to different issues that come up. As a community organizer, you have to have ideas and opinions on a lot of different subjects. It's It's also dealing with all the issues that are going to be our issues as candidates. Yes. And if we have these issues as candidates, and we have people on this committee that aren't, you know, that don't really care about sexism or racism in the schools, how beneficial are they going to be? They're going to have their own agenda for uh for the reasons why they want to go to our meetings and our stuff and it could be really I think mostly it's an educational process. So, I'm learning, but I'm trying to teach the people in the community. Sometimes like it's really hard because I'm a woman to be a community organizer because at meetings if I say anything, it's not as important as if a man says it. And I have to be twice as assertive and twice as knowledgeable on a subject to have any kind of say in certain area. No, but you could call, you know, there. If he get a little rough, you know, like if he says that I mean he don't want to be violent, just tell him that you have to meet with him because he sometimes he can turn you off. Do you know him? Yeah, I know him. So, the All right, did you have a nice day in school? Yeah. Mhm? Have any tests or anything? No. No? Hm. You had a good day, huh? Mhm. That's nice. Okay, listen now. Okay. I want you to go upstairs and change, you know, and then I want you to come down and do your homework. Okay? Bye-bye. Go ahead. Since Linda's gotten into the women's movement, I'd say past year or so, we've been getting closer and closer. Our marriage and our life together has grown much more because she's becoming more and more independent, more and more stable in her feelings and everything and she's learned a heck of a lot more and I've learned. She's actually probing into me and learning more about me and with that I'm actually finding more about myself and more about her. I've learned more from her being in in the women's movement, I think, than she has. The changes that have been made are all been beneficial to myself. Her homework and things like that, I learn more and more about my daughter. Look at Shannon now. Shannon. The same things that I have to do around the house, well, there ain't nothing wrong with that. You can learn that uh it isn't being a [ __ ] having to do housework or anything. It's just being a person, you know. How did you know that was seven? Cuz of the TV. That one was easy. Now, this one here you have to count. All right. 4 + 3 How many? No, look at 4 + 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 Listen to me. 4 + 3 7 Okay. When Linda first started going to the meetings and everything, I felt it was a little I guess, you know, every husband, cuz it was all new to me. And I didn't know what was going on and everything. I thought, "Oh God, here she goes. She's going to come home and she's going to be a Hitler or something else." But uh it didn't take long to find out actually what it was about. I feel closer to my wife than I have in a long time. I mean, there's still, you know, no marriage is perfect. I mean, don't get me wrong. But you know, there's hang-ups here and there. There's always arguments. I mean, you know. I really adore her. Love her. I mean, I put her above my feelings for anyone else. Because that's how I feel about her. I feel much closer to her and much more at ease and I like to be around her more than I like to be around anybody else. Hi, Jan. Hi, Jan. Oh, I missed you. I missed you. What you got? I got those chicken patties. I needed him because I was married and I was supposed to have a husband and because I had a child and they needed a father. And cuz I need money. And that and that lasted for I married 7 years for about 6 years or 6 and 1/2 years. Just in the last few months or 6 months or a year whatever, it's changed that I I need him now just just for support because I like the type of person that he is sometimes. And because I saw that there was that I I didn't need him. I didn't I could work myself. And it wasn't so much of a dependency. Did the dog? No. Let him out? Yeah. You do want everything? How did you feel being captain? I was crying in school. You You're What? Why? Because because they're home. Uh how long did you think they were going to keep you? Nobody I know comes in here and says they're going to keep it three or four hours. They never keep us in school. I know. not a push, either. Liberation has a lot of pains and a lot of costs and there's a lot of rewards and a lot of goodies you get with that, too. Sometimes then I think, is it worth it? Is it really worth it? I think, oh, I remember the way I never thought of any of these things. I try to tell myself, yeah, you were happy then. And all of a sudden, once I say, all right, you know, Wendy, you could go back. You don't have to work and all you can do is stay home and, you know, do what everybody else does. All of a sudden, this feeling of entrapment, almost like a chains that uh I don't think I could ever go back. What are you doing? The dishes. What are you doing? Nothing. Nothing at all? You want to put up your bed?