DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am spending the holidays with my boyfriend's family for the first time. I asked my boyfriend what his family dinners are like, and he mentioned that after dinner the women clean and the men talk and watch sports on TV.
These outdated gender roles go against both of our beliefs. I don't mind helping clean, but it bothers me that the men will just be sitting around.
My boyfriend says it bothers his sisters too, but that no one has done anything about it. He offered to say something, but I know he really doesn't want to and is just doing it to make me happy.
What should I do? I don't want his family to think I'm rude by not cleaning, but I also don't want to encourage something that I don't believe in.
GENTLE READER: So, as a first-time visitor and non-relative at a family event, you could snap off the television set and order the men to the kitchen. It wouldn't do anything to spread your beliefs, but at least you would never again have to worry about the dynamics of this particular family.
Guests have no business acting as reformers. Still, Miss Manners supposes that you expect her to devise a more subtle way to plant the idea of change in this family, because of the possibility that you might someday join it. All right, all right.
One would be to ask the sisters, "Don't any of you want to watch the game?" and, if anyone says yes, to say, "You go ahead; I'll cover for you here. Or maybe you could send one of them in, in case anyone wants to join us."
Another would be to persuade your beau to insist upon helping clean up, and insisting equally forcefully that his mother go out and relax.
Either way would begin to suggest the idea of after-dinner division by interests, rather than by gender.