Parents do £70k of unpaid work in the home

[1Wanda1]

From an article in The Times today (have pasted a few bits as most people won't be able to read the article if I link it. This might be of interest to the many MNers whose partners seem to think they sit around doing nothing all day!

A separate study found British parents undertake £70,768 of unpaid work a year around the house and running around for the children.

It found that the average parent spends more than 100 hours a week juggling household tasks, from cooking and cleaning to ferrying children around and helping with their homework.

Parents were spending 29 hours a week cooking, preparing and serving food and drinks, ten hours playing with the children, the same amount of time driving on the school run, to activities, clubs and playdates, and nine hours giving advice.

I find it a bit sad that playing with your children is counted as "unpaid work". Really?

As for 29 hours per week cooking/serving food and drink.. that's more than 4 hours a day. What on earth are these people eating that takes that amount of time. I think maybe they need to learn to batch cook!!

Oh damn, I’ve been getting a stool and sitting next to the washing machine watching it go round. Gamechanger.

Like I said, you're living in cloud cuckoo-land if you think all or even most women can protect themselves against male entitlement by asserting "strong boundaries".

You don’t have to date men who are like that though. Or if they fall short of your expectations, you leave. Prioritise your financial independence. What’s the better option, resign yourself to the fact that men are shit and suck up doing all stuff you don’t want to do, or be part of the change you want to see? I had an ongoing pattern of dating disrespectful entitled men who wouldn’t have pissed on me if I was on fire, so I did something about it. Got therapy, learned how to properly care about myself. Having strong boundaries certainly worked for me in finding a partner who does his fair share - in fact he does more ‘wife work’ than I do.

This gets brought up every couple of years.

Yes , if you outsourced child rearing and housework and diy and general property maintenance then it would cost an enormous amount of money.

But it's normal life for most people.

Calculating the cost of it all is subjective and not even applicable.
You live your life.

If there's a subsection of the population that feels that we should be paid to live our lives then God help us.

Nope. I live firmly in reality. I've been a 'victim' of inequality in a relationship. I fully understand why that was so - a lot of it is down to being young and silly and falling for frankly bullshit notions and stereotypes. It ended badly for me. I learned.

We can do better. We can choose better. We can leave men to flounder in their useless-ness, if they are not willing to step up. The majority of men are as capable of maintaining a household as the majority of women are. We are not victims to men's incompetence. Or at least we don't have to be.

Give women the credit they are due. We are entirely, absolutely 100% capable of asserting strong boundaries. If you really believe we are not capable of that, then do you believe us doomed??

Absolutely, I believe women as a group have the power to change the system.

But to blame individual women for finding themselves in a situation where they are victims of inequality because they didn't "choose" carefully enough is beyond the pale.

Take single parenthood, for example. The one thing women could do to move forward equality in terms of caring labour and economic power is the one thing they'd never do... dump the kids on their ex's doorstop and go to work.

Goldbar
”Like I said, you're living in cloud cuckoo-land if you think all or even most women can protect themselves against male entitlement by asserting "strong boundaries".”

Rubbish. I was brought up in an abusive household (in the 1960s) where my father regularly beat and raped my mother, sexually abused me and physically abused my brother.
I determined from a very young age that no-one would ever do that to me again when I had licence and they never have. I simply would not tolerate it.

I also determined that I would never see my father or brother (who went on to abuse my mother and I when she finally escaped my father) and I didn’t. We all have free will.

It's not blaming. I was a single parent for years. What would have made my economic potential at that time would have been good quality, free childcare and good quality jobs that worked around family life. What eventually got me there was doing a degree. I didn't need my ex to raise my kid, I needed better job prospects so that I could do both, comfortably.

My now DH once, years ago, sat down on the sofa in the evening to watch TV or whatever, and then he noticed that I was still watching dishes. He said 'oh you're still working" and then got up to tidy the living room. He recognised that what I was doing was in fact work, work that benefitted him, and that therefore it wasn't sitting back and relaxing time yet. This is because he is a normal man. He's not an angel, he's not perfect, he doesn't 'help' me, he is just a normal capable adult and I wouldn't settle for less.

My life is significantly easier as a result of having a higher bar (and tbh it's not that high. Capable, functioning adult is not actually a high bar at all!)

The one thing they could do is not procreate with feckless, irresponsible and/or abusive losers. Be more discriminating, ladies.

I don't think it's that at all. Given generally women do everything, it's good for them to know what that's "worth" and for their partners to appreciate that and for both not to expect that the woman does everything as a 'given'. That's why women are so screwed, me included when I realised I have basically been brainwashed my whole life and didn't even see it

People choose to have children.

It's not unpaid work that is just ridiculous it's called parenting

You really have completely missed the point 🤦🏻‍♀️

As have many on here.

Stable door. Horse. Bolted.

These feckless losers don't tend to walk around with signs on their heads. Sometimes it may be clear, but it's well-known and well-documented that often abuse starts/steps up during pregnancy and when children arrive. Let's stop blaming women for men's failings.

It’s not really specifically parents though is it?

Single people do unpaid ‘work’ if that’s how you see it - cleaning, cooking shopping etc. So does everyone who looks after an elderly parent or who does volunteer work.

I guess I’ve got millions in unpaid ‘work’ behind me, before I even became a parent. I just thought I was living.

But why should be people be paid for conducting what is essentially life? Cooking, cleaning etc are just things we have to do to survive.

It's so depressing 😞

None of that is work. Cooking your own meals and parenting your own children is not work. It's just life.

They're not being paid or asking for pay! It's a conversation starter to highlight the disparities between men and women and how much "unpaid" unappreciated "work" women do in life 😖
I assume OP just wanted to have an intelligent discussion about it. Thank you OP it is interesting to think about, and I'll be talking to my friends in RL about it

Surely most of these things have to be done whether you have children or not? Really the only extra 'work' dd solely requires is getting to places and my attention. I'd still have to cook, clean, look after pets... regardless. It's not really a huge burden to chuck a bit extra in a pan or do an extra wash especially when I compare it to the joy she brings me. I see her as a positive addition to our lives, after all it's not like she was brought by the stork and thrust upon me

The article refers to "parents" rather than "women" specifically. I think the real discussion to be had is why, in so many families, these tasks are still predominantly regarded as "women's work".

I always laugh at those articles saying the SAHP should be valued like a trained chef, nurse, nanny, professional driver, etc. and valued at 100k a year or whatever.

A) It's likely that the tasks aren't being performed to a professional standard
B) the articles always conveniently forget, when saying it would cost XX to replace a SAHP, that there are costs associated.

Deduct a dwelling, electric/heat/water costs, food, vehicle/transport fuel, technology, wifi and gadgets, clothing and personal care, leisure and entertainment, etc etc that the earner has to cover and you'd find that the expense of an SAHP quite offsets their supposed market value.

Whatever people want to do inside their own household to divide labour and responsibilities is fine with me. Don't like it, don't agree to it / get yourself stuck with someone who doesn't hold up their end of the bargain. But don't complain to the rest of us when you do.