Is it because women tend to be more houseproud than men?

[Anordinarymum]

So many threads on here talking about the end of a marriage with one of the main contributing factors being that men refuse to do housework saying it's not their job - prompt me to ask the following questions..

Is it do you think our own fault for ending up like a maid to our other halves simply because we have a better eye for cleaning and making the house presentable ?

Is it because we get the 'nesting' instinct as a result of having babies and a pattern develops which is hard to break?

I think there is a combination of reasons for women being landed with the responsibility to look after the home; with another one being that men tend to have been looked after by a generation of women who thought is was their job to wait on men hand and foot, and they automatically slide into that role when they get married?

It's s shame when a marriage becomes a toil of a pleasure for the woman simply because her OH is lazy don't you think ?

I find these threads blaming women as mothers, as wives or just as people with decent standards, so misogynistic and depressing.

Yep.

There's an underlying tone that women just have high standards and need to relax, and that anyone who wants to have a nice clean home is just obsessed with hygiene or tidying.

This is something I've often wondered about. All i know is that, when DH and I started dating, and then living together, we split almost everything 50:50 - cleaning, cooking, shopping, household management. Now, despite being the higher earner (and working longer hours) I'd say we're at 70:30 at best. And I have to do ALL the thinking.

I think there are multiple factors at play such as

• Societal expectation, both real (my MIL asking me who was going to look after the kids when I went back) and imagined (I would feel judged if I my house was a mess, or the DC went to school in the wrong uniform). Also, in the workplace, a woman is not judged as harshly for asking to go P/T as a man
• Mat leave - that's when the shift in responsibility started for me, because we had to economise we sacked the cleaner and I started doing the cleaning, I started doing the shopping because it got me out of the house, and I started doing the cooking because I was at home.
• Habit - now, because I've done it all for so long, i know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. e.g. online banking, DH can NEVER remember his online PIN, because he never does it, so I have to do all the bill paying. I organised the cleaner, so she sends me the bill, so I pay it.
• the x-factor (this is the bit I don't know about). Does DH REALLY not see that the shower plughole needs cleaning, despite the fact that I've left the cover off and it is BLACK with dirt?
• laziness on the part of men. Because they can get away with it, they do.
• Justification for being a SAHM (don't shoot me here - I'm sure it's a rare case, but definitely true for some). If the women takes on the burden of the household, they can justify not going back to the workplace (or reducing hours). This then adds to societal pressure

I think the big question is whether there is a psychological reason or just a societal reason for the thing that i see, which is DHs becoming increasingly reliant on their DW to "look after" them (as though they're another child).