I’m mystified by the women who agree to this kind of an arrangement:
A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that women—even those with full-time jobs—still do the bulk of housework and childcare. On an average day, 48 percent of women and 19 percent of men did housework. Married women with children who work full time spend 51 minutes a day on housework while married men with children spend just 14 minutes a day.
If a woman is a full-time housewife, obviously she should do all the housework. But this report says that even women with full-time jobs chose to be their husband’s unpaid maids. This is such a weird, irrational choice that I don’t get it at all.
I haven’t met a single man in my long and productive personal life who would refuse to take care of 50% of housework. I can’t imagine what such a conversation would even look like. “No, Clarissa, I will not clean the bathroom because. . .” What? What do men referenced in this survey say to explain their refusal to take care of themselves? This is not a rhetorical question. I’m really interested in hearing from anybody who has encountered such men. Do they offer anything in return? Do they have any sort of an explanation for their weird attitude? “Yes, I managed to take care of myself perfectly well while I lived alone, honey, but now that I have you, I have become incapacitated”? Is that what they say?
I’m even more interested in what possesses women to agree to such a strange arrangement. When the household chores are discussed before they agree to move in with their male partners, does it actually get specified in the agreement that they will be responsible for washing their male partners’ underwear and doing the dishes, as if the men in question were severely disabled? I also have to wonder what makes it necessary to keep such a man around? A man who disrespects women and sees them as Mommies will suck horribly in bed. And not in a good way. He also has got to be extremely immature and powerfully homosocial, which means that, as a conversationalist and a life partner, he isn’t anything special either. The quoted report demonstrates that these men are also lousy fathers. Bad sex, crappy conversation, no companionship, barely any fathering, and lots of extra work. So who needs this kind of a guy around at all?
As a person who’d never spend even 2 minutes in the company of somebody who disrespects me and himself to the point of suggesting that I service him as a maid, I read such reports as stories from another planet.
Once again, I have to conclude: people are weird.
Clarissa's Blog 
The/A Freudian analysis would say women are obsessed with cleanliness because they menstruate. I’ve never been obsessed with it myself. I’m a grub.
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“The/A Freudian analysis would say women are obsessed with cleanliness because they menstruate.”
– No, the Freudian analysis is that people who clean obsessively are disgusted by sex. I was just discussing this in analysis yesterday. 🙂 🙂
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Oh, okay, that is another Freudian analysis. I think it’s more likely to be true.
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We are (I was and every woman I know personally was) brought up to be housekeeper/mothers from nearly the moment we are born. It’s more complicated than a phone comment allows, but I’ll just say that describing it as an issue of limited self-respect misses too many of the complexities of how gender is constructed (here).
That said, I agree with you that framing the issue as men “helping” rather than “doing half the work” reveals the depth of the gender-based skewed expectations.
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“We are (I was and every woman I know personally was) brought up to be housekeeper/mothers from nearly the moment we are born.”
– So it’s done to please the parents? Even years after the parents are out of the picture? Scary. . .
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No, not to please the parents. That’s too linear and logical or direct an explanation. I’m talking about the social construction of gender. Is this a framework you agree with? (That gender is a social construction.)
I’m certainly not saying there are overt instructions or even explicit expectations in most cases, especially among progressive or “liberal” families. I’m saying that in our culture (yes, yes, there are wide ranging variations regarding what “culture” means) gender is constructed in a way that there are females and males. To decide and know-in-common who is female and who is male, we need to have shared realities (social constructions). I’m noting that the “female” quality of keeping house (established only when land ownership, and, at the same time, ownership of women and the creation of monogamy began) is part of our construction of “female” and that it isn’t easy for women (not all, duh, and probably less likely a problem among your readers) to cast aside what feels like (feels like, not that is a logical, linear, reasonable choice) “being female.”
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” I’m talking about the social construction of gender. Is this a framework you agree with? (That gender is a social construction.)”
– It’s a social construct that people freely choose to inscribe themselves into because it fulfills their needs.
“that it isn’t easy for women (not all, duh, and probably less likely a problem among your readers) to cast aside what feels like (feels like, not that is a logical, linear, reasonable choice) “being female.””
– You are saying that such women have no other way (or no better way, no more convenient way) to get in touch with their femaleness than scrubbing, cleaning, and servicing men? I agree completely.
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No. I’m talking about how you know a woman is a woman without seeing her genitalia, or how you know a man is a man without seeing his genitalia.
Like this: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/clar0514/academic/west%20and%20zimmerman.pdf
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I thought about it and realized that, whenever there is doubt, I first look at their chest and then at their neck. I automatically search for the physiological mark of their sex. I wouldn’t look for a mop or a broom in their hands to find an answer, would you? 🙂 🙂
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I looked at the article and I understand what you are trying to say. However, the question remains : why do so many women choose to perform gender by scrubbing toilets instead of by lying in bed and feeling like a beautiful sexy flower whose sensibilities would be hurt by the unpleasant reality of cleaning? There is a multitude of ways to perform gender. Why use such a boring one?
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Can’t reply properly. Laughing too hard. 🙂
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This always happens whenever I’m completely serious. 🙂
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Exactly! 🙂
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“We are (I was and every woman I know personally was) brought up to be housekeeper/mothers from nearly the moment we are born.”
I wasn’t. Last time I checked I was female. My parents were born in the late 1920s. I was born in 1963. My parents shared both the housework and the yardwork. I was brought up to clean up after myself and do chores, but at no time was the phrase “you’ll need to do all the housework when you get married” ever uttered in my presence by my parents or any other relative. In fact, neither were “you’ll be a mother” said as a declarative, as if my fate was sealed. It was, of course, presented as a choice, but what my parents actually assumed was that I’d go to work like they did.
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“at no time was the phrase “you’ll need to do all the housework when you get married” ever uttered in my presence by my parents or any other relative. In fact, neither were “you’ll be a mother” said as a declarative, as if my fate was sealed. It was, of course, presented as a choice, but what my parents actually assumed was that I’d go to work like they did.”
– Great parents! I wish there were more parents like these.
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I was, although not by my father — by my mother, and also I just picked it up from the general air. I may choose not to slip into the mode, but I do know how. It’s not to please the parents, it’s more like a skill I have but don’t usually use, or a latent propensity I would have to keep in check if I got into a situation that brought it out to my detriment.
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I once met this right winger –this was before I knew what a right winger was. He seemed to make assumptions about me because of my origins in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. These days, I would know that if someone corrected me concerning where I’m from, by changing “Zimbabwe” back to “Rhodesia”, that’s a warning signal. I didn’t know this back then. He was the education officer for the student guild. He invited me to some kind of stage play and when I arrived at his place, he said he was running late, and would I please iron his shirt for him. I said I wasn’t sure I could do a good job, but he insisted. So, I gave it a go, after which he complained that my ironing wasn’t perfect. A very strange guy. Catholic. Face filled with pock marks.
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I think it may be an issue of control. I have a high tolerance for dirt and stuff at home. If someone commanded me to do housework right now when I may be doing something I would say no. However if that same person asked me to do something within a time frame or just asked I would happily do it. And I think part of the issue is one person just saying, “Would you do this?” But most of the time said person is just working in a huff expecting the other person to read their mind.
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Isn’t it just easier to agree once and for all who is responsible for which part of housework and never discuss it again? For example, the partner who is bothered by dirt is responsible for cleaning. The other partner cooks. That’s how we do it in my family. Who needs all these requests, commands, and discussions?
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I, of course, associate cleanliness with beauty and comfort, and those two things with sex, so…
And, as far as having the one bothered by dirt do the cleaning, I guess that would be OK, except that I don’t like to clean up after people. I went out with this one man who had a really dirty house and would make or allow to be made huge messes that he would just leave … like, let the cats urinate in the closet, throw dirty laundry in there, and let it stay like that … the house smelled and I wouldn’t go in … would never have lived with him and no I don’t think that it was my responsibility to fix the place just because I was the one who did not like it … and also, he LIKED it that way, was not comfortable with cleaner places … I broke the relationship off. And no, he could not cook.
But, oddly, most men I meet *do* do housework and do not have to be asked. My theory is that my father did, and that I somehow emit a radio signal saying I expect it. In junior high home ec we had a discussion about sharing housework, and it turned out many fathers in the class did not do any. I asked my father why he did — had he and my mother hammered out an agreement on this? He said no — he did housework because his father had — both his parents did housework, and he was just following his father’s example.
My mother was in fact a full time housewife and my father still did housework. I know you don´t believe it but housework plus childcare is more than an 8 hour a day job when you consider all the things that need doing (just think of the mending if you have a bunch of active kids — not to mention helping with scouts, etc., etc.) and my father only worked 40 hours usually. Mom would never have had any time off if he hadn’t done a noticeable part of the work.
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No, it isn’t cleanliness that is associated with sexual problems. It’s obsessive cleaning for the sake of cleaning. Like a woman who washes all walls in her house on a daily basis.
“But, oddly, most men I meet *do* do housework and do not have to be asked. My theory is that my father did, and that I somehow emit a radio signal saying I expect it.”
– I also don’t meet men who can’t serve themselves at home. Even though my father is completely helpless around his house to the point that is comical. 🙂
“just think of the mending if you have a bunch of active kids ”
– How come the kids can’t mend their own clothes? If they are too young to mend, they’ve got to be infants, so no mending should be needed. But I agree that people tend to invent reasons to justify not getting a job. Like the woman who absolutely NEEDS to wash those walls every single day and then guilt trip everybody for not appreciating her labor and touching walls with their dirty fingers and heads. A real story, this.
My grandmother had 6 children. They all lived in the Soviet country-side, which meant growing their own food, having to heat water by hand, not having even the bathroom facilities. And she always worked full-time. You should have seen the beauty and the amazing cleanliness of their home! This is why I can’t take seriously the moans of American housewives who have a gazillion appliances, pre-packaged, pre-cooked foods, and two kids, yet feel hugely martyred and underappreciated for their “sacrifice”. I don’t mean your mother, of course. I mean women of my generation.
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There is definitely such a thing as make-work to justify not getting a job (and irritating vicarious living through other family members). And the faux sacrifice, and martyrdom, UGH. But I don’t know — I guess I don’t have a gazillion appliances, pre-packaged foods, and all, and I have no kids at home, and I am not a perfectionist, but that home upkeep really still does take up a noticeable amount of time and I wish I could hire it out.
The other issue is what the schools / scouts / etc. expect of parents. You have to be really competent and efficient to get a reasonable amount of this done and also stand your ground on protecting your time.
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“The other issue is what the schools / scouts / etc. expect of parents. You have to be really competent and efficient to get a reasonable amount of this done and also stand your ground on protecting your time.”
– That’s one thing (among a crowd) that terrifies me about having children. When I see my mentor at work drive to the grocery store at 11 pm because she needs to bake something for her daughter’s German class (???), I get a vicarious spike in blood pressure. I kind of dread having to do that. It isn’t baking that I mind, I love to cook. It’s doing things I find irrational. But a child shouldn’t pay for my hangups. This is a dilemma.
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You can always send a kid to buy a ready-made cake.
In Israel, if one doesn’t have “kashrut” in the house, that’s what must to be done anyway, even for secular school.
Besides, I hate cooking and never baked in my life. If I have a child, who needs cookies for movement/himself/etc., the best choice is to buy them (for various reasons).
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“You can always send a kid to buy a ready-made cake.”
– No, it had to be some kind of a typically German dessert.
“Besides, I hate cooking and never baked in my life. If I have a child, who needs cookies for movement/himself/etc., the best choice is to buy them”
– No, the best choice is to get the child to learn to cook. 🙂 🙂
Do you observe kashrut?
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I never had any expectations put on me to do housewifery. Sometimes, certain chores were expected, especially animal related, or mowing the lawn. Feeding and grooming and washing animals was expected. Also doing the dishes and tidying my room.
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My only “chore” was to take care of my sister. But it’s a pretty big one given that our age difference is not huge.
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Yeah, that would be a big one alright. I had to go down the road and feed my horse every morning and evening, muck out the stable, make sure there was water there, and generally take care of things.
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Mucking out the stable — I’m sure many modern people would not have enjoyed that job. You basically separate the soiled straw from that which isn’t so much, and chuck all the wasted stuff into a compost heap and replace it with new material.
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Relatives once took me to a cow milking. I was so terrified of both the cow and the process that I had nervous hiccups whenever I heard the word “milk” for months after that. You and I were very different kind of children. 🙂 🙂
I’m still terrified of horses, by the way. They are so BIG! 🙂
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“I’m still terrified of horses, by the way. They are so BIG!”
Clarissa, that sentence is adorable!
I was about to post a long comment (have you noticed how I’m NEVER brief?) here, but someone just told me I would make a very good mother for a variety of reasons I never associated with motherhood. So I’ll turn the comment into a post later today. Drop by for a read 🙂
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Sounds fascinating! I definitely will.
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“I’m still terrified of horses, by the way. They are so BIG!”
I’m somewhat nervous around them myself, for that reason. I’m afraid they will step on my feet.
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My husband and I split up the housework fairly evenly, although there are some things that he does because he knows I hate doing it, and vice versa. But I don’t think that’s a gender thing as much as it’s a preference thing. I don’t want to deal with taking out the trash because I just don’t want to do it. He doesn’t mind, so that’s his job. I don’t think either of us feels like the other’s maid. We both do chores, and hope to raise our two sons to be responsible for doing chores, too. I most certainly would not be married to anyone who didn’t do an equal share of the housework and/or parenting. Hubby changes shitty diapers just as much as I do. You do what you have to do — big deal.
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Exactly! I don’t understand how it is even possible to live with somebody who just sits there and expects to be served.
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I think a lot of it is based on perceptions. When my wife and I split up one of the reasons given was that she resented me for not helping out around the house. She said she was tired of doing everything herself. Of doing everything by yourself I asked? She said yes. Well that’s not how I remember it. When she was cooking dinner I was helping the kids with their homework. When she was washing the dishes I was loading and unloading the dishwasher. When she was wiping the counters I was sweeping and mopping the floors. When she was getting the kids clothes ready for school I was giving them their baths and getting them ready for bed. For every chore she had I had a chore of my own and of course I did all the heavy lifting, the majority of the yard work, and fixed things around the house. And yet somehow she remembers doing all of it herself. And when I reminded her of all I had done over the years she said that maybe her perceptions were wrong.
How can you fix something like that? She resented me for all these years because she can only see things from her own perspective and can only remember what she did herself. You can’t win in a situation like that. Now she lives by herself and she truely has to do it all herself including the yard work. And somehow my house (which used to be our house) magically keeps itself clean without her. Go figure?
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I’m sorry to have to say this but she simply didn’t love you. Or stopped loving you at some point. This obviously wasn’t about chores at all.
But the good thing is that now you are free to meet somebody who will love you.
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She has emotional problems and I feel bad for her. Her two relationships after we split ended badly, with one of them in jail, both lost their jobs because of her, and she ended up in jail for a DUI. Fortunately the kids are with me and we’re doing ok. I’m not really interested in getting into another relationship. I’ve gotten used to being a single parent and doing things my own way and don’t see any reason to go back. It just makes me sad that it had to be like this. I still care very much about her.
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“Fortunately the kids are with me and we’re doing ok. ”
– I’m sure they are better off with you. You sound like a very compassionate person.
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“No, Clarissa, I will not clean the bathroom because I cleaned it a week ago and its not dirty. If it matters that much to you then you do it.”
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This conversation would never happen in my house because if we agreed that it’s my partner’s responsibility to clean the bathrooms (which we actually did), he is more than capable of taking care of that duty on his own. It would never occur to me to act as his Mommy by reminding him.
Where does everybody meet all these immature folks who engage in such conversations?
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Come to think of it, this comment shows precisely what the problem is: some women need to Mommy their male partners and are incapable of relinquishing control to save their lives.
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“he is more than capable of taking care of that duty on his own. It would never occur to me to act as his Mommy by reminding him.”
Maybe you missed the point. My threshold of dirty is a lot different to 99% of womens. Its not about reminding, its about one party (99% of time its the woman) complaining that something needs cleaning when the other party doesn’t understand how they can consider it dirty.
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So you distribute the duties as follows : she cleans, you cook. Done. Problem solved.
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oh, well, I can just be a MGTOW-I won’t oppress any women and I’ll make my own meals, clean when I want (that’s not too often.) There will still be feminists and traditionalists calling me a misogynist because I’m keeping my (limited) money for myself….
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I think everybody should do absolutely whatever they want with their money, as long as they pay their bills and adequately provide for their children.
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I don’t plan to have children….
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“I don’t plan to have children….”
– Then you totally don’t have to share your money with anybody. Except the credit card companies, maybe. 🙂 🙂
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there’s taxes unfortunately….
as far as the credit cards, lately I’ve been paying off everything every month and that 1% cashback is nice….
hopefully i can keep my head above water and not make those shysters rich….
If I was king of the manosphere, my catch phrase would be-keep your waist lean, your wallet fat, your mind unclean and your partying hard 😉
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“my catch phrase would be-keep your waist lean, your wallet fat, your mind unclean and your partying hard ”
– Brilliant!!!
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On the cookie issue, bought ones wasn’t what they meant when they asked you to bake, in my experience. I just drew the line there — I was a provider of juice or cold cuts or something like that; the kids could bake for their classes if they wanted to, but I wasn’t about to insist.
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‘When the household chores are discussed before they agree to move in with their male partners…’
I think many couples where one partner ends up with more than their fair share of household chores have fallen at this exact hurdle.
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If people can’t negotiate even something as simple as this, what chance does this kind of a relationship stand?
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Early on in our marriage, my wife and I made two lists of weekly household chores and each list contained things neither of us liked to do. Each week we traded lists. All chores got done (most of the time) and we quickly found out what was important to each of us. The reward for getting the lists done before noon Saturday was our going out for breakfast/brunch/lunch together. Still have the chore list and the kids are expected to do their part. Their reward is access to electronic entertainment. It works for us.
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Sounds like a brilliant system. I always say that there is nothing hard about such issues for people with an intellect.
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//However, the question remains : why do so many women choose to perform gender by scrubbing toilets instead of by lying in bed and feeling like a beautiful sexy flower whose sensibilities would be hurt by the unpleasant reality of cleaning? There is a multitude of ways to perform gender. Why use such a boring one?
Is it a rhetoric question? If no, here it is:
“If you don’t do lion’s share of HW, no man will stay with you. Men expect of women more than sex”
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“Is it a rhetoric question? If no, here it is:
“If you don’t do lion’s share of HW, no man will stay with you. Men expect of women more than sex””
– I’m talking about today’s women, not some ancient grandmas. 🙂
The actual reasons are: the fear of relinquishing control, the need to release aggression, and the incapacity to form a partnership. These are pretty much the same reasons why women so often push out men out of the realm of caring for their shared children.
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That’s what today’s women hear from a young, impressionable age from their female relatives and then get a man, who wasn’t taught to do anything about the house & doesn’t want to.
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“That’s what today’s women hear from a young, impressionable age from their female relatives and then get a man, who wasn’t taught to do anything about the house & doesn’t want to.”
– Most men in developed societies today do not move in with their girlfriends straight from their Mamma’s house. This just doesn’t happen. Most men live alone or with roommates and manage to take care of themselves perfectly well. Then, they move in with a girlfriend and she does all she can to infantilize the man in terms of housework. NOT doing that is actually quite hard. Even I had to battle the desire to do that. But at least I can acknowledge honestly that I experienced a desire to exclude my partner from housework, even though I passionately detest housework.
As for women hearing such things from relatives, in fundamentalist marginalized circles, yes. But among normal people who are not religious fanatics? Come on. There is always television where all you see are female characters who are so incapable of any housework that it borders on the bizarre. Yet, such women are massively adored and have crowds of admirers. Just remember Sex and the City.
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//Yet, such women are massively adored and have crowds of admirers.
Those crowds want to have sex with them, not to marry & raise kids, I suspect. 2 very different things.
//As for women hearing such things from relatives, in fundamentalist marginalized circles, yes. But among normal people who are not religious fanatics?
Haven’t you heard it from your relatives?
I am sure it happens much more than you think in “normal” families.
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“Those crowds want to have sex with them, not to marry & raise kids, I suspect. 2 very different things.”
– You don’t watch a lot of American TV, do you? 🙂 🙂
“Haven’t you heard it from your relatives?”
– I grew up in a patriarchal 3rd world country. Yet, I left my parents’ house without knowing how to do anything around the house. My first husband had to do the most basic things for me. I managed to boil water once, of course, which would have been a huge achievement had I not immediately spilled it all over my arm suffering severe burns. 🙂
“I am sure it happens much more than you think in “normal” families.”
– Girls being told that nobody will marry them if they don’t clean and cook? You cannot be serious. Any parent who says that to a kid who has access to TV an the Internet would be laughed at by his or her own child.
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Depends, if one has a 100 hour work week and the other only 40, it wouldnt be fair to split the housework 50/50…so I think each of these cases should be studied individually.
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“Depends, if one has a 100 hour work week and the other only 40, it wouldnt be fair to split the housework 50/50”
– Yes, it would. if the person who works 100 hours a week lived alone, would they manage to do all their chores or would they die of hunger and filth? Adult people should take responsibility for their actions. If they have no time to do their 50% of household chores, they can hire a maid. But exploiting a partner for free is wrong.
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What do you do if you have different tolerances for non cleanliness ? ? ?
Magically I have almost never had housework issues with men, they seem to come pre-trained both in terms of how-to and stepping up to the plate. But I have this one ex, that I never could have lived with, because he was actually more comfortable in a mess. Hiring a maid would not have worked because he would not have been comfortable with that level of hygiene ! ! !
In that case this was just one of the various incompatibilities but … I can actually see this being a kind of dealbreaker.
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