Wives of Professional Athletes, Part Three

I am going to take a little hiatus to focus specifically on what Dr. Ortiz calls control work as it relates to the wives of professional athletes.  When I first read it in the article, I was transported back to Spain in May 2007.  At that time our friends Ryan and Angie were visiting us after Ryan’s season had ended in Holland.  At that time we had Abby who had just turned 3 and Elijah who had just turned 1.  I was also only a few weeks out of going through a miscarriage and a D&C.  One day as Angie and I were walking Abby to school with Elijah in tow as well, she said to me, “Can I ask you something personal?”  I kind of prepped myself for the worst and said “Sure”.  Then she said to me, “Does it bother you that you pretty much do everything and Joe doesn’t do much of anything?”  At this I think I laughed and then we had a good discussion.

I think this simple statement was a summation of what Dr. Ortiz is referring to when he speaks of a professional athlete’s wife’s control work.  I see it as him referring to management of the home.  Although I think it looks differently in different households, for the most part the wife is usually in control of most of the day-to-day activities in most American homes.  When you add in having a husband who is away traveling or just simply absent during the season, you usually end up with a wife who does most of the work around the home.  This can lead to a wife who uses this to control her husband, but I don’t think that is what Dr. Ortiz is saying, and it is not the majority of women I know.  I do still think there is a danger in wanting to control your environment and home not for the sake of stability for family, but to grasp hold of some stability for your soul.

So what are some ways we do control work (home management)?  I am not going to be able to exhaust every avenue here, but here are some of the main areas of control work I have seen within my own marriage:

1. Financial.  People do not realize how much we wives deal with much of the financial well-being of our families.  Most professional athletes have absolutely no idea what it means to manage money.  They most likely went to college on a scholarship, so at the prime time when they had the opportunity to learn money management skills, they had no need to.  I can picture just a few weeks after we got married and asking Joe to see our check book.  I saw no record of any transactions and asked him how he knew how much money we had.  He just shrugged at me and said, “We have whatever the bank says we do.”  I promptly took the book away form him and said I would be dealing with the finances from then on:)  To his credit, since then he has really read up on financial management and has a wonderful vision and plan for us as a family that is firmly rooted in Scripture and in providing for his family.  I still manage the day-to-day things, but he has our goals set out for us and the plan we are following.

2. Household chores. For us, most of the household work has fallen to my responsibility.  Below I list a number of reason that this happens for us: I am home more and I am better skilled in this are the main ones.  Joe can run a washing machine if he needs to, but for the most part, this is my area of management.

3. Leaving and setting up a home. This is a huge area of management that I see many wives of professional athletes having to deal with.  Most of us move or help our husbands move twice a year.  That is a lot of baggage to pack!  And when you throw kids in there, the task is even greater.  So for us, I pack everything but what Joe is bringing specifically for himself.  I do all of my things, the kids things and all of the household things we need.

4. Children. Again, most American homes have the wife having most of the management of the children, so ti is not like this is a shocker, but the management can increase when the husband is gone more or when living in separate homes during the season.  And for women who also work while they live apart, this is a huge area of responsibility that can lead to stress and weariness.  Being a single parent for large chunks of time can certainly wear on one.

5. Spiritual Leadership. The general trend in the American church is that wives are the one who are more passionate about their spirituality and therefore take the responsibility for the training of their children and the overall spiritual environment of their children.  Although wives tend to do the majority of the leading, in our home we are in the minority.  This is an area Joe is very serious about leading in and feels a huge responsibility for the spiritual well-being of not only himself, but the kids and me as well.

6. Social activities. When traveling with your husband and making new friends, a lot of time the wife takes the initiative to makes friends with other couples or simply get to know her husbands other teammates better.  I  know for Joe, it is usually me who needs to initiate having a teammate over for dinner or coming out to eat with us.  I don’t think he is necessarily anti-social, but many times he doesn’t want to put any more work on me.

So why does this happen?  Of course, in many American homes the wife is simply home more or skilled in these areas, so it makes sense that she would have more of the management of the home.  I see that in a professional athlete’s home, but also some more traits that may or may not be present.  Again, not an exhaustive list, but just some trends I have seen.

1. Nature of the job. The nature of our husbands’ jobs makes it natural that much of the control work falls to us.  They are simply not home most of the time and when they are home, the physical exertion spent on their bodies can make them physically unable to deal with much else than simply playing basketball.

2. How our husband’s were brought up. Although it is certainly not the rule, because of the high level of success most professional athletes had in athletics, their childhoods were often dominated by being involved in their sport.  I have seen this often lead to it dominating a family.  The young child’s sport becomes the focus of their life and often of the life of the family, and the whole person is never developed.  I see it even at a young age with Elijah.  Because he loves basketball so much, it is easy to just play that with him constantly, instead of working on other skills by reading, doing puzzles, coloring, etc.  Many athletes lack the life skills to help their wives out as much as they could because of the focus that was put on their sport growing up.

3. Catering to of professional athletes. There is also an attitude of feeling others should do for them in professional athletes.  Again, it is not the rule, but I have met a lot of men who expect to be catered to.  This seems to usually be the men who came out of high school as the tops in their respective sports, went to a big school on a full ride and started making a lot of money right away.  But even for those who may not fit in that category, a lot is done for them by the team.  It is hard to remember when you walk through the door after a game that after hours of being cheered for, you are an equal participant in the home.

4. What they saw growing up. Joe and I have found that we often have to really discuss the areas we each have a greater part in because we often go to default mode and just do what our parents did. And when that was different, often an area is getting over looked. You don’t realize how much kids learn from just observing. Joe and I have tried to work at communicating to our kids that much of what I do, men can do too and vice versa. The other day Joe was making dinner (a very rare occurrence, the last time may have been before Elijah was born) and it took Elijah off guard for a minute. But he quickly decided “Boys can make too.” And yesterday as Abby and Elijah were playing pretend and Abby was the mommy and Elijah was the daddy, Abby declared that she could not drive the car because “Mommies don’t drive”. These are things we have never specifically told them, but they pick up on just because of how we often do certain things.

5. Laziness. We all have sin in us and we are all lazy.  This sin does not escape the hearts of professional athletes and they suffer from it as the rest of us do.  I don’t think they do any more so, but it is worth mentioning because it is always an issue when deciding who does the work around a home.

As I mentioned before, the control work is not the reason Joe loves me.  But it is hard to separate that work from who I am.  Joe has said that although he doesn’t love me for the work I do, he does love the things about my personality that bring about the work I do.  He appreciates organization and toughness.  He has mentioned he couldn’t be married to a “wimpy” woman (although I think I can be pretty wimpy at times!).  So much of what we do is an extension of who we are and why our husbands fell in love with us in the first place.  I think for many professional athletes, if they were serious about making their sport their profession, they either consciously or sub-consciously looked for women who could endure the life alongside of them.

So just a brief overview of what I see Dr. Ortiz referring to when he is speaking of control work.  It is work that does control the spirit and environment of the home.  It is going to look different for every family though.  My main reply to Angie two years ago, was that we had spent a lot of time talking about what would work for us.  We each have different giftings and limits.  Plus we have a situation where I travel with Joe and I do not work.  For those who do not travel, the situation is different.  Both parties learn to function on their own.  And for the wives who work, again it is different because whether working while traveling with the husband or while staying home, the home management would have to be divided in a different way.  The key is to communicate and figure out what works for your family, how each member can use their God-given talents to the best of their ability and how the home cane be a blessing to all who come in contact with it.

Part four coming tomorrow.