Woman just expect more than men and treat them like naughty boys regarding housework...

I see so many posts on here complaining about wife work- yet women seem so happy to take it on.

I really don’t understand this. Presumably he bought Christmas presents for his family before he met you? Why on earth would you take on the responsibility for buying presents for his family? If my husband wants to give Christmas or birthday presents to his family that is entirely up to him.

I generally quite like Christmas shopping, and he doesn't, and has less time, so I took it over to a large degree. I was a little overwhelmed that year with the new baby so I asked him to do more than usual.

I suspect his gifts to his mother before we married were always a little hit and miss.

I'm hope that meets your approval.

It always reminds me about the year my youngest was born and I asked my husband to do all the Christmas shopping for his side of the family and the kids. He fine for the kids, and well for his brother and dad in fact he now does them all the time

I really don’t understand this. Presumably he bought Christmas presents for his family before he met you? Why on earth would you take on the responsibility for buying presents for his family? If my husband wants to give Christmas or birthday presents to his family that is entirely up to him.

Not shame. I’m a lazy bitch.

I dunno perhaps my vagina forgot that it’s supposed to do housework 🤷🏽‍♀️

It's absolutely the shame/judging thing that women still seem to suffer from more.

It's weird: I'm imagining a couple called Peter and Jane let's say. If someone said "Jane gets a cleaner in" I'd think nothing of it, just that Jane is busy/tired/hates cleaning, whatever. But if someone said, "Peter gets a cleaner in" I'm imagining within that sentence something of Jane's commitment to cleaning and a potential judgement of Jane by the speaker or Peter, whereas I didn't even think about Peter in the first example. Gah. Is that the conditioning? Like picturing a male when you see the word surgeon even though you correct yourself afterwards?

It’s socialisation. It’s giving little girls dusters and pretend hoovers and letting them help mummy or nanny with the housework, and praising them for it. Not doing it with boys, because boys don’t enjoy that sort of stuff, they need to be out burning energy...

Most men i know are more than happy to do housework, but want a list of instructions. They don’t seem to understand housework is a constant, ongoing thing, not a 10 min job and done for the day.

I know anecdote isn’t data but I have known 3 men in my life who housekeep “properly”. Always picking up things as they see them, cleaning and washing when it needs doing, not waiting for instructions from a woman.

All 3 of those men sadly lost their mums at a young age, so got used to making these decisions by themselves.

Again an interesting observation, the partner of one of these men is my close friend. When she was pregnant i was telling her how getting a cleaner saved my sanity- her reply? Well i won’t need one, this house keeps itself pretty clean...

Not different standards, She simply hadn’t noticed how much her husband did. Throwing a load in the washer before bed, running the vacuum for 10 mins before they sat down for tea, loading the dishwasher as cups were left next to it, wiping the surfaces before cooking, stopping at the shop on the way home from work....all little insignificant things individually but make a huge difference..

I am always fascinated by cleaning threads on MN because people seem to be doing a lot more cleaning than me generally. Especially anything to do with laundry. Those threads get crazy.

God yes. Those threads regularly make me feel fucing disgusting tbh! I remember outing my vile self on one years back..as someone who only changed sheets once a week. I am sleeping in loads of piss, poo, puke etc apparently. I would honestly suggest that those whos sheets get THAT dirty..are doing something differently to what I do in bed!

Also massively gross, is me only washing kids hair twice a week. And (arguably maybe actually gross) how I once went over a week in the same bra!

I am 'lucky' in that DH is a neat freak, and does near all the housework. Its actually got to the point where he told me to stop doing it, as he likes it done a certain way and apparently my way is not good enough so he only has t do it again so its pointless me doing it to start with. Which I am fine with, as I bloody hate it. Well matched it seems!

I think you'll find if you read the rest of the thread carefully, Hooves, that all of the points you make have already been covered (some of them by me).

Should a fully grown adult be capable of tidying up/cleaning after himself? Hell yes.

Would a fully grown adult get away with strategic incompetence/only doing a half-arsed job in his paid employment? Hell no

But many disagreements aren't about living in sanitary or unsanitary conditions are they?

A man might be very capable of keeping a clean home but just doesn't see the need to clean the windows weekly or have an array of cushions on the bed ( just two arguments I've heard from friends).

One person's clutter is another person's cosy isn't it? I get the point in the op - people have different standards. Assuming there's basic cleanliness being done, if one partner wants a significantly higher standard to be met should they try to make the other partner comply?

There is a difference between class analysis and a generalisation about motives.

In any case neither are all that useful for understanding something like how these kinds of disagreements and tensions actually arise in relationships.

Class analysis, Goose. In my observations of friends and family, backed up statistics (e.g. most recently, how many women are taking a hit on their ability to work from home in order to support their children's education, versus how many men are doing the same thing), a higher percentage of women are involved in hands-on parenting than men. Of course some men are great and some women are crap. But we're really talking population averages here.

Many men constantly criticize women for failing to meet cleanliness standards, even though the men do not do any housework beyond outdoor cooking in the summer.
So I do not think women have higher cleanliness standards than men. It is a question of being willing to do the work. How much work each is willing to do is very different from how much work they want the other person to do.

A bloke who can't be arsed to "fake it till he makes it" on the parenting front with all the boring shit work, and cherry picks the good bits, isn't "not noticing", he simply doesn't give enough of a shit about his own kids to parent properly.

Are you thinking of some particular man, or men in general? Lots of dads spend time with their kids. Modern parenting that puts a lot of emphasis on parents doing kids activities is not what I'd call a universal though.

Kid's activities - let's just take that one as an example.

Because I fucking hated (in no particular order) soft play, pushing swings ad nauseam, imaginary play ("you be the monster mummy, no not that way, this way...") baking stuff with toddlers (oh god, the washing up)*. A lot of it is desperately, desperately boring. I did it all, and I smiled through it - because my kid needed me to. Not because it was women's work. Not because it came naturally to me. Not because I noticed it. But because my kid needed that input and attention.

A bloke who can't be arsed to "fake it till he makes it" on the parenting front with all the boring shit work, and cherry picks the good bits, isn't "not noticing", he simply doesn't give enough of a shit about his own kids to parent properly.

(*Your own personal list may vary - I liked football, brio and lego, and cardboard engineering. Could happily do those for hours.)

I think a lot of that wifework stuff is where you get serious differences between the sexes in terms of what is important. Kids activities, Christmas looking a certain way - these tend not to be things men are so focused on. At least, I have yet to see a men's magazine with articles about Christmas cookie exchanges or how to make cards by hand or the best way to pick out the perfect gift for everyone.

I tend to think it's cultural to some extent, and women sometimes have a vision of what it's supposed to be like. Kind of like women who read bridal magazines and have a clear vision of a dream wedding (which sometimes is completely unrealistic.) So they may also have a vision of a perfect home, a perfect family life, a perfect dinner party, etc. There are whole tv channels about this stuff and its mostly women who watch.

It always reminds me about the year my youngest was born and I asked my husband to do all the Christmas shopping for his side of the family and the kids. He fine for the kids, and well for his brother and dad in fact he now does them all the time. But he bought his mother a giant chocolate bar, bigger than her head. Admittedly she is not the easiest person to buy for, but she looked very perplexed when she opened it.

To be honest it’s the broader ‘wifework’ that can be exhausting. So looking at who books the holidays, Keris the family calendar un order (including the arrangements to get everyone everywhere), meal plans, sorts the shopping, sorts the kids clothes out, buys the gifts, plans Christmas/religious celebrations events, does the clear outs. That’s got to be shared as well. Then on top of that there can be a greater expectation for women to do the ‘emotional labour’ so to hold the emotional stability of the family and make sure everyone feels ok and cared about. Got to share that one too.

It’s not just running the hoover round.

So feminists are misandrist when we mention this disparity and the mental load, etc. and this clown is answering that by saying the men are actually really filthy, disorganized and lazy and women should just join them in unsanitary squalor?

And feminists are the misandrists?

How does anyone end up in a house that they share with another adult and do so much more than the other? It's not overnight, is it?

If you live in a household where you pick up after adults, do all the cooking, cleaning and childcare then you are, at least, partly to blame.

For me it just wasn't obvious before having dd. Childcare he had always talked as if he'd take equal responsibility. The reality turned out to be very different. I guess with cleaning/tidying, I must have been doing the majority all the time and just not noticed. I probably should have but genuinely didn't. Especially in the early months after she was born I was very sleep deprived, had a fairly long recovery from childbirth due to complications, and I couldn't not notice. And as she's got older and generates mess of her own, it becomes more obvious because the work load has gone up and you can't not see that one person doesn't pull their weight.

Somebody else's problem is a thing, but I think it often does have to be explicitly talked about. I for example always did this with oil changes on the care, until DH pointed out that while he is happy to take care of the details, I need to tell hi when the oil light comes on.

With cups it seems more like no one notices that the work is getting done, one person is just more on top of it.

People get mad because they feel like SEP is obvious, but once it is slotted into that bit of the brain, it isn't until you drag it into the frontal lobe.

When I read about women complaining that they have to write Christmas cards for their husbands/partner's friends and relatives, I do think "well you're bringing that on yourself". I know that's not the topic of the op exactly, but it seems to come up quite a lot under "wife work".

With cleaning and tidying it's very hard to say without knowing what goes on in individual households. I know that some men complain if their wife/partner doesn't keep the house to a certain standard, so the bar is not always set by women.

In my household, my child's father does very little except load the dishwasher. I think it's a basic courtesy to clear up your own mess in a shared space. I dont think my own standards are particularly high.

I've often wondered if this is true statistically, if women are more likely to be tidy, or maybe tidy about certain types of things, than men. Many people clearly think so, but I have never been sure one way or the other.

My experience, which probably counts for nothing, when I was younger and moved around a lot living with different housemates, and time at university, was that there was no clear sex divide. I actually met and lived with more fastidious men than women. But it seems like once people get into serious heterosexual relationships and move in together, it seems like that's when the change happens and women suddenly feel responsible for making sure a home is tidy and get judged if it's not.

The neatest couples I've ever known, it's been lead by the man.

If I took the lead of my DP, the sides would never be cleaned, and we'd be up to our armpits in dirty cups/empty bottles in the living room.

I have very low standards. I haven't hoovered in 3 weeks, and I'm looking around thinking it needs doing, but am living with it rather than getting round to doing it.

It's not that DP can't see the dirt, it's that he's assigned this stuff in his mind as Somebody Else's Problem (all credit to Douglas Adams) so he refuses to acknowledge it. This is the big problem I see most - that so many men are willing to let someone else do it all for them, whereas many women would feel guilty for doing that.

I agree with OP. I am the messier person and DH does most of the house admin. I do more of the kids stuff though including night wakings. It’s a team thing - I agree you have to negotiate and compromise.

I think it often happens during/after maternity leave.

Picking up the odd thing after DP isn't a huge stress and often women just do it while in the haze of first love on moving in together. A kind of "well 2 mugs in the dishwasher isn't much harder than one" thing (with a side order of "bless him, he doesn't see dirt" thanks to our old friend female socialisation).

But then children come along, you're the one at home with them full time, the tasks shift to your detriment, plus the overall workload increases exponentially (sea of plastic shite, endless laundry, smelly nappy bins, washing the kitchen floor under the toddler's high chair every single meal, etc. etc.) and somehow the new, higher workload never gets balanced out properly even after you've gone back to work. And now you're raging "goddamit, why doesn't he see the dirt?" but the imbalance feels like it's set in stone.

And if you try to tackle the imbalance, the whole gamut of "but you just have insanely high standards", "I'd do it if you didn't try to micro-manage me" (for "micro mange" read "expect you to wash the cutlery as well as the plates"), and the coup de grace "stop nagging."

It's boiled frog syndrome again. I think women don't notice it creeping up on them till it's too late.

It's one reason why I like being a single parent. It may all fall to me (barring the age appropriate chores I expect from DC) but at least I don't have the raging sense of injustice some of my friends live with.

PinkBrained, so that's more shame.

Shame that your house isn't up to scratch. Shame that you haven't brought up your children well enough to help out properly and trained up your adult partner to pull their weight (although it was presumably to the shame of his mother that he's like that in the first place - shame! shame!)

Actually, I'm doing quite well on the second front and using lockdown to train up ds1 on dishes and washing with the intention to add tasks as we go until we have a clean house and I don't have to lift a finger.

Dh is very poor at housework although he does quite a bit but he also does 90% of the cooking and virtually all the childcare.