To find it unacceptable that society in general expects women to do most domestic tasks

[nonaomi]

I still think most men and women think that women are responsible for 'housework'. It's often joked about how men are 'messy' and 'useless'..and lots of women I know, don't seem to mind this role.

Is this just in my circle, or is that other's experience too ?

@Susie477 I just don't think life is as black and white as this. But happy it that works for you.

Evelight yes I understand what you're saying. I find it frustrating on MN sometimes as the elite all pile in and basically say 'oh well that's not how it is in my circle', it happens with subjects other than housework as well, it could be domestic violence or work issues. Like it's only the uneducated working classes that suffer these things. If only we could get ourselves a Russell group degree and a professional job, all would be fine

@Susie477 Not in your backyard, eh?

Society in general also expects men to do the more physical tasks, such as general house maintenance, outdoor painting, roof repairs etc . Not stuff I’d want to do tbh.

@smittenkittten definitely true.

[quote Evelight]@Natty13 "So I can't see this from any other perspective than my own. "- well, that's good show of empathy you have going on there!

If you're really serious about how to change things, I would start by educating ourselves- there is a TON of research done (by lady-scholars, and a few proper men-scholars natch) on how insidiously these gender stereotypes work to the detriment of women. However this research is mostly read only by other lady-scholars, and as we can see by the comments on this thread, very rarely make their way out of academia, and whenever they do, they are drowned out by a chorus of "Not all Men!" "Not all Husbands"! "My Husband does the Dishes!" "Women love Cleaning!"[/quote]
@Evelight I think you are my new hero

@chocolateoranginhaler, some of us buy our dh’s’/dps’ clothes because the poor buggers are colour blind and in the past we’ve had to get them to take stuff back to the shop. Because the colour is hideous, it looks bloody awful on them, and we won’t be seen dead with them in it.

The two factors which I personally would take into account when talking about men/women doing housework are:

1. Is the man capable of doing the household tasks to a reasonable standard, or does he refuse to learn because he finds his penis gets in the way when he's trying to load the washing machine or change a nappy?
2. Do the two halves of a couple have equal leisure time?

We've had a few different balances of household chores over the decade we've been together, because our work situations have been different. So there have been times when I've expected to come hom to a clean house and a cooked dinner, likewise him, and times when we've both shared it much more equally.

However, as he has shown these past nearly two months when I've been very ill in pregnancy, my husband is completely capable of doing all everyday household tasks and childcare without instruction or guidance from me. I took to my bed, he took over.

I am sure that over the course of our lives I will do more housework but that's because I am, and intend to be for some time yet, a SAHM. What I'm interested in is whether or not we have equal time off. I don't do more housework because I sweep the floor with my boobs and cook dinner with my vulva. If we were both working similar hours then damn right I'd expect him to do half the chores and childcare. But we're not, so I don't.

I am very grateful that growing up, I saw my father cleaning and cooking just as much as my mother. My mother did more emotional/mental labour around childcare, I now recognise, but in terms of hours and elbow grease it was perfectly normal for me for a man to do housework. Funnily enough, my mother enabled my brother's tactical incompetence so he couldn't clean his way out of a paper bag, but my father ironed all his own clothes, made our packed lunches, etc. I'm sure it was a very good influence on me when it came to choosing a partner because to be frank I'd think someone who couldn't look after themselves was a bit thick, and I tend to go for clever men

"I am sure that over the course of our lives I will do more housework but that's because I am, and intend to be for some time yet, a SAHM. ... If we were both working similar hours then damn right I'd expect him to do half the chores and childcare. But we're not, so I don't."

That sounds very reasonable, and I hope you do realise that

a/ your choice in becoming a SAHM is informed by years and years of sexist and stereotypical social conditioning about what men and women "should" and "shouldn't" be doing, and without knowing about your particular individual financial situation, women typically take a huge, irrevocable financial hit when "choosing" to become a SAHM (hence, partly, the gender wage gap, the glass ceiling, more women in poverty etc)

b/The majority of women don't have the luxury of choosing to stay at home and they need to work outside the home(and no, it's not their fault).

So regardless of your individual situation, from a social point of view, the fact is that women need to do paid work, and women are doing more unpaid domestic labour regardless of whether or not they are working outside.

@Evelight It's a big problem when discussing this stuff, though, balancing a societal perspective with an individual perspective.

For example, the issue of women being underrepresented in STEM careers. Every individual woman can choose their own career - it would be wrong to force anyone into a particular job just to make society's numbers look good. So you have lots of individual women saying, "I don't want a STEM career", and you can't just say, "Some of you women are choosing the wrong thing, you don't know what you want, let me tell you what you should want". Yet obviously we know that there are broader forces at work like girls' belief at school that they're not good at STEM subjects - it's not that women are repeatedly choosing non-STEM careers in a vacuum completely isolated from each other.

So are you telling me I don't really want to be a SAHM and I only think I do because of social conditioning? No, of course not (I hope!) I don't think my boobs magically make me uniquely capable of scrubbing floors and cuddling toddlers. I don't think his penis makes him uniquely capable of earning money. In fact, at one point he was a SAHD while I worked for about a year. Then I became very unhappy with the industry I was working in (normalised abusive working practices, and I wasn't in a place to take on fighting the fight), he got onto a training course for a new career he's really interested in, and we swapped. I've really enjoyed it, we had another child and I'm pregnant again, I'm not yearning to work as anything in particular and don't have an existing career I want to progress in, we can afford it (much more than we can afford childcare!) and have always had a joint pot of marital money with equal personal spending money (cut to fit our cloth, but to me it's the same principle as equal leisure time).

The thing is, the way I see it, "society" means lots and lots of individual decisions which all add up to an overall trend. So by saying we need to see societal changes, one is saying that a number of individuals are making the wrong choices and need to be changed. But how do you identify those individuals? Are we making the wrong choice for me to be a SAHM? How can you tell? What about Mrs Next Door? And Mrs Next Door To Her? Because at some point you do have to (theoretically) point the finger at someone and say "You should not want to be a SAHM and you made the wrong choice". Otherwise the societal trend isn't a problem, it's a neutral fact.

I don't disagree, by the way, that many individuals do have bizarre beliefs about men's work and women's work, and there are individuals I would be happy to point the imaginary finger at and say they are wrong about their division of housework and it should change. But I don't think you can have discussions about broader societal trends without it ultimately coming down to needing to criticise individual choices in order to change anything.

@PerspicaciousGreen
But I don't think you can have discussions about broader societal trends without it ultimately coming down to needing to criticise individual choices in order to change anything

I think you can have that discussion, but not the way that @evelight is going about it (sorry). I don't think it matters whether you (or I) are a SAHM because of societal pressure or individual preference or a mixture of the two. We make our choices out of a range of options in our lives. The choices that are workable, and the difficulty in making them work, depends on a whole load of things,but definitely sex. For the average woman, the workable choices tend to be different, and narrower than that of the average man. There's lots of reasons for that - from the physical (women have a shorter window in which to have children, women physically have the children) to the societal (any men not brought up to "see" housework, many of them seem to be shocked by the amount of work a child entails, and take a conveniently long time to "adjust", employers tend to look more kindly on mothers who work part time than fathers) to the economic (women being offered less money for the same job, better paid parental leave for women than men). The specific issues will be different for different women, and they will depend on money, class, race, family support, all sorts, but it remains the case that on average, our choices are from a narrower palette than men's, and they are usually harder. And that's what we should be fighting to change IMO, not worrying about whether one person's life choices are more or less feminist.

I don't think it's even straightforward to say what a more or less feminist life choice actually is. If we were all to go out working, but still cover all the housework and childcare that our partners can't be arsed with (i.e. well over 50% on average), would that be the end of the patriarchy? It sounds more like supporting of the status quo to me. I remember (back when I was an actual Woman In STEM) my new boss expressing delight that there were so many women in our team (newly moved to his department) because he would have an excellent talent pool to promote from and meet his diversity targets. He was fully unconcerned about the economic conditions in the company that had made us such an anomaly - annual redundancies, that had led many of my female colleagues to find other jobs and careers so as not to risk being made redundant in the middle of having children, that being a far more precarious position for a young mother than a young father. Maybe it would have been better if we'd all just left. It might have sent a message. But it's not the only company I've worked at that was simply content to lionise the few women that survived a career full of redundancies and relocations intact so as to gaslight the younger ones into thinking, there's no discrimination here, and if I don't make it I've only myself to blame.

Imagine we lived in a society where we had an unemployment insurance scheme generous enough to actually live on. Imagine we had enough houses that someone on an average wage could afford to buy an average house. Imagine maternity leave was a social insurance that you paid into to get full pay regardless of your length of service, and imagine blokes had to pay into it the same amount. Imagine there was high quality, guaranteed, affordable 8-6 childcare available from the day maternity leave ended until the day a child left primary school. Imagine workers' rights were strengthened to the point where employers were punished for making people redundant or relocating them on a whim. Maybe at that point we could talk about the feminism of individual choices. But do you know what, it wouldn't bloody matter, because the majority of women would have had their options so broadened that nobody would be interested in policing each other's lives to give ourselves the illusion of control.

My DH often cooks because he enjoys cooking .I think he believes this means he is doing an equal share of chores

Lots of people tell me how "lucky" I am that DH cooks. He gets to choose what we eat most days, makes way more mess than I do when cooking that he appears not to notice and rarely does any other chores. I think hes the lucky one.

For me the obsessive "how often do you clean..." threads on MN reflects or reinforces the stereotype that women should be chief cleaners. That women are supposed to care deeply about cleanliness & prioritise it.

I feel uncomfortable with the obsessiveness on those threads and can't help but think some of them are driven by a kind of "This is what good women people with homes are supposed to obsess about" belief system.

Or maybe I'm merely justifying my comfortably slovenly instincts. Guess I can't ever know.

The idea that it's only silly women "allowing" their men to put them in the position of domestic servant, by "putting up with it" makes me want to bang my head repeatedly on the wall.
The women on here who always claim that their husband does his fair share, and they wouldn't "accept" less are, to me, like unicorns. Lovely idea, but mythical.
In reality I have friends from across a wide range of ages and social/cultural backgrounds, and when I talk to the women they ALL do more domestic tasks.
Interestingly, the ones in their 20's don't seem to mind at all, whereas the ones in their 40s and 50s are fucking sick of it..it is BECAUSE both men and women, deep down, think domesticity is in the female domain, that they don't even realise how much more women are doing,
I have lived with 4 men, between the ages of 18-42, and at at no point have I ever lived with a man who voluntarily cleaned the toilet without being asked. Or picked up MY socks and put them in the wash. Or cleaned the inside of the fridge. It's all very well saying that women shouldn't accept it, but that gives us two options: Become the nagging "mum" whose job it is to oversee the domestic stuff, or just don't live with men. I chose the latter (and being essentially poor), although now living with teens I am back to nagging and feeling resentful, probably not least because my teen boys have never really seen a man take charge of domestic tasks, so don't in their hearts believe it's for them.
An, yes, yes, I take a hard line, no money til X is done, no WiFi until Y is picked up and washed, but damn it's tiring!
I fully expect to still get the blame when they live with girlfriends/wives and are still slobs who don't "see mess"....

@Blakes77

The idea that it's only silly women "allowing" their men to put them in the position of domestic servant, by "putting up with it" makes me want to bang my head repeatedly on the wall. The women on here who always claim that their husband does his fair share, and they wouldn't "accept" less are, to me, like unicorns. Lovely idea, but mythical. In reality I have friends from across a wide range of ages and social/cultural backgrounds, and when I talk to the women they ALL do more domestic tasks. Interestingly, the ones in their 20's don't seem to mind at all, whereas the ones in their 40s and 50s are fucking sick of it..it is BECAUSE both men and women, deep down, think domesticity is in the female domain, that they don't even realise how much more women are doing, I have lived with 4 men, between the ages of 18-42, and at at no point have I ever lived with a man who voluntarily cleaned the toilet without being asked. Or picked up MY socks and put them in the wash. Or cleaned the inside of the fridge. It's all very well saying that women shouldn't accept it, but that gives us two options: Become the nagging "mum" whose job it is to oversee the domestic stuff, or just don't live with men. I chose the latter (and being essentially poor), although now living with teens I am back to nagging and feeling resentful, probably not least because my teen boys have never really seen a man take charge of domestic tasks, so don't in their hearts believe it's for them. An, yes, yes, I take a hard line, no money til X is done, no WiFi until Y is picked up and washed, but damn it's tiring! I fully expect to still get the blame when they live with girlfriends/wives and are still slobs who don't "see mess"....

Agreed

@Macaronirabbit

My DH often cooks because he enjoys cooking .I think he believes this means he is doing an equal share of chores

Lots of people tell me how "lucky" I am that DH cooks. He gets to choose what we eat most days, makes way more mess than I do when cooking that he appears not to notice and rarely does any other chores. I think hes the lucky one.

Even the fact that people tell you that you're lucky is ridiculous and proves the entire point of the thread.

I have just visited my ex husband’s home ( we get on well).

It’s a bloody mess. And not clean at all.
He’s happy. A clean and tidy house means very little to him. He’s get a cleaner once a week and doesn’t do anything in between.
Our children don’t give a damn.

My home. Spotless
I’m happy. I like it like that.
Our children don’t give a damn.

Why do do many expect a man to suddenly care about a clean and tidy home and then when they aren’t that bothered - accuse them of being lazy / hopeless / pathetic men and / or an society issue etc

Many men don’t care. Many cate date more about keeping the family car (s) spotless, and do. Whereas many women don’t (me included).

@RosesAndHellebores

I recall at ds1s christening 25 years and more ago now. MIL asked/said "now you are at home/going to work part time, I assume you will be cancelling that cleaner?". It was one of the few times my mother had my back "goodness Joan, did you bring your girls up to clean despite those super universities?".

MIL was a deputy head. She waited on FIL like a handmaid, down to sugaring his tea. Never let anyone help and always complained about how much time the jobs took and how tedious they were. Paradoxically her house was never spotless, no-one was well pressed and she is a poor cook. My gran was spotless and well turned outside her jodhpurs (though they were clean on) my mother is immaculate in every way and I am similar. SILs are grubby and bang on about cleaning being menial and appearance being irrelevant. The one with children does share the domestic load equally with her DH, ie, neither of them do much - the house is a shambles and the dc are unboundaried. Neither SIL has ever done a full-time, full on professional job despite their Russell Group Universities about which MIL still bangs on.

My mum was similarly insistent on doing all the cooking, even though my dad used to work in a bakery and lived alone looking after himself for some years before they met.

But cleaning was mostly our job as kids - and fucking hell does it show now we've left home. My mum still comes out with airy comments about "wondering how people find the time to clean" directed at our fairly clean and orderly house.

Except we pay for a cleaner. All the cleaning I do in the year is discreetly sorting out their house when I visit and they're out.

"Imagine we lived in a society where we had an unemployment insurance scheme generous enough to actually live on. Imagine we had enough houses that someone on an average wage could afford to buy an average house. Imagine maternity leave was a social insurance that you paid into to get full pay regardless of your length of service, and imagine blokes had to pay into it the same amount. Imagine there was high quality, guaranteed, affordable 8-6 childcare available from the day maternity leave ended until the day a child left primary school. Imagine workers' rights were strengthened to the point where employers were punished for making people redundant or relocating them on a whim. Maybe at that point we could talk about the feminism of individual choices. But do you know what, it wouldn't bloody matter, because the majority of women would have had their options so broadened that nobody would be interested in policing each other's lives to give ourselves the illusion of control."

Exactly this. @PerspicaciousGreen what you went through at your workplace- the toxicity and hostility, a lot of women experience that. I am not criticizing individual women's decisions, and I totally get your comment about "not having that fight in me"- I was there too, and a bazillion other women.

Why tho? Is it ok that your workplace was so toxic and hostile that you made the "choice" to fully withdraw from the labour market? Is it ok that men (ok, who wants to talk about the poor men?) are by default the "main breadwinners", and have to shoulder the entire financial responsibility, because their wives and female partners are basically pushed out of competitive, high-earning workforces? is ot ok that so many men fgot through life having no or very little idea about childcare or spending time with their children? Is it ok that women have to leave -oh sorry, CHOOSE to leave promising careers to become SAHM (because they really really really like childcare, yes we do!) The mental health issues coming out of this alone are manifold and generational. Gender stereotypes at work benefit noone- expect a small minority of elite men and decision-makers.

I want to build on what @toomuchtooold (I actually don't see as much difference between what we are saying) is saying- imagine family-friendly workplaces where BOTH MEN and WOMEN are encouraged to develop their careers AND their families/personal life, health and well-being, not one at the expense of the other. Imagine where both MEN AND WOMEN were encouraged to spend time raising their kids (and please spare me the claptrap about the wonderful DHs who some folk are "lucky enough" that they spend the weekends with their kids), and both WOMEN AND MEN are encouraged and supported to develop rewarding, functioning careers giving them financial stability and resources. Too much to ask for? yes, seems like it is.

Meanwhile, thank god for female cleaners tho'.

Don’t clean your house then

@lljkk

For me the obsessive "how often do you clean..." threads on MN reflects or reinforces the stereotype that women should be chief cleaners. That women are supposed to care deeply about cleanliness & prioritise it.

I feel uncomfortable with the obsessiveness on those threads and can't help but think some of them are driven by a kind of "This is what good women people with homes are supposed to obsess about" belief system.

Or maybe I'm merely justifying my comfortably slovenly instincts. Guess I can't ever know.

I never comment on those threads, because in comparison I feel like a slattern . It's nice to have a clean house, but life is too short to spend all of it cleaning. Cleaning can beget more cleaning, as you try to have a constantly spotless house.

Why do do many expect a man to suddenly care about a clean and tidy home and then when they aren’t that bothered - accuse them of being lazy / hopeless / pathetic men and / or an society issue etc

Theres a difference between not minding mess to actually doing fairly standard chores though.
Washing up, cleaning surfaces, wiping spillages, cleaning bathrooms/toilets, changing towels and bedding, and doing laundry are all pretty basic.

*Theres is obviously a variation in how regularly you would do this

Who are all these people with their circles?

I barely have a triangle. Definitely couldn't be arsed having a circle, fuck that.

The women on here who always claim that their husband does his fair share, and they wouldn't "accept" less are, to me, like unicorns. Lovely idea, but mythical.
In reality I have friends from across a wide range of ages and social/cultural backgrounds, and when I talk to the women they ALL do more domestic tasks.
Interestingly, the ones in their 20's don't seem to mind at all, whereas the ones in their 40s and 50s are fucking sick of it

I agree, in that all the women I know do tye majority of it too. t's tricky though. I'm 49 and I'm a bit sick of it. But if you offered me a direct swap with dh I'd say no thanks very much. I do far far more menial chores than him. And yes, the ones that he does tend to be the ones he chooses to do (cooking, gardening and diy). But... overall he works absolutely miles harder than me, has much less free time and much more pressure and stress than me (in the same sector in which I work very part time - so I am very well aware of what his job is like).