It’s a widely known statistic that single women without kids are the happiest subgroup. And it makes sense, right? In cis hetero partnerships, women do all or most of the domestic labor. And when there are kids involved, Moms pretty much do it all. The makers of If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You have an understanding of this. Rose Byrne was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Linda, a wife, mother, and therapist who slowly loses control of herself and her reality. The film opens with a close-up of Linda driving her daughter to medical treatments for a disease that remains unnamed. We don’t see the kid until the end of the film, which is an interesting directorial choice. The purpose is to keep the focus on Linda; showing the kid might ruin the storytelling effect. About ten minutes into the film, the ceiling in her family’s apartment collapses, forcing Linda and her daughter to move into a motel.
Of course, the husband, voiced by Christian Slater, is a major source of Linda’s grief. Away for work, he harangues Linda for not doing enough to take care of their child or fix the hole. The contractor abandons the job midway through, and that’s somehow Linda’s fault. Meanwhile, hubby, a pilot, can go out for late nights with his friends while Linda manages everything at home. Don’t you just LOVE that arrangement?
By the end, the contractors have patched the hole in the ceilings. Hubs says, “You just have to know how to talk to those guys.” Or you just have to share the same genitalia.
And people wonder why marriage and birth rates are falling. If this is how that life is, let them continue to plummet.