Some aspects of marriage were shit work. And many aspects of parenting were. Literally. But the payoff for the drudgery—the laundry folding, the toilet plunging, the prescription filling, the trips to the dry cleaners—in theory, at least, was intimacy. Something you could not buy, or pick up at a bar, or have a one-night stand with. Something you could earn only by putting in the man-hours.
