Women will always have more housework

[Almondmilk]

No matter what. I live in one of the most equalitarian country and I still drop and pick my kid from school, always get up first for breakfast and morning routine, cook, clean, tidy, do laundries. Sometimes he does help, sometimes.

Only those women who let men walk all over them.

I think too many women think it's easier to do the housework themselves than to persuade their other half to do it.

My husband works part time. I work full time. He does all the housework.

You have chosen to do those things, OP. You also have the mindset that he helps you so obviously see it as women's work yourself. I see household chores as tasks that all members of my household take part in.

Change your mindset and discuss the sharing of household chores.

Only those women who let men walk all over them

Sorry, just to explain that I don't include women who are in abusive relationships in that statement. I recognise some women may be working under duress - I don't think that's what the OP meant, but wanted to clarify what I'd said.

@Almondmilk

No matter what. I live in one of the most equalitarian country and I still drop and pick my kid from school, always get up first for breakfast and morning routine, cook, clean, tidy, do laundries. Sometimes he does help, sometimes.

I think the problem is that you (and probably he) see it as 'helping' and therefore being optional/him doing you a favour.

In our house everyone that lives here has an equal responsibility for managing stuff that comes with living somewhere (cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing, mowing the lawn etc), it isn't seen as my job with him helping!

Surely you just do it according to circumstances? I’m not employed right now so I’m doing a very high majority, when we both worked full time we split it 50/50 and when I worked part time we split it 75/25 roughly, why would I do more because of my vagina?

Sometimes he does help, sometimes

There's your problem. It's not ”help” it's sharing the housework in your house that you both live in.

Whilst it does seem to be the norm and the ones with the male partner who does the lions share of housework are the exceptions, attitudes are changing. Gradually.

I'm a SAHM and DH is the breadwinner. It works for us and now the kids are older I'm going to get a job to bring in spending money so we can finally start having treats. However, my man is an exception too. He does probably more everyday basic housework than I do. He doesn't like sitting around and will grab the laundry basket and start folding and putting away. He also (infuriatingly) does the dishes which is DD's job that I pay her for and she's getting used to shirking her responsibilities thanks to him.

My husband and I are 50/50 in all things including housework. We are childfree by choice (for lots of reasons) but I am certain if we had chosen to have kids the bulk of the care would have fallen on my shoulders.

So I’m opting out of parenting! 😂

You’ll get a proper discussion on the feminist board

On a population level, I think that's going to remain the case for a while. Shifting things like that takes different factors.

On an individual level, no, it's not true for every female-male household that women always do more housework, even when the man works out of the home more.

I don't know if it's inevitable. There's no reason it should be really is there.
My husband does more housework than me and does all the cooking and school drop offs and pick ups. He works part time and I work full time. I have a better paid job. He's more of a homebody.

Not in our house. I’m the higher earner with the more demanding and unpredictable job. I don’t think that entitles me to skip my share of housework and childcare, which often seems to be the case with men in that position. We share things very equally and if one of us needs to pick up the slack for the other then we do that willingly. Because I naturally pick up more (but not all by any means) of the mental load for house stuff and DD, DH then takes responsibility for other things, such as the dog, garden and the car so that I know that I don’t need to think about these things at all.

I could never enter into a relationship on anything other than these terms. Being female doesn’t make me any more fond of doing housework!

My DH had 4 brothers and the house was a tip (neither parent was keen on housework). You'd think he'd not bother but it actually had the opposite effect, he didn't like living in a mess and he's very good at housework. He was reluctant to have me meet his parents when we were dating, he didn't want me seeing the house! It's still not great, main issue is they're horders.

My mother on the other hand has a spotless house and kept on at us kids about cleaning, for a long time it put me right off! As a couple we're equal I'd say, I'm better at clearing and tidying day to day, he's good at the deep clean jobs. Laundry and dishes 50/50.

No matter what. I live in one of the most equalitarian country and I still drop and pick my kid from school, always get up first for breakfast and morning routine, cook, clean, tidy, do laundries. Sometimes he does help, sometimes.

I suppose it depends whether your partner is willing to really engage with trying to have an equal partnership.

Despite dp being a hands on feminist, it still took us a number of years to really be equal partners in the housework (because it is easy to fall into the roles we've been taught). I can honestly say that he shares housework, childcare and the mental load pretty equally now. There were a lot of discussions on the way were he felt he was doing half but listened to me while I showed all the extra things I was doing.

The infuriating thing is that other men ridicule his role in the family.

Stompythedinosaur
OT,but makes him a feminist?

I still drop and pick my kid from school, always get up first for breakfast and morning routine, cook, clean, tidy, do laundries. Sometimes he does help, sometimes.

what's your set-up? i always picked my kids up from the childminder did there meal, sorted stuff for school - because my DH worked evenings and wasn't available. Conversely he took them to school, did breakfast and morning routine and put in the laundry.

Each family has to decide for themselves what works best. But if you're landed with a dud partner who doesn't pull their weight - make them shape up or ship out.

My dad did national service, learned to iron and clean and he cooked too. He worked shifts, so if he was home when my mum wasn't, he did the work, if she was home and he was at work, then she did.

It came as a HUGE shock to me when I started dating, to find that men thought women would automatically do all the housework. I've been married three times and each one of those men had to be educated into the 'clean up your OWN mess' way of thinking.

Parents need to model equality of housecare to their children.

Why do let him then, if you’re unhappy about it? It doesn’t advance things when you talk about him “helping”, he isn’t helping if they’re his children and his home

It is very easy to blame individual women for "putting up with it" when this is a problem on a societal level. Many men are fine at first, and many women are slatterns themselves when they first get together, as with many things the change can creep in when you have children and when the woman finds herself at home for the first time. What you pick up in maternity leave can be very hard to put down again.
There is a lot of conditioning in this. Dh up before me today as I had a lie in. He has made himself breakfast. When I got up I also made myself breakfast, but on the way downstairs I carried a load of laundry, stuck that on and moved other stuff to the dryer, put the kettle on and moved several dishes into the sink, put the toast on and wiped up some surfaces. He will do strictly one thing at a time.

@Mistlewoeandwhine

My DH does far more housework than me and he is the main earner. Mainly because he is very tidy and I am a foul filth pig.

I'd say my husband and I spend about the same amount of time, but I do more to a far lower standard, and he is really thorough and does the jobs carefully.

We play this to our advantage. He does careful jobs for longer and I whizz around quickly making things tolerable on a daily basis.

We both despise each others messes whilst thinking our own are perfectly acceptable. If neither of us thinks a job is important we're capable of ignoring it indefinitely.

My partner and I aim to split the housework evenly, but he is tidier than me in general, so probably does more. I don’t see the mess as much, so I schedule tasks (eg, vacuum and clean the bathroom on a Saturday morning) so that I remember to do my share.

He does the DIY around the house and I look after the garden by preference, though we’ll help each other out when needed. We take it in turns to shop for the week and then cook with what we’ve bought - we both like cooking, but are glad not to do it every single day.

We don’t have children and generally clean up after ourselves, so it helps that there isn’t tons of housework to do anyway. We have equally busy and similarly paid jobs. My partner is doing a distance learning degree, so I try to pick up a bit more of the slack when he’s busy with that, but he still sometimes gets to chores before I do.

In terms of general trends though I don’t know...I hope this is something that’s becoming more equal, but I don’t have any information on that. I do know that I couldn’t have settled down with someone who was dirty/ didn’t keep their home reasonably clean, though I’m not bothered by a bit of mess as long as it gets tidied up and isn’t actually dirty/smelly/gross, so maybe I just have low housework standards! If you have a non-cleaning dp I wonder what they were like before you (general) got together with them. Were they slobby in their own homes, or maybe you met when you were both young and living with parents so it wasn’t obvious...I don’t know, I’m just being nosy really!

A lot of these issues could be easily solved if more women chose to be childfree.

Having a vagina doesn't make me better at:-

• dropping off and picking up kids from school
• getting up early
• making breakfast
• doing the morning routine
• cooking
• cleaning
• tidying
• doing laundry.

I don't cook with my vagina. I don't put clothes in the washing machine with my vagina. I don't have an alarm clock in my vagina that wakes me up early.

So no. Being a woman doesn't mean you should have to do all this stuff.

If he won't help just stop doing it.

We alternate mornings. We alternate drop offs to nursery.

I do the cooking and laundry, he maintains the gardens. We play to our strengths but work as a team.

My DH does a lot of housework, although obviously more at the weekends. I am signed off (35 weeks pregnant) and we have a toddler so during the week all the housework falls on me. He does come home and do the dishes and put DD to bed after work. However, on the weekend he does a lot. This morning he got up with DD, made her breakfast, made us breakfast, put a clothes wash on, put the clean clothes away, and did the dishes. He is about to go food shopping. I have just been sitting.

Of course if the woman is home more the housework will fall to her. If you are both equal time at home, and the woman does the majority of the housework, it's because the man thinks he shouldn't have to do it, and she is letting him think that. You want DP/DH to do more? Tell/ask him to. He will get the idea after a while.