I Didn't Know My Father Was a Writer It came as a complete shock to me when I read an essay that seemed taken directly from my father's . mouth. My father and the author might have been neighbors if it weren't for the four states between Ohio and Texas. The essay is about the author, Scott Russell Sanders,'s attempt to understand what women feel they lack; when, in his experiences, a man's life has few or no privileges. I agree with the author's ideas in all respects. There's nothing I can't relate to because I've been hearing these stories since I was two years old and I see it all in my head. Sanders describes the pain and hardship that husbands and fathers had to endure. It also describes the advantages that wives and mothers had. He feels confused when he is first told about the oppression of women. He never saw women's work as hard as men's. It was only later in his life that he looked back and saw exactly what women had to resist. Sanders had never seen "...how much of a prison a house could be" (77), until he took the time to look back and see for himself. I agree with Sanders; Men had much more difficult physical challenges than women. However, women's lives were mentally just as difficult, if not more so. Growing up, hearing stories my whole life of my grandfather working until his hands bled and only coming home, during the day, to bandage them; and my grandmother raising four children and doing housework, while tending a vegetable garden; I was used to these images. As I read the essay, I saw my grandfather's "...scar-tattooed hands" (Sanders 76), and my grandmother "...attending to the needs of young children all day long" ( Sanders 77). Depending on how you looked at it, life was more difficult, but men and women still had difficult lives. Sanders wrote a compelling essay about his life, but not everyone has lived his life. And not everyone grew up hearing similar stories, so their views on gender burdens will inevitably be different..