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From a modern perspective, it is a bit harsh to demand from one's wife ¨Hey babe, I am not coming back, please raise our two kids, oh and by the way please help
by jll29 4y ago
From a modern perspective, it is a bit harsh to demand from one's wife ¨Hey babe, I am not coming back, please raise our two kids, oh and by the way please help our parents also!¨ - if she really was not at all informed.
- greenpresident 4y agoShe was married to a jet pilot in the 1950s. It‘s not like he lived an otherwise safe life, as evident by his death in a plane crash 7 years after his space flight.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- krisoft 4y ago> Hey babe, I am not coming back But that is not at all what the letter says, isn’t it? It says he thinks everything will be all right, but he is writing the letter just in case something goes wrong. > if she really was not at all informed She surelly must have known that she married an air force pilot. She might not have known the exact details of this particular mission, but she also must have known that he was working on special stuff when they moved from Murmansk to Moscow when Gagarin was selected to the space program. It is not like one day he went out for milk, but ended up in space. > from a modern perspective, it is a bit harsh to demand from one's wife “Take care of the kids” is one of the fundamentals of marriage. That is what marriage is for. Heck this is basic human decency. If you made a kid you are responsible to bring that kid to adulthood as safe and as sound as you can. Especially and even more so if the other person you made the kid with dies. She is not responsible for taking care of his parents, not to the same degree she is for her kids. And you might notice he is putting on a very different level of emphasis on that one. He literally says “if you have an opportunity, help them somehow” All in all I don’t find the requests harsh at all. Sad of course, but not harsh.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- southernplaces7 4y agoYes, because asking your wife and the mother of the children the two of you created together knowing that they're a commitment of decades at least, to then take care of those children for as long as she can is just so old-fashioned and sexist? What's the "modern perspective" he missed out on here? That caring for one's own children is a circumstantial and fluid responsibility depending on convenience levels? Asking her to help his parents is also wrong how? What a sadly shallow concept of marriage one would have to have if making such requests is too much to ask.
- wil421 4y agoCalm down, I’m sure a wife would say similar things given the circumstances. If I was on my death bed or my wife was we would both ask each other to look after our kids.
- southernplaces7 4y agoI think you misunderstood my comment. I was arguing that there's nothing at all wrong with asking a wife (or husband) to take care of the kids or even asking either to try doing the same for your parents. Marriage shouldn't just be a passing transactional thing with responsibilities that completely end if one partner dies.
- dang 4y agoPlease edit out swipes like "calm down" from your HN posts. (This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.) Your comment would be fine without that bit.
- xyzelement 4y agoIf anything that reflects poorly on the modern perspective. What different request would a man make today?