Reality Extravaganza: Wifeswap

Wifeswap

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Like your life is spinning out of control and everyone has a better handle on things than you do?

Watching ABC's "wifeswap" makes me feel normal and well-balanced. These people are crazy.

Watching "wifeswap" makes me wonder two things: where do they find these people, and how would I fit in?

This weeks' episode was about a high-powered executive mom in Florida and a wife in Wisconsin. The Southern belle dynamo runs a modeling agency and has two elementary school-aged daughters who wear make-up and run from band practice to gymnastics and snorkeling. The husband is a complete waste of space.

On the other hand, Wisconsin Ma has a passel of rather large boys and a daughter. They like huntin' and fishin' and rastlin' and also volunteer as EMTs. They think family time is very important and being average is okay.

With this show (or "Trading Spouses", which is the exact same thing but with a seedy Fox twist regarding money), it seems that the point is to scour the far corners of the United States to find two caricatures of normal families that are completely, diametrically opposed in everything from morals to daily routines. I think the viewers are supposed to side with one family or the other, and feel that, in the end, their choice was vindicated as the better choice.

I must admit, this is the second time I've seen the show. In the earlier one, a glamorous non-working mom from Pennsylvania with a housekeeper and babysitter traded with a Tennessee farmer's wife who homeschooled their 8 kids and clothed the family on $500/year. In both episodes, my life is probably more similar to the city-dwelling moms who hire help and compulsively overconsume. But I can't say that I would willingly classify myself as that.

As someone who will probably have to work full-time and be a mother some day in the future, and having been raised by a working mother, I don't like the insinuation that hiring household help means that you don't care. Or that you don't love your kids if you buy them things and take them to lessons.

I just wonder, if I were to apply for the show, how would they peg me? I clicked on the application to see how the questions were phrased. Scrolling down a bit, I decided they probably threw out most of the application and chose show participants based on the one important question: "What pushes your buttons?"

They could put me in with a family where Dad is the head of the household, no one ever reads, and everyone uses disposable plates and silverware all the time. I'd be sunk!